That would be Bhagwat Chandrasekha.
No, it’s a game and the players are expected to play the game, which includes both offense and defense. Players will have varying degrees of skill with regard to any specific aspect of the game. That’s how games work and that’s how athletics performed by human beings work.
Correct, and pitchers suck at hitting. My point was that nobody actually expects (or even wants*) pitchers to be competent at hitting, yet they are asked to do so every game. It is rather odd to require a player to perform a task at which they are almost guaranteed to be laughably bad at. Generally, we want and expect professional athletes to be good at things, and value their abilities at the various aspects of the game they perform.
There is no particular interest in a pitcher who can hit .200 over the pitcher who hits .150. What you care about is how they perform on the mound. We ask them to hit even though they’re almost universally bad at it, and we don’t really value them at all for their hitting.
- Oh sure, you “want” pitchers to hit well, but no club will want their pitchers to put the work in that is necessary for them to hit well. Hours in the batting cage and hours in the front of the monitor studying opposing pitchers is not the way pitchers should spend their time.
Them’s the breaks. You want a great home-run hitter? You might have to settle for a poor fielder or runner. You want a great pitcher? You might have to settle for a poor hitter. That’s athletics. Part of the inherent calculation in the game is whether you think it’s worth it to take time in a developing pitcher to also develop his hitting skills. If you decide not to, then you have to take the downside … a weak spot in the lineup.
We expect professional athletes to play the game, not to opt out of the parts of it they find too hard.
Yes, and you should be subject to the consequences of this calculation, which is, as I said, a weak spot in the lineup.
Its time for offensive and defensive platooning. Think how the quality of baseball would go up if the defense was by great defensive players who may not have to bat. Football does it. At one time ,many players played both sides of the ball. Now it is accepted. Maybe baseball should go that way too.
Yeah, football is the example we should follow. :rolleyes: One player to swing the bat, one to run for first base, one to lead off from first, one to adjust his package, and another to spit tobacco juice.
Why not just replace them all with robots engineered to perfect a particular motion?
I spit my tobacco juice at this suggestion.
It’s not a calculation, it’s a given. Pitchers do not spend anything more than a token amount of time on hitting skills because pitching skills are overwhelmingly more important to their value on the team. It’s not that hitting is “too hard” it’s that hitting requires an enormous amount of work, and pitchers cannot put that kind of work into non-pitching skills, or their pitching will suffer. Nobody is going to ask a developing pitcher to work especially on his hitting skills, it doesn’t happen.
There isn’t really an issue when it comes to defensive platooning, because there’s little about being a good defender that requires one to be terrible at hitting.
That looks exactly like a calculation to me.
It’s not a calculation in that no managers sit down, run the numbers and then decide what to do with their pitchers based on how the calculation comes out. The answer is always the same, and has been the same for decades, focus on pitching.
You made it sound like the managers are simply dealing with the results of their choices, when there is only one reasonable choice, and every single manager makes the exact same choice across the league. This is not like choosing to play small ball, or choosing the good glove SS instead of the good hit SS, those are choices that require thought and planning, they’re not the obvious choice that every manager would make every time.
No, the game as a whole is dealing with this choice, and it is a perfectly reasonable condition to force managers and players to be subject to it. You want to play in the big leagues? You have to bat sometimes. So learn to live with it.
Pitchers can not even bunt. That is part of the calculation.
Denny Mclain used to practice bunting for hours. His explanation was if I can bunt they wont take me out as often.
I am unconvinced bunting is really a good idea. Bill James argues that it is slightly better than swinging away ,but I think it has to consider who is at bat. You do not bunt Arod or Bonds ,if you are smart.
I
It’s part of basketball, too, for players to have to play parts of the game they aren’t good at. Shaq can’t send someone else in to shoot his freethrows for him. Some players are really good defensive players, but they still have to shoot every now and again. It’s part of the sport for the coaches to figure out how to exploit a player’s strengths without letting their weaknesses handicap the team too much. Football is unusual in this regard, and I would imagine the only reason this is so is because football is so complex…I’m sure it’s hard enough to learn and remember all the offensive or defensive plays alone, much less both.
I saw Pujols lay down a perfect bunt one game. If I recall correctly, it was a late inning and the Cards were trying to manufacture a go-ahead run. He caught the Reds off guard and got a single. Great play.
I imagine it has been many years since either of them bunted.
I have to say I hate your two-team idea; baseball is overspecialized as it is. It’d be a poorer sport if players like Griffey Jr. were forced to decide between playing offense and defense. And that would happen, since working on areas other than their specializations would be considered a poor use of their time.
This I agree with, both objectively and subjectively. If I’m gonna pay $45/seat, plus beer, food and parking to see a game, I want to get my money’s worth. 4 hours at the ballpark? Wonderful!
I used to scour the schedule early in the year looking for double headers. i went to as many as I could. Baseball is not long.
The platooning was not serious but it would improve the quality of play.
One of the Indian villagers in the (must-see) “Lagaan” bowled with one. Got some funky movement on the ball with it, too - the British officers had quite a spot of bother with it.
Oh, if you want to be at the ballpark for 4 hours, you only have to see 1 game nowadays. I don’t blame the DH for that, I blame all that standing around staring blankly that’s become so much more of the game. And who prefers to spend any of that time seeing Pujols or A-Rod bunt???