DrungoHazewood

I think a lot of businesses are like individuals. Their contingency plan for not having revenues for several months involves misplacing a lot of bills and not answering the phone when the bank calls. You have to already be pretty successful to have months and months of reserves.

I'm not stopping there. It's Aaron Judge's fault, and he needs to be driven from what's left of the game forever.

I'm sure it's because comprehensive pitch count data starts in the 1980s, and isn't even complete then. I'd guess they'll eventually incorporate the handful of games where there are videos and other sources of data, but things like Project Scoresheet started the regular collection of this data a little over 30 years ago and it's a lot of work to incorporate scattershot information from other sources.

If not for the virus we wouldn't be having this discussion, but instead one about why Stevie Wilkerson is still on the team this far into the season. Olney needs clicks for revenues, but it couldn't be more clear that the virus is the root cause for all of this. The money is just a detail to be worked out because of the virus.

Half of everything the internet: "See that guy over there? He's an idiot, and you're all morons because you love him. Why am I the only one who sees the truth?!?!?!?"

Yes, that's standard for interactions today. Who's head can we place on a pike if all of these hypotheticals fall into place? Don't want to be last in line for recriminations.

I have not, I'm sure it's very interesting. Paige was probably one of the guys mentioned above who was a physical freak and whose body didn't break down at levels of abuse in 30 years that would have crushed a normal major leaguer in a season or two. But also the Negro Leagues were something like Korea or Japan or Cuba today. They had 28-year-old inner circle HOFers on the same field with 16-year-olds and 43-year-olds and guys who were A ball quality. The Homestead Grays would play the Baltimore Black Sox one day, and some local semi-pro team the next. Paige would almost certainly have been able to pace himself at reduced effort for a lot of his herculean stretches.

Perhaps it's human nature, but there's an awful lot of assigning of blame to a specific person or group for very large, societal, country-wide, or even worldwide events and trends. It's a little silly to take a huge, global event with thousands of interlocking pieces and effects and assign hypothetical blame for a baseball season that hasn't been canceled yet to a very specific group like the players.

He and Casey Kelly were clearly the best starters on a 79-64 team last year.

Dan Brouthers hit one over the fence at Union Park in 1894 that rolled down the street, into a wagon, which got dumped into a ship and ended up in China. Or something like that. That's why they painted "HERE" on the fence, and why they put up the "HERE" flag at Memorial when Frank hit the one all the way out. They should put a HERE flag on the top of the Warehouse just to mess with people.

Legends are fun. But they're also fun to poke and prod and sometimes debunk. People claim Ruth hit 600 foot homers, when the biggest steroid-jacked guys hitting off 100 mph fastballs couldn't come close to that. So I'm curious, I try to figure out if that was possible. And I think it probably wasn't, not unless the QA on the baseballs was so poor that you'd often get a really juiced one. You don't have to believe the legends to have fun with them.

Also, I think there's a difference between throwing hard and THROWING HARD. Bob Gibson probably threw low to mid 90s, and did that for 300 innings. But if he were born in 1990 he'd have thrown 98 for 200 innings, or would be turned into a reliever throwing 101 for 65 innings. Yes, Ryan threw 101 for 300 innings and walked 220 guys some years. But he is an alien.

I believe that Bob Gibson wanted you to believe that. I'm naturally skeptical of legendary stuff. People talk about Gibson hitting a batter every other inning out of spite and meanness and intimidation. But he hit fewer batters per inning than Chris Tillman or Miguel Gonzalez. I don't know, maybe he did throw hard every pitch. Maybe he was like Nolan Ryan and Livan Hernandez and had some kind of freakish physical build that let him throw more and harder than normal human pitchers. But as I said, I'm naturally skeptical.

Because I wanted a particular outcome. And my way is dramatically easier to implement. There's no good way to measure an 80% swing, but I'm guessing you knew that and your response was just a round-about way of saying my suggestion is dumb.

The worst of all options: expending plenty of resources, but on mediocre and declining players, leaving nothing for investment in development. A recipe for a downward spiral that's hard to recover from. If he'd just been cheap at least he would have forced the GMs to go with a cutthroat Rays solution of never signing bad contracts, trading players before they declined, and relying only on development.

The '98 Orioles were the 2nd-oldest MLB team (at least by position players) since 1980. And perhaps of all time, I only went back to 1980. The only team with an average position player age above 33.2 was the 2006 Giants, who were under .500 despite Barry Bonds and would stay there for a few years.

Weird thought experiment. Back in history pitchers got injured, so teams started limiting how much they throw both in innings and pitches. Most pitchers just took that and ran with it, and started throwing as hard as they could for the lesser amount they were given. That highlighted the fact that everyone pitches better in shorter outings. Which kickstarted the arms race (pun intended) to everyone throwing short outings at 97 mph. So what if there was a flavor of baseball that made any pitch over 90 mph a ball? Deaden the ball so scoring doesn't get out of control, but make most pitchers throw at 80% effort. Much more contact, and pitchers can go back to throwing seven, eight, nine or more innings a game. Would that be a better brand of baseball?

Eight innings, two runs, got the win. Every generation has a couple guys with rubber arms who defy all logic. Livan was his. If he'd played in the 1960s and 70s he would have thrown 340 innings a year. But that's not really so much of a thing any more because everyone throws hard and gets pulled with one out in the sixth.

It was a different mindset, a little bit of a throwback to the 20s and 30s. Your best pitchers were your top 2-3 starters. Relievers were guys who weren't good enough to start. You left the starter in if he was ahead and he wasn't totally gassed. It can work when everyone else does it, and the quality of play is a little different with more guys in the lineup with no power. Earl was one of the last holdouts. Casey did that, too, and more. Look at the top starters of the 1930s, they'd sometimes start 35 times and relieve another 15 and have 6 or 8 saves. Because that was thought of as being better than having your 6th starter pitch relief. I have a feeling that modern lineups would tear that strategy to shreds.

The 2018 slash line (BA/OBP/SLG) was .248/.318/409. The 1969 slash line was .248/.320/.369. That would mean an average player in '69 hit .248 with 25 doubles, a few triples, 14 homers and 64 walks. The average player in '18 was the same except for 22 homers. There were 60% more homers in '18 and it's just gone up from there. Teams scored half a run a game more in '18 than in '69.

Details tend to get lost over time. People advocate for Dick Allen to go in the Hall because he was basically the Albert Belle of the 60s and while stat lines are forever on bb-ref, even the most egregious behavior gets washed away as "there's a lot of jerks in Cooperstown!"

It was a bit of a different world. In 1968 the average major leaguer had a slash line of .237/.299/.340 and 10 teams failed to hit 100 homers for the year. I'm pretty sure the Twins had a game last year where they hit 100 homers. Gibson and the other pitchers of 1968 didn't have to throw max effort and wipeout sliders all the time when the other team's shortstop was Ed Brinkman.

It's just a continuation of a 150-year-old trend. In 1871 Asa Brainard threw 30 complete games in a 32-game schedule. In 1884 Old Hoss Radbourne threw 73 complete games out of 114. 678 innings. The last 600 inning season was in 1892 by Bill Hutchison, which was also the last 500 inning season. The last 400 inning season was Ed Walsh in 1908. The last 350 inning season was knuckleballer Wilbur Wood in 1973. The last 300 inning season was Steve Carlton in 1980. The last 275 inning season was Dave Stewart in 1988. The last 250 inning season was Justin Verlander in 2011. Johnny Cueto and David Price were the last to go 240, in 2014. The pitches database isn't as long or nearly as complete, but for games we have records: By Tom Tango's pitch count estimator Joe Oeschger threw about 330 pitches in his 26-inning complete game in 1920. Stan Williams had a 207 pitch game in 1961. The last 175-pitch game on record was by Joey Jay in '62. The last 150-pitch game was by Livan Hernandez in 2005, one of only two this century. There was one 130-pitch game in '19, in Mike Fiers no-hitter. In 1988 there were 236 130+ pitch games. In '88 there were 598 120+ pitch games. In 2019 there were 14. It's been clear for a long, long time that pitchers are much more effective throwing fewer innings and pitches. It's kind of amazing that it's taken this long to get down to five or six innings a start. Clearly most pitchers and teams would get better results with less work than that. The only thing stopping them has been roster size.

That's fine. Hate the wave! My seat will always be a no wave zone.

A few fans briefly bought into the EBW narrative about Eddie. But that was completely gone by the time he came back in '96 and he's almost universally beloved in Baltimore now. The only people in Baltimore who fondly recall Joey are the curmudgeons and devil's advocates who refuse to take the consensus position on anything.