A. Why does database consistency matter? and B. Given that the strike zone, mound height, and other parameters have varied historically anyway, so what?
Again, so what? The game has evolved continuously, sometimes in steps, over its entire life, and the skills required so succeed have evolved as well.
Wouldn’t that rules change be even more drastic than the ones you’re opposed to?
You could even put the opposing coach on a seat over a dunk tank, and if the ball hits the target in the middle of the goalposts, splash he goes. Fun for the whole family.
Statistical comparisons (from era to era) matter more in baseball than any other sport. We saw how upset fans got when they realized “hallowed” records like 61 and 715 were being broken by frauds. The mound-lowering change in 1969, is a good example, in your favor, but the game had become so pitching dominated (Yaz leading the league with .301 in '68 and Gibson’s ERA of 1.12) that something had to be done. (And it might just have been that pitchers were getting taller, so you had to compensate. Can you imagine Randy Johnson off the old mound height?)
I don’t think so. Enlarging the strike zone, would change the dynamics of every pitch… it’s possible that BA’s could drop by 30-40 points, and that extra base hits could be cut by even a larger percentage, since it would be that much harder to square up… at least against pitchers with pinpoint control.
My approach would only directly affect certain pitch counts (with the hope that it would indirectly affect earlier pitch counts – a hitter like Manny or Youkilis would stop taking the first pitch every time.)
Think sexier… put a cheerleader (braless under her sweater) over the dunk tank. Screw fun for the whole family… It’s Dad that’s paying for those seats, let him have all the fun.
How?
I’d say a more elegant solution would be to take the pitching spot out of the MLB batting order altogether.
Having a setup man and closer pitch the eighth and ninth doesn’t slow things down at all. Sure, it means that 225 innings is practically the maximum a starter can pitch, and most won’t even do that, but that’s apparently the best way to use pitchers. (It does seem to me that if starters are only going to pitch 6 innings, give or take, it makes even more sense to go back to a 4-man rotation, but I digress.)
Rather than have a bunch of arbitrary rules like that, I’d rather institute the penalty I mentioned, and let the managers do what they will.
To whom do they matter, and why?
It did? Why? And how did a change come about that “something had to be done about”? All you’ve done is confirm that yes, there has been constant change in the game throughout its history.
The strike zone, since it’s the immediate topic, has changed both with and without formal rules changes. Change is the norm, so why object to changing some more? If you’ve identified something as a problem, how do you fix it *without *making changes?
Isn’t that what we need to do? If we want to cut down on working the count, doesn’t *any *change we might make change the dynamics of every pitch?
Okay. But, again-- what problem is this solving?
The NCAA tournament: give the 32 highest-ranked teams a bye to the round of 64, and have an open tournament for the other 32 spots. Assuming there are are no more than 288 Division I teams, you’d have no more than 256 teams in the play-in tourney, and a 3-round tournament would take you down from 256 to 128 to 64 to 32 teams to fill in the non-bye slots.
Turbochargers are back. Can’t agree on the refueling, it seems to add an unnecessary safety risk while introducing an element of team strategy that has very little to do with actually making for good racing.
That said, I’d ban DRS in its current gimmicky incarnation and find a way to limit downforce. Adjustable aero would be allowed but overall downforce in max-downforce mode would be limited by some kind of a rolling-road wind-tunnel test. The goal would be max cornering Gs around 2, less than half of what they are now. I actually like the current engine restrictions so I wouldn’t mess with that, except I’d get rid of the fuel consumption rules and let the teams run as much fuel as they wanted within the weight limits.
I’d allow blown diffusers back in but they’d be subject to the same downforce rule (testing would be done at WOT). We’d get a lot more variation in bodywork as teams would have free reign to balance drag and downforce under their max downforce cap.
The goal would be to have cars that are harder to drive. There’d be less grip in the corners so speeds would be slower there, but with moveable aero, low drag, and the same power levels as the 2014 cars, top speeds would be high and the cars would be all kinds of squirrelly. We’d see more innovation in the body design and the cars wouldn’t all look the same with slightly different noses.
Isn’t that what the regular season is for?
Boredom?
Present the numbers 61, 714 and 755 to a baseball fan of my era, and they’re instantly recognizable as Maris, Ruth and Aaron. 510 means something, as does .367 and ,406. Outside of Chamberlain’s fanastic 100, I can’t think of any record in Basketball, Hockey or Football that is nearly as recognizable. What’s the NHL goal record or Football rushing record? I dunno.
As I mentioned, changing the mound height, might have been simply adjusting to the fact that pitchers’ had gotten a few inches taller since the mound height had last been set.
And unlike the 1960’s where pitching had totally dominated, today, we’re talking about speeding up the game, which is not as critical as having a league full of .240 hitters. We want to deter the most patient hitters in baseball, not drastically change the balance between pitching and hitting. And the ill-advised alteration of the zone after 1961 (from your link) also contributed to the decline of hitting, and they changed it back when they lowered the mound height.
We’re trying to address two problems, speeding up the game, but making hitters more aggressive, and to have more at bats produce balls in play. Your solution of altering the K zone will lead to more K’s, less balls in play and less walks. My solution will produce more K’s, less walks, but a majority of those lost walks will result in balls in play - approximately 1/3rd will be hits, and the rest will be outs given a BABIP of around .300.
This is really creative, very Champions Leagueish. In fact, I’d give the byes only to conference champions (as determined however the conference wishes) and make runner-ups of all stripes survive the multi-round play-in.
Doublechecked the numbers. There are indeed exactly 32 conferences in D1 but 351 total schools. So the math doesn’t work out perfectly but it should be easy to weed out the last 63 teams (hey, there’s your NIT!).
I really dislike “selection committees.”
Thanks, and I’d be good with limiting the byes in a variety of manners, including the one you suggest.
Me too! And to get down from 351 to 288 or fewer, there could be a low-threshold cutoff, like 5 (adjust as needed) victories against other Division 1 teams during the regular season. Even a low cutoff like that would probably do the job, but nobody could complain that a viable NCAA tourney team had been arbitrarily excluded. (ETA: or just add another round to the pre-tourney tourney.)
And the regular season currently settles this, how?
I mean, I’m really very big on a fairly long regular season (like baseball and basketball have) of actually settling something. But NCAA basketball has gone most of the way down the opposite route, so why not go the rest of the way and let everyone have a chance?
I don’t think this would work from a financial standpoint. Assuming the 351 were seeded somewhat correctly according to strength, you’d have a first round of 144 outrageous mismatches that would have no appeal to any televison network, and probably not to any live fanbase, either. It would just be a financial burden on a 10-17 Lafayette team to have pay to travel to, say, North Carolina to lose 110-34.
It would also devalue the Conference Tournaments, which for many small conferences is a play-in tournament, anyway. If all teams still got into the NCAA tourney anyway (all except the bottom 63), why have the conference tourneys at all?
I like it. I’d also like to see a limit on the number of time-outs a team can call in the last two minutes. The problem is this will never happen in the NBA. A foul-fest gives a losing team one last chance to create a close game at the end and the time-outs allow more advertising. It sucks.
I’m not a big soccer fan but one thing I don’t understand is why not allow free substituting? It seems like having fresher legs would lead to a faster and more exciting game.
Everyone does have an exactly equal chance. At the beginning of the season. Play well during the regular season, you get in.
At the end of the season, they even get a second chance to get in by winning their conference tournament.
But then there’s the distasteful matter of “selecting” the remaining at-large bids, yes? A bunch of teams are going to get fucked, yes? Well, no matter where the cutoff is, unless you’re proposing they just let all 351 schools into the tourney and let them play it out, there has to be a cutoff somewhere, and someone is going to get fucked, no matter where that cutoff is. So what’s the difference?
I don’t remember the numbers but statistical analysis of OT games showed that the team that won the toss won the game overwhelmingly. It’s unfair that the game should be decided on a coin flip.