![]() Babe Ruth never had to deal with a cutter, slider or splitter or this kind of velocity. Pitches have been invented along the way, too. The breaking stuff has never been more ridiculous. Now that's basically every single reliever and most starters. Back in even just the 1990s, a pitcher sitting 97 was hailed as a fireballer. Given the above points, why wouldn't you adopt an all-or-nothing approach? If you're a left-handed power hitter and every single time you hit a hard groundball or line drive it goes right at someone, wouldn't you just try to hit a home run every time? It's easy to be a Goose Gossage type and lament today's game at every turn, but what's the solution?Īlso, I'm a lot less inclined to yell at the hitters for striking out a lot, given that the raw stuff of the pitchers has never been better. Why the hell didn't teams start shifting to stop it? I suppose one could argue Gwynn was such a great batsmith that he would've found a different hole, but that can't be proven. Think about the legend of Tony Gwynn and the "5.5 hole" (the hole between third base and shortstop). Some of it seems dumb that it took so long. They do now and it's harming the on-field product, offensively. Teams in the 1970s didn't have access to such data. The Padres knew exactly where to position him. Teams have scores and scores of batted ball data and they know exactly where to position players on any given hitter. If the player hits a ball that used to be over the right fielder's head for a double or triple, now it's a flyout. Nowadays, you've got an infielder standing in right field with the right fielder able to play near the warning track. For decades, that's been a routine single. in 2018, let's picture a lefty hitting a hard line drive that will end up in the middle of right field. The problem is teaming the continual rise in strikeout rate - the strikeout percentage, league-wide, is the highest ever for the 13th(!) consecutive season - with the low BABIP, we get so little on-field traffic. The batting average on balls in play (.291) isn't excessively low by historical standards, though it is currently the lowest since 1992. Yes, part of this is the strikeout rate exploding, but in watching games, part of that is the defense seemingly being in the exact right spot on most of the groundballs and line drives that don't leave the yard. We absolutely have a batting average problem. The latter two led to the mound being lowered. The only other lower batting averages in history are from the 1800s, the Deadball Era, 19. This is the lowest league batting average since 1972, the year that led to the implementation of the designated hitter. 248, what's your initial reaction? We've grown accustomed to thinking that's bad, but it's actually above average this year. Though it's been rising in recent weeks, the batting average this season is. Now? The 2020 season has convinced me that Major League Baseball needs to do something to essentially ban the shift. It was actually at the 2018 All-Star Game when Jed Lowrie convinced me that infielders shouldn't be in the middle of the outfield. For a long time, when I heard people say "ban the shift" my response was that hitters should adjust and the beauty of baseball was that the defense wasn't required to stay in specific spots. Maybe I just needed to get north of 40 years old to achieve my "old man yells at clouds" moment, but it's arrived.
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