MLB and Union talk major rule changes

[atomic]

13 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

1957.  No war.  Post-WWII economic boom.  Baseball was still the unrivaled king of US professional sports, and the Yanks were in the middle of arguaby the most dominant period of any team in baseball history.  And they drew 100k fewer fans than the 2018 Orioles.

Half the population and 3 teams in NYC. I am not sure why less people attended games. I guess you could do some research. Probably no corporate tickets being bought then.    Perhaps families didn't go as much back then and it was more of man thing.  I know the Bronx was pretty scary in the 70's. Not sure what it was like in the 50's. 

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

No he wasn't.

At best he was better than average at the position they put the next to worst fielders.  That still puts him way down on the overall list of defenders.

That concept is why Sean Foreman puts dWAR on bb-ref.  It's totally misinterpreted all the time, but I get why he did it.  

[DrungoHazewood]

5 minutes ago, atomic said:

Half the population and 3 teams in NYC. I am not sure why less people attended games. I guess you could do some research. Probably no corporate tickets being bought then.    Perhaps families didn't go as much back then and it was more of man thing.  I know the Bronx was pretty scary in the 70's. Not sure what it was like in the 50's. 

That's a good tip, I really don't know much about history and stuff.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That concept is why Sean Foreman puts dWAR on bb-ref.  It's totally misinterpreted all the time, but I get why he did it.  

Please, after the back and forth with Frobby the other day I'm done talking about dWAR for a while.

[atomic]

Last season was the first season in MLB history that there were more strike outs than hits.  

[Frobby]

44 minutes ago, atomic said:

I guess people don't think of Houston as a big market as it isn't much of a tourist destination. People don't know too much about it than it is hot and humid.  As opposed to places like Austin and San Antonio where people actually visit for leisure. 

Having been to Houston on business, I doubt I’ll be making any tourist trips there.    I have a wedding to attend in Austin later this year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what that city’s all about.   

[Aglets]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's a good tip, I really don't know much about history and stuff.

Curious to hear what your theory is for the explanation.  It doesn't appear to be any of the reasons speculated about above.

Best I can figure is back then the games weren't televised nearly as much right?   So maybe interest was a little lower......and i'm guessing there were far fewer evening games?   So people had to actually work and stuff?

[Tx Oriole]

51 minutes ago, Frobby said:

It’s the 5th largest metro area in the US, bigger than Baltimore/Washington combined.

I sure didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, wildbillhiccup said:

...or they could just keep it at 9 and shrink the roster sizes so it penalizes / handcuffs teams who choose to carry one trick ponies. Somewhere along the way between launch angle and the DH it's let to an influx of non fielding/swing for the fences hitters in the league who really should be playing in beer softball leagues. Trumbo, Morrison, Davidson...would any of these guys even have jobs if it weren't for the DH position? 

Dick Stuart had a job for 10 years with numbers like Trumbo, and he was a -59 first baseman in the pre-DH era.  There have always been Roy Seiverses and Mike Epsteins and Frank Howards.  The calculus was just a little different when you had to shuffle them off to be pinch hitters when they got too bad in the field.  Remember, prior to the DH pinch hitters could get into almost every game, that was a job.  I guess it still is in the NL.  Matt Stairs.

[atomic]

22 minutes ago, wildbillhiccup said:

Did you isolate Trumbo's stats for just his time spent at 1B? And going by the eye test (my eyes) I can tell you that Trumbo is most definitely not a better fielder at 1b then Davis. The comparison is probably much closer in the OF, but they're both terrible. 

Yeah I am looking at Trumbo's stats at first base.  He has only started 9 games over the past 3 years. With never more than 4 starts in a year.  Over the last 2 years he has 35 innings at First Base. I am not going to judge anyone on such a few games at first.  

Trumbo and Mancini are both terrible outfielders.  And Jones was bad in center last year.  Throw in bad play at Shortstop and it is no wonder our pitching was so bad last season.  Playing everyone out of position does not lead to success it seems.   

[Tx Oriole]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Having been to Houston on business, I doubt I’ll be making any tourist trips there.    I have a wedding to attend in Austin later this year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what that city’s all about.   

Enjoy Austin. 

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, Aglets said:

Curious to hear what your theory is for the explanation.  It doesn't appear to be any of the reasons speculated about above.

Best I can figure is back then the games weren't televised nearly as much right?   So maybe interest was a little lower......and i'm guessing there were far fewer evening games?   So people had to actually work and stuff?

I don't know how anyone ever went to a weekday baseball game prior to lights.  It's probably a miracle that baseball didn't settle on a 50-game schedule with almost everything on weekends.  You literally had to skip out on work or school to go to a weekday MLB game.

But by the 50s everyone except the Cubs had lights.  I think there's a lot of interacting reasons.  One is lower disposable income.  Poorer transportation.  Smaller population.  Stadiums were... different.  Memorial Stadium, for example, was much harder to get to than OPACY and there was nothing around the stadium besides residential areas.  And these weren't mallparks with Korean taco stands - these were either 60-year-old stadiums with limited amenities, or the newer multi-purpose concrete behemoths with limited amenities.  Memorial was kind of a hybrid of those two types.

Attendance surged in the years right after WWII, but then TV got big and attendance fell a lot by the mid-late 50s.  Some was probably urban decay, this was the start of flight from cities by middle class mostly white people.  Football and basketball really took off as rival sports.  

And I don't think you should discount the Yankee dominance.  It's hard to fathom this, but from 1921-64 the Yanks were in the World Series 29 times.  At the same time the old franchises owned by a guy who'd been kind of rich in 1920 lost all the time.  The Browns and Phils and Braves and A's more often than not were 30, 40, 50+ games out of first, barely making ends meet, no farm systems.  If you were the Browns you knew as a matter of absolute fact that you were going to finish 43 games behind the Yanks, it didn't matter what year it was.  

This could go on forever, but other things like very rapid expansion, leading to a large number of teams with no real history or organic fanbase.  And the unfettered movement of franchises in the 50s and 60s.  I know I still feel like the Marlins and Rays aren't exactly on par with everyone else... in 1972 eight of the 24 teams didn't exist 10 years prior and a bunch of others had moved, some more than once.

It's complicated.

[wildbillhiccup]

33 minutes ago, atomic said:

Yeah I am looking at Trumbo's stats at first base.  He has only started 9 games over the past 3 years. With never more than 4 starts in a year.  Over the last 2 years he has 35 innings at First Base. I am not going to judge anyone on such a few games at first.  

Trumbo and Mancini are both terrible outfielders.  And Jones was bad in center last year.  Throw in bad play at Shortstop and it is no wonder our pitching was so bad last season.  Playing everyone out of position does not lead to success it seems.   

Agreed. That's not a judgeable sample size, but it also tells me there's a reason he's only played 35 innings that position. 

[elextrano8]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It would be a heck of lot more fun product than 28 minutes of commercial breaks from the 6th inning on in every game.  Or if you're at the game, watching 96 warmup pitches from the mid-inning relievers.

I've always wondered about the warm-up pitches. I haven't pitched since AAA (...in little league...) so I've never experienced coming into a game like that. Is there a reason that pitchers who have already warmed up in the bullpen would NEED to warm-up further after getting to the mound? Perhaps requiring relievers to be ready to pitch when the manager makes the call would help cut down on wasted time.

[wildbillhiccup]

56 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think some players, Davis and Jones come to mind, look smooth in the field.  I think the eye test overrates their actual performance.

 

In other words Davis and Trumbo both might not get to a ball in the outfield but Davis will look better (not) doing it.

If we're just discussing their OF play then you're basically comparing terrible to even worse. I stand by my comment about Davis' defense at 1B. As much as I'd like to pin him to proverbial Orioles cross my beef with him is limited to what he does in the batter's box.