It was a 1 run game at the time. I’d have done the same thing. The game comes first, milestones a distant second.
I agree that the game comes first, you’re trying to win it. Milestones are irrelevant. You play the game just like 99.99% of other games. You certainly don’t “give the guy a chance” just because he’s one away from a milestone and risk losing the game. The Yankees are contenders in a tight and tough division. One win could make a difference, witness the Blue Jays last year. Although they ultimately lost, the Yankees did the right thing.
There is one instance that I can think of when it appears the opposing team just didn’t want to be a part of history. April 11, 1984. The Expos are in Cincinnati. Pete Rose had signed with Montreal and on this day, he’s one hit away from 4000. The Reds pitchers walked him 4 times, I think it was the only time in his career he walked four times. The last time was in the 8th, Montreal leads 5-3 and Rose was leading off the inning. Cincinnati fans were not happy.
Of course, it’s also the factr that intentional walks are stupid and backfire a LOT, as did this one.
Anyway, returning to the subject of low offense, I’ll tell you guys what; watch video of games from 40 years ago and then watch a game now. The pitching now is just unbelievable, and the fact the MLB batting average isn’t .150 is a testament to the fact the hitters are better, too.
I decided to Youtube up a game from the 1982 World Series. The pitching was not remotely what it’s like today. I mean, they’re throwing really, really hard of course, but it’s visibly not as devastating as what you see them throwing now.
After bouncing thru a video of the 1974 All Star Game I looked up videos of Dave Stieb. Stieb might well have been the greatest pitcher in baseball in the early 80s and it was largely on the strength of his slider, which then was widely considered maybe the best pitch anyone threw. He’d throw them back to back to back and when he was on no one could hit it. But I’m telling you right now that there are dozens of pitchers today who throw sliders better than Stieb’s.
Blaming the institution of baseball today for the lack of contact hitting is crazy; what we have are competitive teams acting absolutely rationally in an effort to win. Of course they are using all the tools of sports kinesiology, video review, physics, defensive positioning and sabermetrics to maximize the effectiveness of pitching, and of course on the hitting side they are reacting in a rational fashion to what pitchers can do. If you tried to use contact hitting to beat a parade of pitchers throwing 93-MPH sliders that move like Frisbees, you’d just fail.
I cannot help but think that the solution will have to be something truly fundamental.
Thank you for that analysis, @RickJay. Very interesting observations.
I do wonder, at this point, what can be done to bring hitting and pitching back into some sort of balance. That genie likely can’t be put back into the bottle.
Pushing the pitcher’s mound back a little strikes me as being the most obvious solution. They did try that in a minor league, but apparently it was a dramatic (a full foot!) midseason change, which is a stupid way of doing it. The wise way would be literally 1, maybe 2 inches, in the offseason, over the course of maybe 3 or 4 years. A difference of six to twelve inches would slighty reduce effective velocity and improve reaction time.
There are other things you could do of course but some aren’t easy. Moving fences back is a terrific idea; it not only makes for fewer homers, but could increase doubles and triples, could even increase singles, and requires teams place a bit more emphasis on outfield defense (though my perception is that outfield defense is actually very good right now.) However, that’s not possible in every stadium.
There are a lot of suggestions out there, I don’t know what more feasible. Some I’ve heard that I don’t think are unreasonable:
- Make the ball heavier. Would pitchers not be able to deal with this?
- Lower the mound (again). At what point are pitchers throwing the ball out of a hole in the middle of the infield?
- Ban the shift. How soon do we see them move the LF into RF territory if they implement this?
- Robo umps. This can’t come soon enough. They can tinker with the strike zone as much as they want at this point to favor batting or pitching as much as they want.
I wonder how much of the difference is that guys don’t have an off-season. The guys from the 70s and 80s probably didn’t have second jobs, but it seems like there was a ton of hard living going on and then they’d think about picking up a bat or baseball around February 1.
I’d be curious to see to what extent that was actually the case.
Growing up in Green Bay in the '70s, one got to know a lot about the Packer players, and what they did in the off-season. Except maybe for the biggest stars, a lot of them did have off-season jobs, often in sales, insurance, etc. Part of the reason that training camp was long (and they played six pre-season games) was to get guys back in shape after they spent six months not working at being athletes.
Oh, I agree. Unfortunately, my sample size is books and magazines of the era and they aren’t likely writing about a journeyman utility infielder.
My recollection, from back then, was a big part of the reason why the non-star players had offseason jobs was in order to pay the bills.
This link from Baseball Reference shows minimum and average MLB salaries from the 1970s and 1980s. In '75, the minimum was $16K, and the average was less than $45K. By 1980, the minimum was $30K, and the average was $143K, though the relative handful of big contracts that were starting to appear (like Nolan Ryan’s landmark $1 million a year) drag that average up some.
An amazing day for the Chicago Cubs today with a 21-0 shutout of the Pirates. Even better, for Cubs fans still bitter over the fire sale last year, it happened on a glorious 80 degree F Saturday afternoon
21-0; that’s three touchdowns. Yikes.
In another football score, the Lions Tigers shut out the Broncos Rockies, 13-0.
Interestingly, both the Cubs and the Tigers only hit one home run each.
I was a proponent of pushing the mound back too, but while you can question the validty of the experiment, the results were not promising. I believe strike outs and walks were both up. The additional distance increased the break on pitches which offset the velocity decrease.
Robo umps are more promising, but definitely not ready for prime time. I know people want to turn it on tomorrow, but it would be a disaster. Just because it is a box on your screen doesn’t mean it is actually a strike. Once they get it right, adjusting the strike zone might be the best bet for reigning in pitchers.
I’m actually a big fan of MLB hiring Epstein and letting him run these experiments. It is one of the few things they have done right is the Manfield era. Figure them out on the minor league level and implement then ready.
I’m not sure if the box on your screen is connected to the actual system MLB uses. The MLB system is VERY accurate, consistent, and essentially never makes a noticeable mistake.
Indeed.
oh god
Not sure where you are getting that, but it isn’t accurate. Dale Scott was on a podcast (well poscast) talking about his new book and talked about how each call had to be hand checked before umpires were graded, because they weren’t always accurate particularly on calibrating the height of each batter.
But that’s a human error, too, and one that would be relatively simple to fix were we relying on roboumps - and which of course is true of human umps, if not more so, so I don’t see how it’d be WORSE.
The average MLB ump is blowing a lot of calls every game. They don’t miss one or two a game. The AVERAGE is like 12-14, and in some games it’s well over 20 and can change who wins and loses the game. It’s time to fix it.
I’m not under the illusion umps are calibrating their own strike zone to the height of the batter. It’s time to standardize the strike zone, bring in the robo umps, and rip that bandaid off.
Edit: there is a deeply boring no-no happening in Tampa right now. The Rays, who have scraped together all of 2 hits of their own against the Red Sox, have used 6 pitchers and gone nearly 9 no hit innings. It’s currently 0-0, and looks like it’ll go 14 innings, even if they loaded the bases in extras to start each inning.