Owners submit new economic plan to union : UPDATED

[Dipper9]

5 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

A lot of it really is just pacing.  There's a only a few pitches difference between a high-K inning and a low-K inning.  And pacing is hard to change.  Pitchers really did used to work much faster.  Jim Kaat (IIRC) used to say that at two hours his arm turned into a pumpkin, so he worked really fast. 

I used to play seven-inning softball games in an hour and it never felt rushed.  Limiting the Stanley Steamer commercials will help, but somehow attitudes have to change.

Me too, but most at bats were one or two pitches.  We didn't have 5-10 pitch at bats that keep the game going and going.  

I'm not complaining.  If the Sox and Yanks can have batters foul off the good pitches until they get one to hit, more power to them.  Its the pitchers job to fool them into missing the ball or hitting a weak grounder.  

[DrungoHazewood]

34 minutes ago, Bahama O's Fan said:

Here's an unrealistic way to stop tanking. The last place team every year gets bumped down to playing AAA next season. The AAA champion moves up to MLB and takes their place. 

That works absolutely brilliantly in soccer leagues around the world.  Owners will sell their first born sons to work in the salt mines to avoid relegation.  No one ever, ever, ever tanks in the Premier League or the Bundesliga or Serie A.  Finishing in the bottom three means you are going to lose 75% of your revenues.

But that also depends on a pyramid of teams that are all independent of one another.  Doesn't work so much when the AAA team is owned by the MLB team.  And there's no crisis I can think of that will get us to that point in baseball.  Nice thought, but completely unexecutable in North American sports.

[DrungoHazewood]

14 minutes ago, Dipper9 said:

Me too, but most at bats were one or two pitches.  We didn't have 5-10 pitch at bats that keep the game going and going.  

I'm not complaining.  If the Sox and Yanks can have batters foul off the good pitches until they get one to hit, more power to them.  Its the pitchers job to fool them into missing the ball or hitting a weak grounder.  

I'd regularly have five or six pitch at bats.  I'd take the first two strikes and just kind of stare out at the pitcher.  People thought I was nuts.  But I think I had the highest OBP on the team.

[BRobinsonfan]

Late to the discussion, but I thought this was interesting.  MLB considered calling off the 1941 season after the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought us in to WWII.  Kenesaw Landis, the commissioner of baseball wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt asking his advice about what they should do.  Roosevelt responded with what has become now as the "Green Light Letter" saying "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going."  67% of Americans, according to a poll taken at the time, apparently agreed with him.  The full story can be read here.  https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-polls/roper-polls-major-league-baseball-world-war-ii

The bottom line is, we need baseball.  I hope the players union and the owners find a way to do this.  

[Philip]

6 hours ago, CarrRun49 said:

ng, teachers are great.  Are teachers underpaid? Maybe.  Lets say they make 45k avg per year.  They work roughly 2/3 of the year.  45k prorated for the 2/3 is almost 67k for those working months.  

 That’s one of the big misconceptions about teaching. During the school year, which is 180 days mandated classroom instruction, plus about 20 additional days of teacher training, teachers work easily 60 or 70 hour weeks. During the summer, they are required to go to continuing education classes. They get time off, but it’s not nearly as much as you think it is, And it’s incredibly stressful.

 Yes baseball players have unique skills, but you are insinuating that their unique skills are worth $30 million a year. Even Jesus was only worth 30 pieces of silver. The baseball players are getting paid too much. You speak of the work they put in as children and as young adults and you are correct, but that’s why the minor leaguers should be paid more, not the major leaguers. Two years of minimum pay is an entire career salary for a teacher(for instance) and teaching well is a rare skill that requires inborn talent, just like in baseball. The only difference between teaching and baseball, is that in baseball the lousy ones are obvious and in teaching the brilliant ones are underpaid.

 I’m something of a libertarian, I don’t have a problem with baseball players making as much as they could get, but I have a huge problem ignoring minor leaguers and ignoring every state of affairs except their own pocket books. 

I detest the owners for being greedy, but I despise the players for being no less greedy. Wealth comes with obligation, and each side is ignoring their obligation.

[DrungoHazewood]

21 hours ago, Tx Oriole said:

I just don’t want the DH put in the NL. I’m old school. Been a fan since the 50’s. 

Your version of the game was hopelessly out of touch, not nearly as exciting as the ballplaying of ninety years prior! 

 

[Philip]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

I don't disagree with that at all. It just hate non-DH baseball at the professional level. I hate watching an automatic out bat and destroy a good rally. I'd rather watch nine actual hitters bat. 

 

But why is it an automatic out? The pitcher can bunt and bunting is a valuable skill. It’s not developed very much but it is.

Letting the pitcher hit Isn’t required either. The “Opener” is increasingly popular, pull a pitcher when it’s his time to bat and bring in the next three inning guy. And whether you do that or not depends upon the game, your available bullpen, and other factors. It also provides wide opportunity for fans to second guess, and isn’t that part of the fun?

One of the rule changes I would like to see is for the batter to be awarded first base if you foul off a certain number of pitches. That requires the pitcher  to go right at the batter.

 For me, a foul ball is the single most boring thing about baseball. Introducing a rule like this would make the foul ball a valuable strategy. It’s hard to foul balls off, and it’s hard for a pitcher to go full effort during an entire AB. A rule like that would give drama and meaning to a foul ball where there currently is none.

I would very much also like to see a rule allowing the better to steal first on any wild pitch or passed ball. Currently he can only do it on a third strike, but being able to do it at any point in the AB would be exciting.

[DrungoHazewood]

14 minutes ago, Philip said:

 That’s one of the big misconceptions about teaching. During the school year, which is 180 days mandated classroom instruction, plus about 20 additional days of teacher training, teachers work easily 60 or 70 hour weeks. During the summer, they are required to go to continuing education classes. They get time off, but it’s not nearly as much as you think it is, And it’s incredibly stressful.

 Yes baseball players have unique skills, but you are insinuating that their unique skills are worth $30 million a year. Even Jesus was only worth 30 pieces of silver. The baseball players are getting paid too much. You speak of the work they put in as children and as young adults and you are correct, but that’s why the minor leaguers should be paid more, not the major leaguers. Two years of minimum pay is an entire career salary for a teacher(for instance) and teaching well is a rare skill that requires inborn talent, just like in baseball. The only difference between teaching and baseball, is that in baseball the lousy ones are obvious and in teaching the brilliant ones are underpaid.

 I’m something of a libertarian, I don’t have a problem with baseball players making as much as they could get, but I have a huge problem ignoring minor leaguers and ignoring every state of affairs except their own pocket books. 

I detest the owners for being greedy, but I despise the players for being no less greedy. Wealth comes with obligation, and each side is ignoring their obligation.

The problem, if there is one, is that people get irate toss representatives out of office if their taxes that pay teachers go up 0.5%, but many people happily pay $200 for their family to go see the Orioles, and $100 a month for cable to mainly watch sports, and $20 for the MLB app, and $125 for MLB out of market streaming, and on and on and on. 

Also, the ratios payee to payer are all off.  There are less than 1000 MLB players at any moment.  There might be 1000 teachers just in my county.

In almost any free society there are going to be some people who make many multiples of another.  And in a $10B industry driven by the best players and teams the money has to go somewhere, and that's likely to be the players and teams people want to see the most.

[weams]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

I don't disagree with that at all. It just hate non-DH baseball at the professional level. I hate watching an automatic out bat and destroy a good rally. I'd rather watch nine actual hitters bat. 

 

And it goes stronger than that now. The war is over, the NL owners agreed to give up pitchers hitting and it is now a carrot for the union because MLBPA wants a Universal DH. So DH from now on.  I'll let this drop and assume that if there is ANY agreement for ANY play this year it will encompass next season as well. They will surely not want to have to negotiate four different times. Then the new CBA will take over. 

[Yossarian]

20 hours ago, spiritof66 said:

No tee. After 14 innings, only position players can pitch. After 17 innings, remove a defensive player each inning (as Can O'Corn proposed). After 20 innings, eliminate a base each inning (so in the 18th, a runner on first scores by going to third and then to home.

That'll create some real fan appeal. 

Or......

 

I played in a one-pitch slow-pitch softball tournament a few years back.  You got one pitch per at-bat.  If the pitcher threw a ball, the batter got a base on balls.  If the pitcher threw a strike that was swung on and missed (an embarrassment in slow-pitch softball) or it was ht foul, that was a strikeout.

We could play a 7-inning game in like 30-40 minutes.  The scores were like 3-2, 4-1, 2-1 and so on.  The corner outfielders would play well off the line because batters weren't going to risk hitting balls foul down the lines. the field got real small.

Games went quick.

 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

 

[VICIOUS]

20 hours ago, scOtt said:

My Favorite Floyd albumn. Hands down

 

[DrungoHazewood]

5 minutes ago, Philip said:

But why is it an automatic out? The pitcher can bunt and bunting is a valuable skill. It’s not developed very much but it is.

A sacrifice bunt is more valuable than an out, but not by a whole lot.  It's worth so little that in many or most situations you're better off having a pitcher with a 2019 NL average .329 OPS swing away. 

Quotes from The Book, by Tom Tango, et al:

With a pitcher at the plate and no out and a runner on first, only a below-average hitting pitcher should bunt most of the time.  An average hitting pitchers should bunt about half the time, and a good hitting pitcher should only occasionally bunt.  This assumes that the defense is expecting a bunt and positions itself accordingly

With a pitcher at the plate with one out and a runner on first only the worst-hitting pitchers should bunt, and even the, only about half the time.

There are a bunch of other quotes in other situations, but the summary is bunting is of such limited value that even a pitcher OPSing .329 should pick and choose when to bunt and when not to.

[DrungoHazewood]

56 minutes ago, Yossarian said:

Or......

 

I played in a one-pitch slow-pitch softball tournament a few years back.  You got one pitch per at-bat.  If the pitcher threw a ball, the batter got a base on balls.  If the pitcher threw a strike that was swung on and missed (an embarrassment in slow-pitch softball) or it was ht foul, that was a strikeout.

We could play a 7-inning game in like 30-40 minutes.  The scores were like 3-2, 4-1, 2-1 and so on.  The corner outfielders would play well off the line because batters weren't going to risk hitting balls foul down the lines. the field got real small.

Games went quick.

 

It would be very interesting to see a major league game played under those rules.  I'm not saying it would be better, just very interesting. 

I think offense would be down... maybe.  More walks, more strikeouts, and a good number of foul outs.  I think you could finish a game in an hour, just so long as they got rid of what's now about an hour of commercials.  The pitcher/batter dynamic would completely change.  Think Adam Jones, who a pitcher desperately wants to get to two strikes, then get him to swing at a slider down and away.  Now does the pitcher ever risk the down-and-away slider, because if he lays off it's a walk?  Does Adam just start taking anything that's not a fastball?

The semi-intentional walk calculations would change.  What do do with Mike Trout?  Every pitch off the plate is a potential walk, and every pitch over the plate could be crushed.  Do pitchers just fall back on throwing their out pitch most of the time and hoping for the best?

Could be a fun exhibition.  MLB might be reluctant to try it because too many people might like it.

[Philip]

5 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

A sacrifice bunt is more valuable than an out, but not by a whole lot.  It's worth so little that in many or most situations you're better off having a pitcher with a 2019 NL average .329 OPS swing away. 

Quotes from The Book, by Tom Tango, et al:

 

 

 

 

There are a bunch of other quotes in other situations, but the summary is bunting is of such limited value that even a pitcher OPSing .329 should pick and choose when to bunt and when not to.

Bunting was only one possibility. You can also let him hit, bring him out, or tell him to foul off as many balls as possible.

With the opener becoming more popular, there’s less reason to let a guy face a batting order the second time anyway. 

Ultimately, someone either likes the designated hitter or they don’t. I am more interested in strategy, and there is more strategy when there is no DH. There is also more strategy when there are fewer homeruns, and there’s more excitement too.

But the current situation, with one league having it and the other league not, I think is a great mix.