Playing complimentary baseball

[Hallas]

7 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, we don’t know that it will stop.  Don’t get me wrong, players will still try to hit homers but it’s certainly very possible we see more guys trying to just be better all around hitters again.  

This 3 outcome craze has really become a thing during the last 5-10 years.  Maybe nothing changes but that is why they are getting rid of it imo.  It’s not to help Joey Gallo…it’s to try to foster the idea of doing more with the bat and trying to cause more action.

If you do what the O's do and make the field bigger league-wide, then hitting it over the shift doesn't result in the same number of runs as it previously did.  Of course it will take more than just the O's to make this meta shift an actual thing.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Hallas

[deward]

4 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's completely backwards.  If you want more contact, sign players who spray the ball around and can't be shifted on.  If you want a lot of big, left-handed power hitters who do nothing but K, BB, and HR, ban the shift and watch them proliferate as they hit .250 instead of .210 since the defense is no longer allowed to stand where they know the ball will be hit.

Be realistic, that isn't going to happen. Even Elias isn't trying to do that, he's drafting every LH power hitter he can find. 

[deward]

4 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's completely backwards.  If you want more contact, sign players who spray the ball around and can't be shifted on.  If you want a lot of big, left-handed power hitters who do nothing but K, BB, and HR, ban the shift and watch them proliferate as they hit .250 instead of .210 since the defense is no longer allowed to stand where they know the ball will be hit.

Posted twice for some reason, sorry

Edited August 11, 2022 by deward

[now]

12 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

But I don't think there's any evidence that you win more in the postseason with fewer homers and more steals.  In fact, since you generally face better pitchers in the postseason sequential run scoring involving getting guys on base, stealing and getting several hits per inning is less likely to be successful than just hitting homers. 

Yeah Bill James showed in an early study that homers correlate more with postseason success, and it makes sense for the reasons you mention. Recently I heard another stat that showed a similar result, way lopsided, like 160 out of 180 times in postseason play, the winning team had more homers than the loser. Yes I know, 2014 Kansas City, but still. 

P.S. Today before the rainout Melanie mentioned a comp to the '87 Twins... I imagine because of the thin rotation. That team had so-so bullpen but four big thumpers in the lineup. The '87 Cards, who lost to them in the World Series, had just one big bat (Jack Clark) but 248 stolen bases. Also a rotation that was balanced but not star-quality, and like the Twins, a competent bullpen anchored by a lockdown closer (Reardon, Worrell). The Twins outscored them 38-26, winning the Series 4 games to 3. My guess is they outhomered them by a ton. Okay, I'll go look... Minnesota 7, St. Louis 2. Anecdotal evidence!

Edited August 11, 2022 by now

[Frobby]

I remember when Manny replaced the two-headed monster of Mark Reynolds and Wilson Betemit at 3B and our defense instantaneously changed from subpar to outstanding.   And a light bulb went off in my head and I remembered something that I’d once known but had somehow forgotten, and is easy to forget when your team is bad:

Defense is important.  Extremely important.   It can take runs away, or make a pitcher’s life miserable.  Pretty much every good Oriole team there has ever been had better than average defense, and at times, defense that was utterly amazing.  Good defense inspires a team and gives the pitchers confidence.   Bad defense drags a team down and causes pitchers to pitch scared.  

The defense this year has been better than I expected.   Much better.  Mateo has been a revelation at SS and Urias quite solid at 3B.   Rutschman is showing on a nightly basis how valuable catcher defense can be.  We’re turning all the DP’s that should be turned, and many that seem improbable.  And Mullins is roaming CF like a champ.

So when the OP says complementary baseball, I think that’s 75% about the defense.   It’s oft-ignored when we look at stats, because it’s still tough to measure in many respects.  But when you watch it, you know.  
 

[Aristotelian]

12 hours ago, Babkins said:

Good opening post; I agree with all of it. But I’m an English teacher and an editor, and I’m finding it impossible not to point out that the word you’re looking for is complementary.

Who is complementing or complimenting what? I agree they are playing plus defense.

[InsideCoroner]

18 hours ago, jabba72 said:

O's staff are 12th in the AL out of 15 teams in K's with 839, so they need to play very strong defense to keep all those balls in play from falling in. They are 4th in Walks allowed so that is helping their cause alot. They are 10th in FIP at 4.10. All this suggests they need a very good defense going forward. 

This much reminds me of the 1989 team a bit. The ‘89 Orioles pitching staff was dead last in the majors in K’s — almost comically so by today’s standards. In 450 combined innings, Jeff Ballard, Dave Schmidt and Dave Johnson only struck out 134 batters. But, they had the least defensive errors of any team in baseball, and it seemed that guys like Orsulak were constantly making diving catches in the gap. Without solid defense that team would have been doomed. 
 

[DrungoHazewood]

9 hours ago, deward said:

Be realistic, that isn't going to happen. Even Elias isn't trying to do that, he's drafting every LH power hitter he can find. 

GMs don't see the shift as a problem.  Teams are building their organizations to load up on guys who're TTO and jack the ball 500'. If MLB ever decides that the all homers and Ks approach has gotten stale they'll have to change the incentives.  Banning the shift encourages TTO, you'll get more and more Chris Davises and Rob Deers because they'll hit .230 instead of .185, or .250 instead of .210.  If they want to go the other direction they'll need to move the pitching distance back, and move the fences back.

Just imagine a park like OPACY, just with LF dimensions all over and a mound at 63'.  You might actually get a .350 hitter for the first time in over a decade.  Teams would pick an Austin Hays to play LF/RF instead of Mark Trumbo.  More players sprinting, leaping, diving, sliding.  Less watching and jogging.

All banning the shift does is tell teams to double down on the one-dimensional sluggers.

Edited August 11, 2022 by DrungoHazewood

[deward]

37 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

GMs don't see the shift as a problem.  Teams are building their organizations to load up on guys who're TTO and jack the ball 500'. If MLB ever decides that the all homers and Ks approach has gotten stale they'll have to change the incentives.  Banning the shift encourages TTO, you'll get more and more Chris Davises and Rob Deers because they'll hit .230 instead of .185, or .250 instead of .210.  If they want to go the other direction they'll need to move the pitching distance back, and move the fences back.

Just imagine a park like OPACY, just with LF dimensions all over and a mound at 63'.  You might actually get a .350 hitter for the first time in over a decade.  Teams would pick an Austin Hays to play LF/RF instead of Mark Trumbo.  More players sprinting, leaping, diving, sliding.  Less watching and jogging.

All banning the shift does is tell teams to double down on the one-dimensional sluggers.

To try and steer this a little back in the direction of the original point of the thread, I personally prefer the full Earl Weaver approach to complementary baseball - pitching, defense, AND three-run homers. I'm not interested in creating conditions where no one but Aaron Judge can give you the three-run homer part on any kind of consistent basis. There's a path out there that MLB can find that will encourage more contact and athletic plays without turning every team into the 1980's St Louis Cardinals.

[DrungoHazewood]

10 minutes ago, deward said:

To try and steer this a little back in the direction of the original point of the thread, I personally prefer the full Earl Weaver approach to complementary baseball - pitching, defense, AND three-run homers. I'm not interested in creating conditions where no one but Aaron Judge can give you the three-run homer part on any kind of consistent basis. There's a path out there that MLB can find that will encourage more contact and athletic plays without turning every team into the 1980's St Louis Cardinals.

I don't think we're in any danger of doing that.  The current era is the highest HR era of all time, and it's not really close.  The top five homer seasons ever are 2019, 2020, 2017, 2021, and 2000.  2022 is down a bit, but is still the 13th-highest season ever.  If you take all of baseball history the median number of homers/team/game is something like 0.5 or 0.6, 2022 is currently sitting on 1.08. In 1979 when the Orioles were AL champs there were 0.82 homers/game, or about 25% fewer than today.

The environment of the 2022 Orioles at home, 101 homers or 50.5 per team in 54 games at OPACY (0.93), is higher than the league rate any year they won the Series.

You could move every fence the majors back 15-20' and we'd probably still see homers at a higher rate than every season from 1871-1986.

[deward]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't think we're in any danger of doing that.  The current era is the highest HR era of all time, and it's not really close.  The top five homer seasons ever are 2019, 2020, 2017, 2021, and 2000.  2022 is down a bit, but is still the 13th-highest season ever.  If you take all of baseball history the median number of homers/team/game is something like 0.5 or 0.6, 2022 is currently sitting on 1.08. In 1979 when the Orioles were AL champs there were 0.82 homers/game, or about 25% fewer than today.

The environment of the 2022 Orioles at home, 101 homers or 50.5 per team in 54 games at OPACY (0.93), is higher than the league rate any year they won the Series.

You could move every fence the majors back 15-20' and we'd probably still see homers at a higher rate than every season from 1871-1986.

Yeah, but they only moved the fence back in LF this year at OPACY. You said you want to move ALL the fences back. That'll have a much bigger impact on the HR rate.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, deward said:

Yeah, but they only moved the fence back in LF this year at OPACY. You said you want to move ALL the fences back. That'll have a much bigger impact on the HR rate.

2022 OPACY is seeing roughly 30% more homers per game than all-time MLB averages, and maybe 15% higher than post-WWII averages.

[Hallas]

3 hours ago, deward said:

Yeah, but they only moved the fence back in LF this year at OPACY. You said you want to move ALL the fences back. That'll have a much bigger impact on the HR rate.

they moved at least 40% of the fence back by 30 feet, so the average fence distance is like 11-13 feet farther.  Yeah, it impacts righties more since the entirety of the fence move is in left field, but the distance moved is pretty significant.

 

edit to add: It's also worth noting that the current conventions for ballpark dimensions were mostly established in the mid-70s and later.  Before that 420 or 440 or 500 to center was within the realm of normal.  For the first 3 or 4 seasons Memorial Stadium was ~445 to dead center because they hadn't built those bleachers yet and they extended the field all the way out.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Hallas

[btdart20]

Complementary is about having the right tools for the job.  And knowing what you're measuring matters too.

Since the shift came up in this thread AND since this article basically is about the mindset around fielding a 'complementary' team both in the team construction (the relief pitcher) but also in how to play/position within that context (the various shifts).

The Giants and the Anti-Shift | FanGraphs Baseball

But in the end "that's why they play the game" still matters.