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The end of the juiced ball era?
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Post by johnsilver52 on Sept 27, 2019 4:57:59 GMT -5
To Fenway's post above that I should have copied... Oh heck I'm not thinking that strikeouts will recede to the 1980s level. Chicks dig the long ball and long balls mean more player money. Pitchers are bigger, stronger, faster. Some combination of factors will result in huge strikeout numbers. We are encroaching on an all or nothing game tho...a bit like little league. I don't know that baseball lied about the ball tho. I think that it was at a loss as well and circled the wagons when attacks came. Believe always a large group of owners that hang together when trouble strikes, why MLBPA strikes usually do not help much now (threats) in baseball. They hung tough during the so called "collusion" era, until got caught. Pretty sure rich millionaires know when it's best to put money 1st and any squabbles they might have 2nd. |
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Sept 27, 2019 8:16:40 GMT -5
I'd like to see a little fewer home runs at least, because I think the environment makes it hard for pitchers just from a mentality perspective.
i.e. You spend your whole life dealing, and now you're giving up home runs like never before. You feel like you need to make a change, when in reality you're still doing well relative to your competition.
Human nature is to get bored with what you have at some point. Change is inevitable for that reason. And things are mostly cyclical for that reason. We'll have another dead (or dead by comparison) ball era eventually. What will be interesting is to see if any front offices are able to make a correct hypothesis as to which players will greatly benefit and which will struggle to adjust.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 10, 2019 10:42:56 GMT -5
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 10, 2019 10:55:13 GMT -5
Also, that the ball magically just completely changed all of a sudden right in time for the playoffs, shows that they know exactly what they're doing in regards to the ball and have for awhile.
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orion09
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Post by orion09 on Oct 10, 2019 11:03:12 GMT -5
Also, that the ball magically just completely changed all of a sudden shows that they know exactly what they're doing in regards to the ball and have for awhile. Agreed. Pretty unfair to change direction just for the playoffs, especially for teams like the Twins that were built around the ridiculous ball in the first place. They’re trying to change the game to artificially create “playoff baseball,” which, given that it impacts teams’ strategies differently, is borderline tampering. |
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Oct 10, 2019 12:43:14 GMT -5
Also, that the ball magically just completely changed all of a sudden right in time for the playoffs, shows that they know exactly what they're doing in regards to the ball and have for awhile. I mean, it could also prove that they just recently figured out what the actual change was. (I don't think it actually proves much of anything, but one way or another, MLB has undermined it's own legitimacy in a significant way here. Which is high on the list of things MLB should not do.) |
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Post by foreverred9 on Oct 11, 2019 22:09:47 GMT -5
This would explain why everyone on the Dodgers thought that Will Smith's hit in the 9th was a home run.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 11, 2019 22:27:54 GMT -5
This would explain why everyone on the Dodgers thought that Will Smith's hit in the 9th was a home run. I think it was Max Muncy that hit a ball with an EV of 107 and launch angle of 31 degrees and it was a warning track out. In the regular season, it's a home run in 30 of 30 stadiums. |
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Post by Oregon Norm on Oct 12, 2019 1:05:03 GMT -5
Someone needs to tell me what the value of a record book is in a playing environment that's like quicksand. This will never fly with the owners but I think it's high time the MLBPA insists on a joint agreement about testable standards for baseballs. They are the ones carrying the bats around to hit those things after all.
I wonder how many arbitration eligible players saw a big increase in their HR numbers this year? Might make for an interesting off season in MLB front offices.
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Post by greenmonster on Feb 8, 2021 14:38:02 GMT -5
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2021 3:12:12 GMT -5
Bradford Doolittle at ESPN+ has a very informative and well-researched report on changes in the game as the result of the new baseball, but, alas, he doesn't remember middle-school science (F = ma, or, as is relevant here, A = f / m -- given the same force, a lighter ball will be accelrated to a higher speed, both velocity and spin rate), so he says that we don't know for certain that the lighter ball is responsible for the increase in FB velo. He also has no stat chops at all, and says that if the lighter ball was really responsible for that, you'd expect everyone to be throwing harder, instead of the observed roughly 50% ... which is not the way it works.
He has some stuff I hadn't realized about BABIP, and I looked into it and found the following: -- Despite the lighter ball, there's no increase in averge EV off the bat, which means the expected increase from the lower mass has been offset by the reduced springiness (coefficient of restitution) and better pitching. He notes that barrel percentage is up, but barrels are defined by a certain combo of EV and launch angle. I'm going to look into whether EV is up in the barrel range of LA. The guess here is that the lower weight is not fully offset by the lower COR, so that EV, given the quality of the pitch, is up. (I read just that conclusion in an article earlier.) The percentage of mistake pitches wouldn't change, and those would be hit harder, hence more barrels. The increase in tough pitches from the enhanced velo and spin rate brings the overall EV back to average. IOW, the variance in EV should be larger. You've broadened the bell curve, and that puts more balls in the barrel range. -- He notes a huge decline in BABIP the last few years, and not only blames the shift, but guesses that non-shift defense is better, too. He's right. Let me post a table for ground balls and then explain it. Year SPct S-xB NS-xB SE NSE Pre
2017 .183 .232 .234 .004 -.019 -.020
2018 .234 .229 .230 .005 -.023 -.021
2019 .321 .237 .231 .009 -.018 -.020
2020 .410 .244 .237 .021 -.011 -.009
2021 .385 .253 .246 .032 .007 .006
SPct is shift percentage. This includes both 3-men-on-a-side shifts, and the "strategic shifts" where just one or two infielders are out of position but they are still spit normally. You can see the more than linear increase from 2017 to 2020, and then a backing off this year.
S-XB and NS-xB are the xBA in the shifts and the non-shifts. You can see that in 2017 and 2018, they were shifting for balls that (ignoring direction) were slightly less likely to be hits! They fixed that in 2019, and the difference has remained fairly constant. SE is Shift Effectiveness, in points of BA, i.e., simply xBA - BA. This got better from 2017 to 2020, along with rise in shift frequency, and in those years, 89% of the increase in shift quality is explained by the increase in frequency. This is probably just more and more teams adopting; I'll do a team-by-team analysis at some point soon.
NSE in Non-shift Effectiveness. It's almost perfectly predicted (last column) by Shift Percentage and Shift Effectiveness, both of which are expected to correlate to smart positioning. It's hugely better this year, although some of that may be the weather. Alas, Statcast has no group by month feature, so we'll have to wait for a while to nail this down completely.
Here's all grounders: Year xBA BA Diff
2017 .233 .249 .016
2018 .229 .246 .017
2019 .232 .242 . 010
2020 .240 .238 -.002
2021 .248 .232 -.016
We lost .007 of BA in 2019, .012 more in 2020, and so far this year, .014 further. There's some reason to believe that's close to being maxed out, as evidence by fewer shifts.
The xBA in 2020 is elevated ... that might be the lack of cold spring weather in the data.
I still don't like the idea of legislating against the shift. Remember, the BABIP on a strikeout is zero. Nobody ever payed attention to BABIP until recently; they just looked at BA. Ultimately it's the percentage of PA that end with a potential hit that makes the game exciting.
I do like the idea of selecting for guys like Bogaerts and Verdugo who use the whole field from foul line to foul line. A guy who does that is more fun to watch than a guy who's a dead pull hitter. Create a heavier ball that cuts strikeouts a lot, with an enhanced COR to give a net small increase in EV off the bat to counter the shift just a bit, and then tweak the drag (the toughest challenge in terms of material science) to get homers at the right frequency to keep overall offense in the happy zone, and you've gone a log way to fixing the game of baseball.
Add the universal DH, robot umpires, and the Rafeal Dolis Memorial Pitch Clock, and you're that much closer.
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on May 22, 2021 7:40:56 GMT -5
 Nice bullpen game for the Yankees. 8 of the 11 home runs in this game were under 400 feet. I would love to see the Yankees give up 19 runs EVERY night!! |
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on May 22, 2021 7:44:56 GMT -5
Minor League Stories @minorsteamnames · 10h Final AAA Home Run Totals: 2018 - 3,652 2019 - 5,749 AAA games switched to MLB baseballs in 2019. Stupid question....why don’t the major and minor leagues just go back to the old ball? |
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Post by incandenza on May 22, 2021 8:04:48 GMT -5
Add the universal DH, robot umpires, and the Rafeal Dolis Memorial Pitch Clock, and you're that much closer.
A prediction about robot umps: pitchers with great control become more valuable as borderline strike calls become reliable; more soft-tossers get strike calls in unhittable spots at the corners of the plate. Also batters with good plate discipline become more valuable; more balls are called off the plate. Strikeouts and walks go up; baseball becomes more boring. |
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mobaz
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Post by mobaz on May 22, 2021 11:07:11 GMT -5
Add the universal DH, robot umpires, and the Rafeal Dolis Memorial Pitch Clock, and you're that much closer.
A prediction about robot umps: pitchers with great control become more valuable as borderline strike calls become reliable; more soft-tossers get strike calls in unhittable spots at the corners of the plate. Also batters with good plate discipline become more valuable; more balls are called off the plate. Strikeouts and walks go up; baseball becomes more boring. Plus you won't get to yell at the ump to "bend over and use your good eye!" Um, not that I ever did. |
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