New rules impact on stolen bases

[DrungoHazewood]

11 hours ago, emmett16 said:

Have heard a lot of chatter from my non-baseball fan friends on enjoying the new pace of the game.  

Have heard soccer fans (i.e. baseball is slow and boring) say, yea, I'll probably watch more games now.

[RarityFlaherty]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Have heard soccer fans (i.e. baseball is slow and boring) say, yea, I'll probably watch more games now.

Wow, even before these changes, I’d definitely say that soccer was the slower, more boring sport to watch. 

[DrungoHazewood]

29 minutes ago, RarityFlaherty said:

Wow, even before these changes, I’d definitely say that soccer was the slower, more boring sport to watch. 

It's really funny to talk about baseball with soccer fans and soccer with baseball fans. If you didn't know which group was which you might have trouble picking out their statements, they say many of the same things. "Who would ever watch that, it's slow, boring, nothing happens." "If you haven't grown up with the sport you won't understand all the strategy going on behind the scenes." "We're not one of those sports like basketball or American football where the scores are for ADD kids, like 55-45 or 102-90."

[RarityFlaherty]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's really funny to talk about baseball with soccer fans and soccer with baseball fans. If you didn't know which group was which you might have trouble picking out their statements, they say many of the same things. "Who would ever watch that, it's slow, boring, nothing happens." "If you haven't grown up with the sport you won't understand all the strategy going on behind the scenes." "We're not one of those sports like basketball or American football where the scores are for ADD kids, like 55-45 or 102-90."

Ha yeah I played a lot of soccer and loved it. But I have always felt like baseball, football, and hockey have the right balance of action and enough scoring to make it enjoyable to watch. I feel like soccer doesn’t have enough scoring and shots on goal so there’s not enough action. Basketball (at least NBA) has too much scoring, so each time they score it means way less and isn’t as exciting. Just my personal preferences for what I like to watch. Personally, I never felt like baseball needed any adjustments to the rate of play, but I’m definitely very excited to see more base stealing. Probably one of my favorite plays in baseball. 

[DrungoHazewood]

41 minutes ago, RarityFlaherty said:

Ha yeah I played a lot of soccer and loved it. But I have always felt like baseball, football, and hockey have the right balance of action and enough scoring to make it enjoyable to watch. I feel like soccer doesn’t have enough scoring and shots on goal so there’s not enough action. Basketball (at least NBA) has too much scoring, so each time they score it means way less and isn’t as exciting. Just my personal preferences for what I like to watch. Personally, I never felt like baseball needed any adjustments to the rate of play, but I’m definitely very excited to see more base stealing. Probably one of my favorite plays in baseball. 

It comes down to mindset and expectations.  Some sports are all about the build up, some are mostly the scoring. They can each be equally exciting. Most of the world is fanatical about soccer matches that typically end 2-1.

I bet 99% of US sports fans would call a cricket match that sees 1000 runs scored tedious and boring.

Edited April 1, 2023 by DrungoHazewood

[spleen1015]

I don't compare sports. All sports are compelling for their own reasons. I watch the ones that I like and ignore the ones I don't.

[sevastras]

I played high school lacrosse and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don’t enjoy watching lacrosse. I enjoy watching golf, but I golf. I could see someone who doesn’t golf thinking it was the worst thing on tv. I hate soccer but my two non athletic half siblings seem to enjoy it. I am guess because it is simple and the rules are easy to understand.  

[Frobby]

My biggest problem with soccer is that I’ll pay attention for ten minutes, nothing interesting will happen, I’ll glance down to look at my phone a second, and that’s exactly when a goal will be scored.   I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me.  In baseball, it’s much easier to tell when you need to be paying attention and when you can let your mind wander a minute.  Ditto football.

Now, soccer fans might say it’s a feature, not a bug, that you have to pay close attention all the time because you never know when something might happen.  But I have trouble paying attention that long when nothing consequential happens much of the time.  

[emmett16]

2 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's really funny to talk about baseball with soccer fans and soccer with baseball fans. If you didn't know which group was which you might have trouble picking out their statements, they say many of the same things. "Who would ever watch that, it's slow, boring, nothing happens." "If you haven't grown up with the sport you won't understand all the strategy going on behind the scenes." "We're not one of those sports like basketball or American football where the scores are for ADD kids, like 55-45 or 102-90."

 You have to come up with made up and inflated scoring when the game only has 10 minutes of live action over a 4 hour time period.  How anyone can watch American Football and say baseball or football boring is beyond me.  There is a reason American Football can’t grow outside of the USA and that the average age of viewership is about to pass baseball.  

[emmett16]

15 minutes ago, Frobby said:

My biggest problem with soccer is that I’ll pay attention for ten minutes, nothing interesting will happen, I’ll glance down to look at my phone a second, and that’s exactly when a goal will be scored.   I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me.  In baseball, it’s much easier to tell when you need to be paying attention and when you can let your mind wander a minute.  Ditto football.

Now, soccer fans might say it’s a feature, not a bug, that you have to pay close attention all the time because you never know when something might happen.  But I have trouble paying attention that long when nothing consequential happens much of the time.  

For me, It’s like surfing.  The beauty and art is in the athletic movements, control,  and gravity defying ability of the players.  It’s often not the goals that are the most enjoyable parts of the game but the individual movements and  the cohesive movements of the team together.  

[emmett16]

I’m still waiting for Hurling to take off over here.  Best game in the world - oldest field game in the world, in fact.  Can be said baseball, lacrosse, football, soccer, rugby all have Hurling to thank as a muse for their sport.  Only Irish folks can handle it, though.  Everyone else would give up

 

[emmett16]

With all that said.  Mullins & Mateo are going to steal  50+ bases each this year.  

[DrungoHazewood]

40 minutes ago, Frobby said:

My biggest problem with soccer is that I’ll pay attention for ten minutes, nothing interesting will happen, I’ll glance down to look at my phone a second, and that’s exactly when a goal will be scored.   I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me.  In baseball, it’s much easier to tell when you need to be paying attention and when you can let your mind wander a minute.  Ditto football.

Now, soccer fans might say it’s a feature, not a bug, that you have to pay close attention all the time because you never know when something might happen.  But I have trouble paying attention that long when nothing consequential happens much of the time.  

Says a fan of a sport where you can go to the bathroom in the 4th inning of a 0-0 game and by the time you come back you've missed two homers.

And when you say nothing is happening, that's like telling a baseball fan that any inning where a run doesn't score you can just skip. There's often plenty going on in both sports.

[DrungoHazewood]

25 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

For me, It’s like surfing.  The beauty and art is in the athletic movements, control,  and gravity defying ability of the players.  It’s often not the goals that are the most enjoyable parts of the game but the individual movements and  the cohesive movements of the team together.  

Yes! Baseball is highly quantized, a sequence of individual events, and one-on-one matchups. Soccer is much the opposite, a flow, 11 players moving constantly on and off the ball to implement a strategic vision.

But both sports are largely things where the managers wind up their players, set them off on the field, and hope they understand what they need to do.

[DrungoHazewood]

35 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

 You have to come up with made up and inflated scoring when the game only has 10 minutes of live action over a 4 hour time period.  How anyone can watch American Football and say baseball or football boring is beyond me.  There is a reason American Football can’t grow outside of the USA and that the average age of viewership is about to pass baseball.  

I think part of the draw of football is the overt violence. Whether that's good or bad is up for debate...

I have long wanted to see a football or basketball game with a continuous clock like soccer. No timeouts, no clock stopping on out of bounds or incompletions or free throws and fouls. Even with halftime and breaks at the quarters it would be over in 1:30. Managers would have to rely on the players to know what to do the vast majority of the time.