The game I grew up with...

[DocJJ]

Twice in the past week, a starting pitcher was pulled from the game with a no-hitter in progress in the 7th inning.  That would NEVER have happened in the past- and it would have made for very exciting 8th/9th inning.  

 

I realize Bradish is coming off a very serious injury and we need to be very careful with his workload.  I can't say I'm totally against it.  Skenes had also thrown well over 100 pitches in his game.

 

Still, it was way better the old way...

[baltfan]

21 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

Pitchers are more skilled than they ever have been before in the history of the game, with the velocities being higher than ever and movement being sharper than ever.

It’s not that hitters don’t have bat control, it’s that most of the time you are only going to get one to two pitches to hit per at bat (at most). 

The game is different overall. But as we all learn the older we get, the only constant in life is change. What are you are describing is the evolution of the game, which has taken place in all sports and will continue to go on as long as they are played.

Yeah, watch baseball from the 70’s and 80’s.  There are soooo many meatballs. 

[DrungoHazewood]

43 minutes ago, SemperFi said:

You can add the trend to symetrical parks, and thanks to Pete Reiser padded walls and warning tracks.  OF's also generally play much deeper than they did in previous eras.

Yes, ballparks today are built on relatively huge lots, without any of the constraints of earlier eras when resources were more scarce. Fenway is 300-ish to LF because Landsdowne St. is maybe 320' from home plate. Ebbets was just like that in RF.

Today governments bend over backwards to do anything for their Major League sports status, but 100+ years ago many parks had seemingly odd, asymmetrical fences because that was the shape of the lot they could afford and nobody was moving roads or buildings for them. Boston's South End Grounds, home of their NL team for many years, was just over 250' down the lines, but at least 440 to CF.  It was replaced by Braves Field, which when it first opened was 400-415-461-542-369 because that was the size of the grounds.

League Park in Cleveland was 290' to RF, probably 330' to RC, and 460' to deepest CF. For 50 years Yankee Stadium was 296' to RF and 461 to deep LC.

I know I've told this story several times, but I love it... King Kelly was a HOFer who mostly played in the 1880s. He has some bizarre fielding stats. He played all over, including catcher, but more outfield than anything else. A good example of the weirdness is 1884. When playing the outfield he had 69 putouts, 31 assists and 26 errors in 578 innings (about 64 games) , good for a .794 fielding percentage. Yes, this was before modern gloves, but his fielding percentage was 70 points below average and he had an outfield assist every other game. After some people did some digging, it was clear that while Kelly was listed in the box score as playing the outfield, he'd often just sneak in and play 5th infielder, fielding grounders and throwing people out at first. You clearly can't do that today, but prior to 1920 it wasn't crazy, as most players weren't even trying to hit long fly balls most of the time. Wasn't so hard to hit a triple if the RFer is playing 150' from the plate.

Also, prior to 1920 inside-the-park homers were much more common. HOFer Jesse Burkett hit 75 career homers, 55 inside the park, and three bounce homers (prior to roughly 1930 those weren't automatic doubles, but home runs).

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, DocJJ said:

Twice in the past week, a starting pitcher was pulled from the game with a no-hitter in progress in the 7th inning.  That would NEVER have happened in the past- and it would have made for very exciting 8th/9th inning.  

I realize Bradish is coming off a very serious injury and we need to be very careful with his workload.  I can't say I'm totally against it.  Skenes had also thrown well over 100 pitches in his game.

Still, it was way better the old way...

What, the drown the witch method of determining how many pitches a pitcher can handle? Let a guy throw 200 pitches to see if his arm falls off when you let him throw 200 pitches.

Look, I understand wanting to have star pitchers who can throw nine innings all the time. But pitchers used to pace. They knew that if they threw 110% they would break, so they backed it off, and nobody had ever heard of Driveline or wipeout sweepers or anything like that. Many still got hurt. Robin Roberts made a HOF career by throwing mostly decent fastballs, spotting them well. If you throw at 80-90% effort you can throw 300 innings. But good luck on a major league team today throwing 80-90%, even if you're pretty good the pressure to be better by throwing at 110% would be overwhelming. And at 110% you cannot throw nine innings and 130+ pitches on a regular basis, and you will eventually break even at today's workloads.

Edited May 27 by DrungoHazewood

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, baltfan said:

Yeah, watch baseball from the 70’s and 80’s.  There are soooo many meatballs. 

Which you could get away with when the balls and bats weren't as lively, and most lineups had a Kiko Garcia, a Lenn Sakata, a Mark Belanger, and a Rich Dauer. And if you were in the NL, a pitcher hitting .102 who struck out 60% of the time against meatballs.

[DrungoHazewood]

16 hours ago, sevastras said:

I miss brutal collisions at second or at the plate. I know it isn’t great for the players, but I still miss it. I miss a fastball to the ribs after someone shows up the pitcher. I miss the occasional brawl. 

The game has more than enough injuries as it is, we don't need a nostalgic return to the wild west that inevitably comes with someone like Gunnar missing months after getting broken in a stupid brawl or by a takeout slide on a double play.

[Frobby]

5 hours ago, DocJJ said:

Twice in the past week, a starting pitcher was pulled from the game with a no-hitter in progress in the 7th inning.  That would NEVER have happened in the past- and it would have made for very exciting 8th/9th inning.  

 

I realize Bradish is coming off a very serious injury and we need to be very careful with his workload.  I can't say I'm totally against it.  Skenes had also thrown well over 100 pitches in his game.

 

Still, it was way better the old way...

If he’d been at 85 pitches or so through 7 IP, I could have seen giving him a shot at it.  At 103, you really can’t.  Plus, if you watched him, his command was getting shaky that last inning.  It took him 23 pitches to get through that inning.  He was done.  Even if he wasn’t coming back from a UCL strain, I would have expected Hyde to pull him.  

[ExileAngelos]

6 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What, the drown the witch method of determining how many pitches a pitcher can handle? Let a guy throw 200 pitches to see if his arm falls off when you let him throw 200 pitches.

Look, I understand wanting to have star pitchers who can throw nine innings all the time. But pitchers used to pace. They knew that if they threw 110% they would break, so they backed it off, and nobody had ever heard of Driveline or wipeout sweepers or anything like that. Many still got hurt. Robin Roberts made a HOF career by throwing mostly decent fastballs, spotting them well. If you throw at 80-90% effort you can throw 300 innings. But good luck on a major league team today throwing 80-90%, even if you're pretty good the pressure to be better by throwing at 110% would be overwhelming. And at 110% you cannot throw nine innings and 130+ pitches on a regular basis, and you will eventually break even at today's workloads.

How about letting him throw well past 100 pitches if he is still effective and not showing any signs of fatigue?  Crazy, right?  These percentages you have come up with for throwing effort are pure guesses and not remotely quantifiable.   

[sevastras]

7 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The game has more than enough injuries as it is, we don't need a nostalgic return to the wild west that inevitably comes with someone like Gunnar missing months after getting broken in a stupid brawl or by a takeout slide on a double play.

Cal never missed games and he took some hard slides and he gave them out as well. Yes, it might be a Nolan Ryan situation where just luck and weird genetics, but I get it. It was painful to watch Buster Posey when he tore the tendons in his ankle. I just miss the hard slides into second and collisions at home. I sure don’t want anyone hurt but the bell being rung is fine for me. 

[baltfan]

7 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What, the drown the witch method of determining how many pitches a pitcher can handle? Let a guy throw 200 pitches to see if his arm falls off when you let him throw 200 pitches.

Look, I understand wanting to have star pitchers who can throw nine innings all the time. But pitchers used to pace. They knew that if they threw 110% they would break, so they backed it off, and nobody had ever heard of Driveline or wipeout sweepers or anything like that. Many still got hurt. Robin Roberts made a HOF career by throwing mostly decent fastballs, spotting them well. If you throw at 80-90% effort you can throw 300 innings. But good luck on a major league team today throwing 80-90%, even if you're pretty good the pressure to be better by throwing at 110% would be overwhelming. And at 110% you cannot throw nine innings and 130+ pitches on a regular basis, and you will eventually break even at today's workloads.

This.  Verlander is the only modern guy I can think of that paced himself.  He would often be throwing low 90s early and high 90s late.  Sabathia paced himself a bit too. But these guys are very much the exceptions. 

[FlipTheBird]

10 minutes ago, sevastras said:

Cal never missed games and he took some hard slides and he gave them out as well. Yes, it might be a Nolan Ryan situation where just luck and weird genetics, but I get it. It was painful to watch Buster Posey when he tore the tendons in his ankle. I just miss the hard slides into second and collisions at home. I sure don’t want anyone hurt but the bell being rung is fine for me. 

The problem is you can't have the latter without the former. It's impossible.

There are certainly things I'd tweak about the modern game, but the truth of the matter is we're seeing, by and far, the highest quality of baseball ever played. The skill level of the modern player is incredible. I'm good with that.

If I wanted to watch a sport where the best players are often hurt, the NFL is right there.

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, baltfan said:

This.  Verlander is the only modern guy I can think of that paced himself.  He would often be throwing low 90s early and high 90s late.  Sabathia paced himself a bit too. But these guys are very much the exceptions. 

Tillman did it.

[sevastras]

1 minute ago, FlipTheBird said:

The problem is you can't have the latter without the former. It's impossible.

There are certainly things I'd tweak about the modern game, but the truth of the matter is we're seeing, by and far, the highest quality of baseball ever played. The skill level of the modern player is incredible. I'm good with that.

If I wanted to watch a sport where the best players are often hurt, the NFL is right there.

NFL can’t even hit each other anymore. Clean hits that are brutal are now flagged even though they are perfectly clean. I don’t know, maybe I would be one for the coliseum during the height of Rome. 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, sevastras said:

NFL can’t even hit each other anymore. Clean hits that are brutal are now flagged even though they are perfectly clean. I don’t know, maybe I would be one for the coliseum during the height of Rome. 

It was mostly fake.

They'd put on a layer of protective flab and give each other shallow cuts so they'd bleed all over.

 

[sevastras]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

It was mostly fake.

They'd put on a layer of protective flab and give each other shallow cuts so they'd bleed all over.

 

I forgot you were around back then.