Power outage in baseball?

[JTrea81]

There has been an alarming drop in offensive performance MLB wide for a lot of the stars of today's game.

Here's a partial list of the underperformers:

Albert Pujols: .262/.329/.403/.732

Hanley Ramirez: .206/.302/.306/.608

Carl Crawford: .236/.272/.369/.642

Evan Longoria: .237/.351/.430/.781

Adam Dunn: .181/.320/.331/.652

David Wright: .226/.337/.404/.741

Aramis Ramirez: .270/.333/.368/.701

Dustin Pedroia: .243/.353/.337/.690

Dan Uggla: .180/.246/.327/.572

Brian Roberts: .221/.273/.331/.604

Having these stars and more all underperform is not good for the game. Baseball has to act and soon to avoid dropping attendance with the stars struggling to put up numbers and hurting their team's offensive performance.

The pitching advantage is clearly too much and something has to be done to limit that advantage so that the game's top hitters can once again perform.

[Can_of_corn]

I am sure they will tweak the balls again after this season as I am sure they have realized that they de-tuned them a bit too much.

On the positive side there are only two players under PED speculation right now and one of them is a pitcher.

[Steve I]

This thread just took on new life, Cardinals lights on one bank just failed with 2 outs in the bottom of the 11th, trailing 7-5. Essentially they are 2 strikes to a loss. Lights go out and Brian Wilson of the Giants is way pissed.

[weams]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2011/06/02/2011-06-02_arod_injects_cuz_into_trip.html

[weams]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2011/05/22/2011-05-22_yankees_bartolo_colon_has_stem_cell_procedure_as_mlb_investigates_but_techonolog.html?obref=obinsite

[weams]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/719464-terrelle-pryor-ron-artest-roger-federer-and-wednesdays-top-sports-news/entry/89857-jose-bautista-does-sluggers-surge-raise-legitimate-ped-questions

And Hawk Haerelson chimes in with his own theory.

http://www.nesn.com/2011/05/former-ballplayer-hawk-harrelson-questions-jose-bautistas-hitting-tear.html

[Moose Milligan]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/719464-terrelle-pryor-ron-artest-roger-federer-and-wednesdays-top-sports-news/entry/89857-jose-bautista-does-sluggers-surge-raise-legitimate-ped-questions

And Hawk Haerelson chimes in with his own theory.

http://www.nesn.com/2011/05/former-ballplayer-hawk-harrelson-questions-jose-bautistas-hitting-tear.html

That bleacher report article is so poorly written and doesn't bring anything to the table. Neither does Hawk Harrelson. Weamsy, not trying to beat you up, just sayin...

Anyway, Bautista hit 16 homers in a season before so he did have a LITTLE bit of pop. I don't think it's out of line to think that he tweaked his swing and figured out how to be a better hitter.

[Pedro Cerrano]

There has been an alarming drop in offensive performance MLB wide for a lot of the stars of today's game.

Here's a partial list of the underperformers:

Albert Pujols: .262/.329/.403/.732

Hanley Ramirez: .206/.302/.306/.608

Carl Crawford: .236/.272/.369/.642

Evan Longoria: .237/.351/.430/.781

Adam Dunn: .181/.320/.331/.652

David Wright: .226/.337/.404/.741

Aramis Ramirez: .270/.333/.368/.701

Dustin Pedroia: .243/.353/.337/.690

Dan Uggla: .180/.246/.327/.572

Brian Roberts: .221/.273/.331/.604

Having these stars and more all underperform is not good for the game. Baseball has to act and soon to avoid dropping attendance with the stars struggling to put up numbers and hurting their team's offensive performance.

The pitching advantage is clearly too much and something has to be done to limit that advantage so that the game's top hitters can once again perform.

I swear you wrote a similar post to this one last year.

[Pedro Cerrano]

I swear you wrote a similar post to this one last year.

Yup. Sure did. And it was actually a year ago today!

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php/97927-MLB-needs-to-pick-up-the-offense?highlight=

[JTrea81]

The same thing applies.

MLB did something last year IMO as the offense did rise somewhat in the second half of 2010, so they need to do something again as well.

[SrMeowMeow]

This is insane. Do they hide these magical tweakable baseballs in the soundstage where "they" faked the moon landing?

[O-The-Memories]

The steroid thread got closed in the Orioles section, so I'll put a response here.

Do have any sources to back up your baloney? I added up the distances for Bonds' HR's from 2000 to 2007 and the average was less than Nick Markakis' averge distance for last year. There are a number of studies that show that PED's don't add that much in distance to HR's. Did Roger Clemmons' velocity increase in his later years when he was using PED'S?

Guys take steroids to gain an advantage, whether it's recovery time or bat speed. Either way, they help or else guys wouldn't take them. I would have taken them too if I was in the majors.

The real problem is MLB. They turned a blind eye to what was plain to see if they opened their eyes. Guys were getting huge and hitting HR's at a record pace. These guys looked like NFL linebackers, not baseball players. But since the revenue was coming in and fans were coming back to the game after the strike, nothing was done. They created the monster.

Now they still haven't REALLY addressed steroids, and the testing isn't very strenuous. I wonder why? Could it be that they don't really want to eliminate the problem? Guys are still using them, connected to HGH during surgery and steroid mules, but since the penalties are pretty high, guys are just being more careful. The game is still dirty, just the same way it always has been. That's fine with me, but just be upfront with it. Tell the fans that you sat back and watched as the steroid "problem" snowballed.