DrungoHazewood

I'm sure I'll get over it, it'll be fine. But it will be a lot different than 30 or 40 years ago. Averages will probably creep up a little, but with strikeout rates still well over 20% it'll all be on BABIP. There won't be any more balls in play, there won't be any change in players trying to pull everything, we'll just have more balls in play turn into hits. Mostly from big lefty sluggers. This isn't to develop more Tony Gwynns, it's to make it easier on Chris Davis.

I'm assigning that as your homework. Please appropriately cite your sources. Due 0800 Tuesday because of the holiday.

What if we moved the mound back 6', but had all parks be 200' all around? Who doesn't like 12-run-a-game baseball?

Maybe, but that would validate a position I oppose so I'll go with no.

I'm not sure the official rules say that you have to supply a bullpen. Just don't have one for the visitors.

There's a certain allure to the old school storyteller who knew that the only way to fact-check him was to spend 20 hours pouring over microfiche at the library.

Sure, but they didn't say "hey, don't cover that guy even though you the ball is going to him." MLB is saying that they know Joey Gallo is going to hit the ball *right here* but you aren't allowed to adjust (okay, optimize) your defense for that.

It would be very different, and I think it would be interesting. But maybe not long term. Error rates were much higher and they still scored less than four runs a game. That White Sox team scored 570 runs. I'm sure their fans loved it, but imagine being one of those 54-100 teams scoring two runs a game, with a cleanup hitter with zero homers. Actually, those '06 White Sox most common cleanup hitters were Jiggs Donohue and George Davis who combined for one homer all season. I'd rather watch 1890s baseball where they did all that hitting and running and bunting and stealing, hit few homers, but they scored 5, 6, 7 runs a game and whole teams hit well over .300.

I think it was Bill Veeck who reconfigured his park based on which opponent was coming in. The Yanks got longer dimensions. The League made that illegal real quick. There's a story (probably from Veeck As In Wreck) that he also mounted a 20' or 30' roll-up screen in RF for the minor league Milwaukee Brewers. Rolled it down when the Brewers were up, fully deployed in between innings when the opponent was coming up. He says the league made it illegal the next day. Problem is that there's no evidence from contemporary papers that this ever happened.

Gunnar Henderson would hit .470 if his opponents averaged 5' 9", 160 pounds, the pitchers were all trying to complete a game every four days, there were no minorities and few non-Americans in the Majors, minor league systems barely existed, scouting was threadbare and primitive. Just imagine any current MLBer playing in the Korean League, where Hyun Soo Kim hit .357 in consecutive seasons with almost twice as many walks as strikeouts.

Everyone knows that scientific base ball is the way to go. Place hitting, bunting, hitting and running, never striking out. Any 6' tall, 200 lb moose can hit a ball 400' once in a while. Yep, it's been all downhill since 1920, boys. The peak of the sport was the 1906 White Sox, who hit .230 and slugged .286 and won the Series.

This is a sport where there are still people who adamantly think that most of the best players played 100 years ago, that complete games are the mark of a real man, that Nellie Fox choking up 6" and poking the ball to second base to move the runner up is what all real hitters should be doing, that both the 1927 and the 1961 Yankees would beat the 2022 Dodgers 4-0 in a World Series. I think it's more surprising that the batting average champion doesn't get a 1911 Chalmers automobile for winning.

There's some AAA park where the LF wall is a giant video board, and the LFer permanently looks like he's being released from being probed in a massive UFO.

Make the LF wall go straight across to the batter's eye, and have that 30' wall in play. That would be roughly 460' to CF, or equivalent to old Yankee. Ah yes, an inside-the-park homer that doesn't involve an outfielder either getting injured or playing like Mark Trumbo.

Yes. And you know I love playing professor Drungo. There are so few things in the world where someone can say "you're the guy for this thing." It's hyper-nerdy in an unbelievably small niche, but this is mine. And I'm glad you guys indulge me on it.

Sure. But it would be like the NFL not scoring enough and the solution is that you can't cover wide receivers outside the hash marks.

I noticed a typo. The 1936 Boston Braves should be '35. The '34-'36 Braves are a really strange case. The '34 Braves went 78-73-1, then collapsed to 38-115, then in '36 rebounded to 71-83-3. All three years they had HOF manager Bill McKechnie. In 1935 the major event was they signed 40-year-old Babe Ruth after the Yanks released him. Ruth wanted to manage and apparently believed that he'd been promised the Braves' job, perhaps the next season. But that didn't materialize, the already had a great manager, Ruth ends up retiring after less than two months, and the resulting circus seems to have tanked the team.

Rank Team Year 1_W Year 1_L Yer 1_Pct Year 2_W Year 2_L Year 2_Pct Diff W_diff Notes 1 1890 Louisville 27 111 0.196 88 44 0.667 0.471 64 Players League chaos 2 1898 St. Louis 39 111 0.260 84 67 0.556 0.296 44.5 Syndicate ownership with Cleveland Spiders 3 1999 D'backs 65 97 0.401 100 62 0.617 0.216 35 Acquired R. Johnson, Finley, L. Gonzalez, B. Kim, A. Reynoso, Stottlemyre 4 1946 Red Sox 71 83 0.461 104 50 0.675 0.214 33 Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Doerr others came back from WWII 5 1936 Braves 38 115 0.248 71 83 0.461 0.213 32.5 Ruth retired in '35 6 1905 Phils 52 100 0.342 83 69 0.546 0.204 31 7 1989 Orioles 54 107 0.335 87 75 0.537 0.202 32.5 8 1962 Phils 47 107 0.305 81 80 0.503 0.198 30.5 9 2022 Orioles 52 110 0.321 83 79 0.512 0.191 31 10 1993 Giants 72 90 0.444 103 59 0.636 0.191 31 11 2008 Rays 66 96 0.407 97 65 0.599 0.191 31 12 1914 Cardinals 51 99 0.340 81 72 0.529 0.189 28.5 13 1918 Pirates 51 103 0.331 65 60 0.520 0.189 28.5 WWI short schedule 14 1947 A's 49 105 0.318 78 76 0.506 0.188 29 Sorry if the columns don't quite line up, this is pasted from an Excel spreadsheet. It's sorted by difference in winning percentage to account for varying schedule lengths. I'd ignore the first two, as 1800s circumstances are wildly different from today. The '46 Red Sox are a pretty unique situation, as they got Ted Freakin' Williams, HOFer Bobby Doerr and several others back from the war. The Why Not? Orioles beat the '22ers by 1.5 games. Overall, they're tied for 5th-best leap forward since 1900 in terms of wins/losses, and 7th in winning percentage gain. Not bad. Not bad at all. I have decent knowledge of most of the teams on this list, but I really have no idea about a few like the '05 Phils or the '14 Cards, '18 Pirates. I'll have to do some digging. Even after briefly looking at the '05 Phillies roster and transactions I don't see any obvious reason they leapt forward.

a) The Federal League was 1914-15. Do I have to hold another remedial class? I mean, c'mon, Baltimore Terrapins, the Supreme Court case that led to the anti-trust exemption, Jack Dunn moving the minor league Orioles to Richmond for a year because the Feds built their park across the street from his so 1915 is the only year since 1900 there were no Baltimore Orioles... this is basic stuff. b) The Federal League was approximately as hard as A ball today c) Batting average races are awesome, especially when someone is hitting like .390. d) No one really cares about batting average in a vacuum, but I certainly prefer a league that hits .280 to one that hits .240 e) The Majors hit .243 in 2022. Lowest mark since 1968, second-lowest since 1908. With a league with as much depth and quality as we have today and a .243 overall average it's near impossible for someone to hit .350, much less .380 or .400. So let's move the mound back 3'. f) Strikeouts are driving the lower batting averages, because when you only make contact 75% of the time you have to hit like .375 on balls in play to have a decent average and that's very hard. Again, let's move the mound back.

Remember that many or most weight estimates from the 19th century (and probably later) were educated guesses based on photographs, many years after the fact. There seem to be an unusual number of 1800s players listed at like 5' 6" or 5' 8", 180, which is kind of chunky. And it's not like these guys were lifting a lot of weights.

Cruz was a different case because he had missed 50 games the season prior for a Biogenesis PED suspension, and he was looking for a short, relatively cheap one year deal to rebuild his value.

I mean, really, that was the best 90s. The 1990s didn't even have cholera or cocaine in the Coca Cola.

No, he wasn't. He was a smidge over replacement the three years prior to coming to Baltimore. The Mariners thought so much of him that they let him go for Steve Clevinger, the Chance Sisco of 2015.

There would be an adjustment phase while the 2022 Oregon Staters adjusted to all submarine pitching from roughly 50' and flat ground by pitchers who were trying to pace themselves to throw 58 complete games in a 60-game schedule. Also fielding on your local Little League diamond without gloves. But after they got over that, and the 19 nagging cases of typhoid, they'd almost certainly dominate. The median height and weight of the '76 White Stockings was 5' 8", 173 pounds. The '22 Orioles' is 6' 2", 215. The '22 Oregon State team's size is nearly identical to the Orioles'.

Not to minimize Ohtani's accomplishments in any way, but because it's me... in the early days of professional and Major League base ball it was common for a pitcher to qualify for both. In the very early days, the NA, the early NL, most teams had one pitcher who pitched 80-90% or even more of their innings. In 1874 Al Splading led the league in both innings pitched (617) and plate appearances as a batter (365). Guy Hecker won 52 games and threw 670 innings in 1884, won the batting title at .341 in 1885, and in 1882 was in the top 10 in PA/AB. But what Ohtani is doing is something unheard of since before 1900, when playing quality and organization was comically primitive compared to today. If Guy Hecker and the 1880s Louisvilles showed up in 2022 they'd probably slot in as a fairly competitive team in a mid-major NCAA conference.