MLB 2018: let the games begin!

[Brad]

If Tanaka hurt his hamstrings running from 3B, he’s clearly not in shape.  The fans are calling in today complaining about it, which is predictable and you really can’t blame them for being upset. However, teams play a lot of inter league games these days and pitchers need to be in shape. 

[paul secor]

48 minutes ago, Brad said:

If Tanaka hurt his hamstrings running from 3B, he’s clearly not in shape.  The fans are calling in today complaining about it, which is predictable and you really can’t blame them for being upset. However, teams play a lot of inter league games these days and pitchers need to be in shape. 

Or just not take any chances. Run easily or not at all.

[Soulstation1]

Tribe has the biggest lead

for any divisional leader

[soulpope]

13 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Ohtani's out for a few weeks too.  And Tanaka's getting an MRI on his hamstrings... boy oh boy, bad news if he gets shut down for more than a start or two.  I hate interleague games for precisely this reason (a dislike I think is particularly acute among Yankee fans because Chien-Ming Wang's career was undone by a base-running injury in an interleague game). Debate this morning online about whether or not Nevins should have sent him on such a shallow fly-ball--he clearly couldn't decide whether or not to slide, which may have accounted for the awkward stride that caused the injury.  Also debate about whether or not Tanaka's conditioning is adequate.  But AL pitchers are never in baserunning situations.  If somebody goes down in the World Series, that's one thing--the season's nearly over anyway.  But to potentially lose a starting pitcher because of some relatively meaningless mid-season game... long live the DH, say I.    

This Ohtani injury is a big blow .... and not only for the Angels, I believe ....

[Brad]

That would be a major blow for the Angels. My son is an Angels fan and we watch the games together.  

[Soulstation1]

Strasburghs 6th DL visit 

[Brad]

Ohtani needs TJ surgery

[soulpope]

12 minutes ago, Brad said:

Ohtani needs TJ surgery

Sad ....

[Brad]

Indeed. Guess we’ll see him in September 2019 or more likely 2020. 

[ghost of miles]

Angels GM denying Tommy John decision has been made regarding Ohtani.

Unbelievable how many pitchers are missing 1 to 1/2 years of their prime these days due to the need for this surgery.

[paul secor]

I think that more and more pitchers - especially young ones - are trying to throw harder than the human body is made to do. I realize that my comment is nothing new.

[ghost of miles]

46 minutes ago, paul secor said:

I think that more and more pitchers - especially young ones - are trying to throw harder than the human body is made to do. I realize that my comment is nothing new.

Younger pitchers are also throwing nearly year-round, which was not the case in previous eras.

[Brad]

I think it’s the year round, the traveling teams and all that.  Moreover, they’re throwing a lot of breaking pitches.  By the time they get to pro ball, teams treat pitchers’ arms like the Mona Lisa.  I’ve heard Leo Mazzone (former Braves pitching coach) say that pitchers need to throw more. 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Brad

[ghost of miles]

Maybe if they threw a little less as kids and teenagers, they could throw a little more as adults? At what age do kids start throwing breaking pitches these days? When I played Little League in the 1970s, that was a big no-no (at least in the league I was in); coaches told kids not to even fool around with breaking pitches until high-school or early teens, because it was thought to put too much strain on a young arm. I’m sure science, knowledge etc. are much more advanced now—but given that, why are we seeing a plague of this particular injury? It seems like some sort of adjustment needs to be made at the lower levels of play. (I also have to confess, on a not-really-related note, that I’m beginning to detest the whole “three true outcomes” concept, and an offensive landscape where some of the league’s biggest stars—Harper, Stanton, and Judge—are putting up numbers that remind me of Dave Kingman. I miss Rod Carew, George Brett, and Tony Gwynn. Hell, I miss Bernie Williams and Paul O’Neill!  In the meantime, enjoying the rookie performances of Andujar and Torres, both of whom are hovering around that old-fashioned hallmark known as a .300 BA.)

EDIT: only fair to note that there are hitters out there with outstanding BAs so far—Mookie Betts, obviously (.359) and Altuve, last year’s AL MVP, clipping the ball at a brisk .342 rate. Mike Trout consistently hits around .300 in addition to piling up a lot of HRs. I think perhaps analytics have worked more in favor of the pitchers so far—plus the beefed-up bullpens tend to offer a near-endless supply of fresh arms for batters to face. A friend of mine said a couple of weeks ago that the collective MLB BA is at its lowest so far this season since 1968, but I haven’t been able to run down any confirmation of that and find it really hard to believe. Wasn’t 1968 the year Yaz won the AL batting title with a .301 mark? I mean, talk about grim times for hitters... that’s when MLB decided to lower the mound, correct? 

Edited June 12, 2018 by ghost of miles

[Brad]

I’m not sure of when they begin to throw breaking balls. On Sunday mornings on WFAN in NY there’s a program with Rick Woolf where all issues regarding high school (and below) sports are discussed and this issue gets brought up from time to time. 

As far as offensive theories go, players seem to be taught to go for the HR. The approach they take at 0-2 seems to be the same when it’s 2-0. 

I think they lowered the mound after the 68 season when they lowered the ERAs and BAs. 68 was the year Gibson had a 1.12 ERA. 

Edited June 12, 2018 by Brad

[soulpope]

Agree with "ghost of miles" that throwing breaking Balls early can be an issue .... when my son played Little League this was a strict no-no and also not part of this "arsenal" until High School .... coaches suggested to incorporate a decent Change up instead (which is a tough pitch to learn) ....

[Dave Garrett]

On 6/12/2018 at 9:56 PM, Brad said:

I think they lowered the mound after the 68 season when they lowered the ERAs and BAs. 68 was the year Gibson had a 1.12 ERA. 

Gibson went 22-9 in 1968, and his 1.12 ERA is still the record in the live-ball era. He also pitched 13 complete-game shutouts and had a streak of 47 consecutive scoreless innings (Don Drysdale set a record that same year with 58 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, which stood until Orel Hershiser bested it with 59 in 1988). Out of 34 starts, he had 28 complete games. And he set the World Series record for strikeouts in a game with 17 in Game 1.  

Denny McLain went 31-6, the last pitcher to win 30 games and the first to do so since 1938, and his Tigers beat GIbson's Cardinals in the Series even though he lost twice in head-to-head matchups with Gibson. 

Just otherworldly numbers that are hard to fathom through today's lenses, and you can understand why MLB subsequently felt compelled to tweak things a bit by lowering the mound. They also reduced the height of the strike zone after having expanded it several seasons earlier.  

[Dave Garrett]

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, Dave Garrett said:

Unbelievable ....

[Soulstation1]

Tribe a hot mess 

[ghost of miles]

A writer and baseball-fan friend of mine told me something several weeks ago that I found hard to believe:  the 2018 collective MLB batting average so far, he said, was on pace to be the lowest since 1968.  1968!  Year of Bob Gibson etc., as we've noted above.  I finally found an online reference source, and while said collective MLB batting average must have moved up since our conversation, it's still on pace to be the lowest since 1972, when the collective MLB batting average was .244:

MLB overall batting average and other hitting stats, season-by-season

[ghost of miles]

Great comeback by the Yankees last night--very happy to see Giancarlo Stanton be the hero at Yankee Stadium:

https://www.mlb.com/news/giancarlo-stantons-homer-seals-yankees-win/c-282213260

[paul secor]

Whenever I see Chasen Shreve enter a game, I cringe and think, here comes Eddie Haskell.

Edited June 22, 2018 by paul secor

[soulpope]

12 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Great comeback by the Yankees last night--very happy to see Giancarlo Stanton be the hero at Yankee Stadium:

https://www.mlb.com/news/giancarlo-stantons-homer-seals-yankees-win/c-282213260

Will probably relax him for the reminder of the season....

[ghost of miles]

20 hours ago, paul secor said:

Whenever I see Chasen Shreve enter to a game, I cringe and think, here comes Eddie Haskell.

I tend to break out into hives myself. OTOH the rest of the bullpen has been on fire for the last month or so. Speaking of being on fire, the Astros have certainly been playing up to and perhaps beyond their 2017 form of late. Mighty glad at least that they didn’t manage to snag Kelvin Herrera from the Royals.