That really is funny!
Also, I’m going to temporary join the Old Timers Club and say that while I think the main jersey of the Mets’ city connect jerseys are cool, the purple/fuschia undershirt is really terrible.
Fuschia isn’t random. It’s the color code of the 7 line subway. Every bit of the uniform has meaning. On paper it sounds good. The color accents on the uniform look fine. I agree the undershirt is a bit much. I do think it might be the best city connect although that’s faint praise.
The Colorado Rockies seem to be dead serious in their bid to eclipse the 1899 Cleveland Spiders for worst professional baseball season ever.
Tonight they’re down 20-0 to the Padres in the top of the 6th (the Padres have two runners on with no outs).*
The Rockies will have a record of 6-33 after this loss.
*Oo, they got out of the inning with no further damage.
**They’ll have to not try harder to beat out the Spiders, who had a winning percentage of .130. The Rockies are on pace for .154.
The good news is they only gave up one more run.
Broncos lose to the Chargers by three touchdowns. 
Oh, I know - I defend city connect unis all the time. I think it would have been smarter to just make one of the pinstripes fuschia - an actual “purple line”.
Carew dropped below .400 on July 6 and never got back to it; after that he dropped as “low” as .374 and actually rallied to get to .388.
Brett was batting .400 on September 19. That is the latest anyone has been hitting .400 in my lifetime. Had he stopped playing then, however, he would not have 502 plate appearances and even with the add-at-bats rule would have lost the batting title to Cecil Cooper.
To my surprise, Gwynn in his .394 season never got back to .400 after May 15, which hovered in the .380-.390 range all year. In fact .394 was his high water mark after he dropped under .400. He went 3-for-5 in his last game.
John Olerud got to August 2 batting .400, which may be the latest in recent history.
Brett was only 5 hits short of .400. Of course, in 1980, the strikeout rate was HALF what it is now - I’m not making that up. Batting averages were almost 30 points higher. It just isn’t the same game now.
People rightly complain that batting averages are down, and in response MLB.. banned the shift. Sorry, but that’s a tiny, tiny part of the issue. The reason batting averages are down is that strikeouts are up. You cannot get a hit unless you put the ball in play. If you remove that many plays from a game where the ball is put in play, of course batting averages will go down.
In 1980 the average AL team struck out 740 times. In 2024 it was 1367 times. So that’s 627 times a year, about four times a game, a player is not hitting a fair ball. The thing is, the batting average on balls hit into play isn’t really any different - it’s .290 now, and was .287 then, and it was actually a little bit HIGHER, not lower, before then banned infield shifts.
So those 627 additional strikeouts are removing roughly 180 hits per team per year, an enormous number. It is THE reason why batting averages are down, it entirely accounts for the reduction in hits (actually, it more than accounts for it; hits aren’t quite down 180/team/year, because increased home runs eats back a little bit of the loss.)
If you want to see batting averages go up and .400 be a possibility you need to reduce strikeouts somehow.
I hypothesize that there are at least two big factors there:
- The big one is how pitching has changed, and how managing pitchers within a game has changed. Between starters being pulled earlier in games, and teams going through more relievers per game, batters are seeing the same pitcher fewer times during a game (and batting average generally goes up each subsequent time a batter faces a pitcher). And, it seems like more pitchers are able to throw high-velocity fastballs now, especially the relievers who come in, throw 95+mph gas for an inning, and then get pulled.
- With power hitting being more prized now, more batters are swinging with a “launch angle” approach, with the intent of hitting the ball in the air, hoping to hit a home run (or at least a double off the outfield wall). Guys like Gwynn and Carew were contact hitters (and very good at it), and even Brett, who had some power, was more of a 20-25 HR guy; there aren’t many pure “contact hitters” anymore.
Agree on both of these.
I will curious to see, if the day ever comes, what a difference a robo-ump will make. The inconsistency of the strike zone of most MLB umps could be at least somewhat of a factor regarding the K rate.
I don’t have the skills or time to figure it out, but it’d be interesting to see how batting average has changed on hitters’ third and fourth time up, which is generally where they used to really hurt starters.
On another note, the Colorado Rockies are so delightfully terrible. I really love them. As of the morning of Sunday May 11:
- They are on pace for a 25-137 season.
- They are 6-33; their Pythagorean projection is 8-31, which is “better” but still would be only 33-129
- They have allowed 137 more runs than they have scored; over a full season that would be a deficit of 557 runs. By way of comparison last year your Chicago White Sox had a deficit of “only” 306. No team has ever been even close to 557. No team, at least not since 1901 has ever been within TWO HUNDRED RUNS of that.
- According to Baseball Reference, their best player is Jake Bird, a relief pitcher. Bird, despite allegedly being their most valuable player, is a pitcher who has not won OR saved any games yet. The Rockies are 4-14 in games Bird has appeared in.
- Only the Pirates score fewer runs, and then only slightly fewer and they don’t play in Coors Field. No one allows more, and the Rockies are WAY out front.
Rockies fire Bud Black.
I’m thinking Bird might be their lone All-Star representative this season.
Yanks won with Judge going 4 for 5.
His average is at .409 now.
Yanks had 15 hits and 5 walks.
That has to be some kind of record for shortest interval between a vote of confidence and a managerial firing.
Before Saturday’s 21-0 loss to the Padres, general manager Bill Schmidt: “I don’t think we are [at that point of firing Black]. Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed. We are all frustrated.”
Then Black gets fired, after a rare win. 
Aaron Judge games with 0 hits in 2025: 6
Aaron Judge games with 3+ hits in 2025: 7
That’s crazy.
As pitiful as the Rockies are, at least some of that has to be attributed to playing in the toughest division in baseball. Every single other team in that division (D-Backs, Dodgers, Padres, Giants) has a winning record.
(Of course, some of those wins were against the Rockies, but still.)
In the past he’s been a slow starter in the beginning of the season. Not this year
Silly thought, but what if this is a slow start and he’ll pick up speed now.