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| In happier times |
My mom was very Yankees-centric in her view of the game, not knowing that sometimes there was something going on in all of MLB that was reflected in the Yankees' performance. I'm that way a lot of times, too...and I think that may be true of many of us. Our laser-like devotion to/mistrust of/skeptical attitude toward the Yankees has a way of coloring what Margaret Mead (no relation to the lake or the bodies being found therein) called our "world view."So this was an interesting article for me.
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| Smoke 'em if you got 'em |
It seems that the men determined to wreck the game have dicked with the ball (again) and this time, they've really fucked it up. So much so that--gasp!--exit velos and launch angles (yo, Coney) that resulted in home runs aren't doing so anymore. And players are amazed, mystified, and peeved. (To be fair, now that all 30 teams are keeping balls in a humidor, that practice is also having a pronounced effect.) So much so that we're in 1968 Year of the Pitcher Land when it comes to batting stats.Joey Gallo incapable of hitting dingers and/or batting .200? It's probably mostly Gallo, but you have to think (or at least want to) that the ball and the humidors have something to do with it. On the other hand, guys who are still managing to hit .300 or have gaudy OPS numbers are even more impressive than they might have been a few years ago.
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| Wee Willie doing his thing |
The developments have made situational hitting, putting 'em where they ain't, and other quaint pre-stat era hitting approaches seem more sound than ever. And they have always been sound, unlike the "Let's All Hit a Bomb" (apologies to Heaven 17) focus we've suffered through as guys hit into the shift or whiff or ground into a double play with men on base. |
| Geniuses at work |
Of course, in their usual overreaction, the powers that be will use their self-produced batting crisis as an excuse to introduce bigger bases, aluminum bats, and God knows what else during the coming seasons. All while secretly tightening up the balls again, so we'll see soaring ERAs and batting stats, with 14-10 football scores the norm.Remember, Cashman isn't the only Brain working in our sport. They are legion.
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12 comments:
Thanks, JM.
It's not a bad thing that the number of homers are down, and I'd love to see the game move away from the Three Annoying Outcomes.
But this constant toying with the ball has got to stop. They've been doing this for years now, and it's ridiculous to force players to hit one way, then make that impossible.
Back in 1961, there was a jump in hitting in the AL. Not a huge rise by any means, and one that any grade-school fan might have figured out was caused by adding two teams that year—and about 20-25 pitchers who would not otherwise have been in the majors. (Weirdly, there was much more of a spike in the NL, which had not yet expanded.)
One of those things—but the Lords of the Game freaked out, and gave us the expanded strike zone, which steadily drove down hitting through 1968. Then they lowered the mound, and eventually brought in the DH. Then HEY LADY! On and on, tinkering with what ain't broke until it is.
From the NYY PR Dept.
Prior to today’s doubleheader, the Yankees made the following roster moves:
•Placed OF Tim Locastro on the 10-day IL w/ a left latissimus dorsi strain
•Recalled RHP Ron Marinaccio from Triple-A SWB
•Appointed OF Estevan Florial as the “27-man” for today’s doubleheader
Thank god it wasn’t the right latissimus dorsi.
And Happy Mother’s Day to all you Mothers!
Bring on Mother Boone - that's all I'm saying.
'Multiversing' today - For the greater good (THE GREATER GOOD)
As 10-13 year old neighborhood kids, we frequently didn't have enough money to buy the $ 3.00 Rawlings baseball because too many went down the sewer or an angry curmudgeon would confiscate stray balls that landed on their property. So we were reluctantly reduced to buying the crappy $ 1.25 Japanese baseballs that were filled with newspaper and rubber bands. After a few good whacks, they'd become lopsided. I'd love to see some pissed-off purchasing agent at MLB surreptitiously sneak in a batch of those baseballs for just one day across the league.
JM -
Good post and good article. Man they are schmucks.
BTW just below the article you posted was this, "The next great Chicago Cub or a first-month mirage? Inside Seiya Suzuki's major league introduction"
Still pisses me off. I was looking at a Statcast thing for some reason and while Suzuki currently has four HR's if he played in Yankee Stadium he would have had seven. SCHMUCKS!!!!!!!!
Of course, after days of rain, the Yanks can only be seen on Amazon Prime for game 1.
Yeah, just keep switching the games from channel to channel, all with steadily costlier fees. I'm sure that will help baseball flourish.
I can watch every game regardless of network carrying it. IPTV!
Yeah, I'm gonna pee TV, too, if I watch anymore of it.
Thank you, thank you, thanks very much people!
It's not the ball; it's not the weather; it's not his uniform. It's him. It's Gallo. Gallo is a useless turdlet filled fuckface fuck.
Keep it up you lot, and I'll say it again!
@ Horace....LOL.
Aha! It was you, Carl J. Weitz, who commented about IPTV a while back. And I got it. And I get all the games, all the time, and it's great.
Thanks for that suggestion.
That pitcher of the fellow with five fingers, isn't he the new scouting coordinator? Or has The Brain been evolving?
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