Five things we’ve learned about Elias after two drafts

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, Philip said:

 Like what? The problem, which is one of many, is that the quality of pitching has outpaced the quality of hitting, so strikeouts have gone up.  Baseball has evolved to the point where players are too good at certain things and other things have not kept pace.

We’re not going to get an electric ump, the empires union would never allow it. We could re-define Strike zone, but frankly, and I’ve said this before, I would rather just make it easier for players to get on base.

Move the mound back a few feet to start.  Mandate minimum bat sizes including handle thickness and overall weight. Deaden the ball some.  Enforce and strengthen rules about minimum fence distances in all new parks.  Make/reduce maximum sizes for fielding gloves, to incentivize contact and balls in play.

There are lots of options, they don't have to do them all, at least not at once.  But there are certainly things they can do to cut down strikeouts.

[Can_of_corn]

7 hours ago, Philip said:

 Like what? The problem, which is one of many, is that the quality of pitching has outpaced the quality of hitting, so strikeouts have gone up.  Baseball has evolved to the point where players are too good at certain things and other things have not kept pace.

We’re not going to get an electric ump, the empires union would never allow it. We could re-define Strike zone, but frankly, and I’ve said this before, I would rather just make it easier for players to get on base.

If the quality of pitching has outpaced the quality of hitting, why isn't scoring going down?

What is actually happening is both sides are attempting to achieve the optimal result in a way they didn't before.

[Legend_Of_Joey]

8 hours ago, Ruzious said:

Or make it harder to hit home runs - by changing the balls or moving the fences out.  I'm going by the assumption that players will stop using the upper-cut swing if they're less likely to hit homers, but I could be wrong.  

So, start using the same balls they used during the playoffs last season?

[Aglets]

First thing I expect they would do to address the strikeouts issue would be to move back / flatten the mound.

[Redskins Rick]

53 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Move the mound back a few feet to start.  Mandate minimum bat sizes including handle thickness and overall weight. Deaden the ball some.  Enforce and strengthen rules about minimum fence distances in all new parks.  Make/reduce maximum sizes for fielding gloves, to incentivize contact and balls in play.

There are lots of options, they don't have to do them all, at least not at once.  But there are certainly things they can do to cut down strikeouts.

Putting the mound height back to where it was back in the late 60s?

[DrungoHazewood]

3 hours ago, Aglets said:

First thing I expect they would do to address the strikeouts issue would be to move back / flatten the mound.

Maybe it's time to admit that this experiment with having the pitchers stand up on a mound of dirt like some kind of deranged mountain goat has run its course, and that it's time to get back to baseball's roots and put the pitcher back into a box on flat ground.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Redskins Rick said:

Putting the mound height back to where it was back in the late 60s?

What, two feet high like the Dodgers?  No, if anything they need to lower it.

[Redskins Rick]

28 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What, two feet high like the Dodgers?  No, if anything they need to lower it.

put it back, where we have the 1.29 ERAs,

[BohKnowsBmore]

4 hours ago, Aglets said:

First thing I expect they would do to address the strikeouts issue would be to move back / flatten the mound.

If the automatic runner on second to start extras is an affront to tradition, this is downright blasphemous. The distance from the pitcher to home has been 60'6" since March 7, 1893, when the National League voted to move it back from 50 feet due to the advantages of now-allowed overhand pitching.

[DrungoHazewood]

I don't know that we really know the impact of the height of the mound.  There's the standard story that a high mound greatly benefits the pitcher.  Maybe that's true.  But...in 1969 the mound was lowered five inches (and presumably more than that in some cases because they really didn't enforce the old rules) and shrunk the strike zone a bit at the edges.  The K rate went from 5.89 to 5.77.  That's barely measurable, you have bigger swings year-to-year from random noise.  Although it didn't stop there.  Here's where I don't know the causal factors: In the 1970s strikeouts fell from that number near six to 5.4 in '71, to 5.01 in '74, and in a few fits and starts down to as low as 4.75 in '81.  There were no obvious rules changes in that period besides the DH, but the fall in strikeouts doesn't really seem to have any inflection point in '73.  

This is something I'd be very interested in getting to the root cause.  More-or-less from the start of the live ball era in 1920 until today strikeouts have done nothing but go up.  Not every year, but probably if you averaged every five year period over a century.  Except the 1970s.  Maybe if we understood that era a bit better we could start to solve the problems of the 2020s.

One contributing factor might be that the DH led to different pitcher use patterns.  AL teams did see a small uptick in complete games in '73, so maybe leaving starters in longer led to fewer strikeouts.  So that may be some evidence in favor of my idea of limiting teams to nine pitchers on the roster.  They'd have to pace, each pitcher would have to pitch more often, and strikeouts would have to go down.

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

If the automatic runner on second to start extras is an affront to tradition, this is downright blasphemous. The distance from the pitcher to home has been 60'6" since March 7, 1893, when the National League voted to move it back from 50 feet due to the advantages of now-allowed overhand pitching.

I think they should bring back the pitcher's box, just putting the front edge at 65'.  Let's get all traditional on the game, bring it back to its roots.

[BohKnowsBmore]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't know that we really know the impact of the height of the mound.  There's the standard story that a high mound greatly benefits the pitcher.  Maybe that's true.  But...in 1969 the mound was lowered five inches (and presumably more than that in some cases because they really didn't enforce the old rules) and shrunk the strike zone a bit at the edges.  The K rate went from 5.89 to 5.77.  That's barely measurable, you have bigger swings year-to-year from random noise.  Although it didn't stop there.  Here's where I don't know the causal factors: In the 1970s strikeouts fell from that number near six to 5.4 in '71, to 5.01 in '74, and in a few fits and starts down to as low as 4.75 in '81.  There were no obvious rules changes in that period besides the DH, but the fall in strikeouts doesn't really seem to have any inflection point in '73.  

This is something I'd be very interested in getting to the root cause.  More-or-less from the start of the live ball era in 1920 until today strikeouts have done nothing but go up.  Not every year, but probably if you averaged every five year period over a century.  Except the 1970s.  Maybe if we understood that era a bit better we could start to solve the problems of the 2020s.

One contributing factor might be that the DH led to different pitcher use patterns.  AL teams did see a small uptick in complete games in '73, so maybe leaving starters in longer led to fewer strikeouts.  So that may be some evidence in favor of my idea of limiting teams to nine pitchers on the roster.  They'd have to pace, each pitcher would have to pitch more often, and strikeouts would have to go down.

Were there any philosophical changes or movements in management/instruction around that time (similar to the swing plane/launch angle revolution)? Was there perhaps an increased emphasis on choking up on the bat with two strikes and putting the ball in play that came more into vogue at that time? 

Any chance that MLB adding 4 new teams in 1969 via expansion impacted those trends?

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

Were there any philosophical changes or movements in management/instruction around that time (similar to the swing plane/launch angle revolution)? Was there perhaps an increased emphasis on choking up on the bat with two strikes and putting the ball in play that came more into vogue at that time? 

Any chance that MLB adding 4 new teams in 1969 via expansion impacted those trends?

Philosophy: I don't know.  We were in the middle of that strange era where it seemed like half the teams in baseball had a (or several) little middle infielders who hit .241 with a .298 OBP and 33 steals and led off 150 times.  Possibly the wholesale acceptance of little guys who stole bases but didn't really hit at all had an impact.  They were probably mostly contact hitters.

Expansion: Maybe.  Although I don't usually buy that there is an imbalanced impact to expansion, only a slight, short-term overall decline in quality of play.  We used to hear that "expansion killed pitching".  I never bought into that idea, and we don't hear that so much any more now that every team has 14 guys who can throw 98 mph.

[BohKnowsBmore]

55 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Philosophy: I don't know.  We were in the middle of that strange era where it seemed like half the teams in baseball had a (or several) little middle infielders who hit .241 with a .298 OBP and 33 steals and led off 150 times.  Possibly the wholesale acceptance of little guys who stole bases but didn't really hit at all had an impact.  They were probably mostly contact hitters.

Expansion: Maybe.  Although I don't usually buy that there is an imbalanced impact to expansion, only a slight, short-term overall decline in quality of play.  We used to hear that "expansion killed pitching".  I never bought into that idea, and we don't hear that so much any more now that every team has 14 guys who can throw 98 mph.

Maybe combine the ideas? Perhaps later I will look to see if it's possible these expansion teams embraced an offensive philosophy that reduced strikeouts. 20 -> 24 teams isn't nothing, by the way, it's an additional 20%.

[Philip]

8 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

  So that may be some evidence in favor of my idea of limiting teams to nine pitchers on the roster.  They'd have to pace, each pitcher would have to pitch more often, and strikeouts would have to go down.

THAT is an idea I can totally get behind.

I  doubt the players will agree to a limit on pitchers, especially with a 26-man roster.

but it’s a great idea, which is probably why The Powers will ignore it.