The pitch count era

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

I do think they should enforce larger stadiums when new construction takes place.

There was (maybe is?) a rule on the books that said all new parks built after 1957 had to be 330+ down the lines and 400+ to center. They stopped enforcing that sometime in the middle of 1957.

I would love a strictly enforced rule that says the sum of LF+LC+CF+RC+RF distances in feet have to add up to at least 1950. But let the teams implement that as they like. Could be 350-400-450-400-350. Or could be 300-375-500-388-388. Or whatever they want. But anything less than 250' is still an automatic double.

Edited May 30 by DrungoHazewood

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

There was (maybe is?) a rule on the books that said all new parks built after 1957 had to be 330+ down the lines and 400+ to center. They stopped enforcing that sometime in the middle of 1957.

I would love a strictly enforced rule that says the sum of LF+LC+CF+RC+RF distances in feet have to add up to at least 1950. But let the teams implement that as they like.

Yep, that was what I meant by enforced.

Evidently it's pretty easy to get a waiver to do whatever you want.

[Can_of_corn]

13 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If he was that cheap he would have told Elias he could move the LF wall just as soon as he pays for it out of his own pocket.

I never really thought Pete or John was cheap, so much as they refused to spend money on the priorities I believed made sense. I mean, there was that season where they probably allocated $75M to Danys Baez, Steve Kline, Jamie Walker, Jay Payton, and Kevin Millar. That's not cheap, it's just foolish.

I wasn't talking about Peter.

 

[BRobinsonfan]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

How are you going to push the walls back at Fenway?

Combination of imminent domain of Lansdowne Steet and a higher wall.  

[DrungoHazewood]

Here's a link to a now 25-year-old (!) Baseball Prospectus article that references Alan Roth, the Dodgers' statistician from 1947-64, keeping meticulous pitch count data. And it's mostly as I remembered, the average Dodger start from that era saw 94 pitches. But with a much wider distribution than we'd see today. 17% of starts were less than 60 pitches, about 16% were 71-90, 12% from 101-110, 10% 121-130, and about 11% 130+.

Koufax once had a 205-pitch start, Drysdale maxed out at 182. But as I alluded to earlier, Koufax also had 28 career starts (or about 9% of his career total) where he got six outs or fewer. Drysdale had 18, with 10% of his total career starts lasting four innings or less. Koufax had 52 starts of 314 (16.5%) where he lasted four innings or less.

For comparison, Max Scherzer has failed to get past the 4th in just 6% of his career starts, and has exited after six or fewer outs just six times.

So in a broad sense, today's pitchers throw about as many pitches per start as pitchers from 1950 or 1960. Or at least did 5-10 years ago. But they're almost never pulled very early unless hurt, and almost never go much past 100 pitches.

Edited May 30 by DrungoHazewood

[Hallas]

27 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

There was (maybe is?) a rule on the books that said all new parks built after 1957 had to be 330+ down the lines and 400+ to center. They stopped enforcing that sometime in the middle of 1957.

I would love a strictly enforced rule that says the sum of LF+LC+CF+RC+RF distances in feet have to add up to at least 1950. But let the teams implement that as they like. Could be 350-400-450-400-350. Or could be 300-375-500-388-388. Or whatever they want. But anything less than 250' is still an automatic double.

I like this! I'd add a restriction that any single measurement can't be less than 275 or 290.  I don't really want to see anything shorter than pesky pole.  

[Hallas]

5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Yep, that was what I meant by enforced.

Evidently it's pretty easy to get a waiver to do whatever you want.

they kind of half-enforce it or require mitigation if you break the guidelines.  You have to have taller walls if your fence is less than 330 I think.

Edited May 31 by Hallas

[DrungoHazewood]

9 hours ago, Hallas said:

I like this! I'd add a restriction that any single measurement can't be less than 275 or 290.  I don't really want to see anything shorter than pesky pole.  

I mean, I wouldn't fight that.

Just think that the Polo grounds were significantly shorter down each line than the RF line at OPACY. So was old Yankee. League Park in Cleveland was kind of like if you took Oriole Park's RF area and moved it in 30-50'. Bobby Thomson's shot heard 'round the world would have been short of the warning track in Baltimore today.

Edited May 31 by DrungoHazewood

[DrungoHazewood]

My Bobby Thomson remark was kind of off-the-cuff, so I went and looked up about how far it traveled (perhaps 320'), and used the Google Maps distance measuring function to compare to OPACY. Yep, perhaps the most famous homer in history would have been a medium-deep fly ball in Baltimore today, landing in the LFer's glove approximately 60 feet in front of Walltimore. I don't think it would be a homer in any current MLB park. Perhaps hitting the Green Monster in Fenway for a double, but just being a medium-deep flyout in most or all other current parks.

Note that Babe Ruth hit 86 homers in the Polo Grounds, Mel Ott 323. Both were lefties, and it was actually shorter to RF (258') than to LF (279').

If you measure 258' to RF at OPACY that's before you get to the little garage door triangle. The Polo Grounds' wall would have started somewhere around the front of the railing on the top of the wall in this photo.