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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Conlin: MLB should raise the mounds and lower the ERAs
And…hey, ladies! Don’t raise the bridge, lower the river!
So here we are in 2009, and most games it takes at least four pitchers working off those itty-bitty mounds to seal the deal - or blow it. Know how many extra beers and hot dogs all those pitching changes sell?
The hitters are in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Era - blown up and going for the downs. And the new wave of retro parks would have been perfect for Willie - Keeler, not Mays. Imagine Mike Schmidt hitting in the Bank - and he’ll turn 60 next month. Picture DiMaggio’s elegant swing in Yankee Stadium Lite. Al Gionfriddo would have to play him on the subway platform.
The game has gone full-tilt. Now that the orthopedic surgeons have done enough Tommy Johns and labrum debridements to retire on Hobe Sound, it’s time to restore the 4 inches of dirt the Lords bulldozed away for no good reason after the 1968 season. Reverse the moundectomy.
Tim Lincecum might be a scary sight, long-striding off a 15-inch mound, but I think Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA is safe. Expansion to the current 30 teams - come on, AL, you’re two light - has added so many high-ERA pitchers to the talent pool, a few less runs and trips to the mound per game won’t make a dent.
Repoz
Posted: August 12, 2009 at 10:47 AM | 102 comment(s)
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I wonder if there might be some truth to the conventional wisdom here. Is the "curve" for pitching talent steeper than for hitting talent? It could be. Also: it's clear that when forced to add more pitchers to the league, you end up with worse pitchers. When forced to add more position players, you could end up adding mostly guys who can hit well enough, but can't field their positions. That would lead to a rise in offense. Now, I'm sure there are people who have studied this and have answers to these points, but I personally don't know the answers nor how reliable they might be.
You might see teams try hiding some slow movers at 2nd or 3rd base. Probably not at catcher though (like Josh Willingham going back there) because the speedy outfielders would put a premium on a strong throwing catcher who can stop the running game.
Oh yeah, and ban the DH.
Didn't Bill James do a study on this and figured there's still enough ML talent to go around and fill up another dozen or so teams?
I don't think it was a study as much as a proclamation without supporting evidence.
I'd probably buy that if the quality of lighting in minor league stadiums was as good as in the major league stadiums.
The flipside is that football and basketball were complete sideshows until recently. But there's another point which is that sudden expansion leads to changes in talent level, even if there's talent enough for steady expansion.
I agree that, to reduce offense, it's probably park dimensions rather than mound height. Adding more Ks to an era already bloated with them isn't the answer.
But I do have to say, I'm not so sure I'm particularly in favor of seeing more Juan Pierre's and fewer Adam Dunn's.
I'm pretty sure that offense is higher nowadays because of the strike zone, the fence distances, the bat handles, the practice of using a new ball for every few pitches, and video study by hitters, not because of the inherent quality of the pitchers. The pitchers are darned good to overcome all those disadvantages to the extent that they do. I think that increased video study has improved the quality of hitters' at bats, and their ability to diagnose a pitcher's stuff, even in-game, to an enormous degree, as evidenced by the fact that most every starting pitcher seems to be helpless the third time through the batting order. Once managers realize this, ERAs will drop, but starters will rarely be forced past the sixth inning.
That should be done regardless of any other intentions.
Another thought is that the unbalanced schedule increases offense, because pitchers have to face the same hitters more often, though the effects of video study might trump this.
Expansion created more JOBS for players, but the last expansion was 12 years ago. But here's the thing. Prior to the last expansion, the typical roster was 15-10 or 14-11 (position players vs. pitchers). That has gradually eroded to now we have 13-12 generally, and in some cases 12-13. So the combination of expansion AND the additions of pitchers per team has created more jobs for pitchers than for position players. Add to that fact, complete games have decreased in that time, innings per start have decreased, innings per relief pitcher have decreased (the two inning "stopper" is nearly extinct), which means that a lot of innings are now being pitched by the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth man on the staff, pitchers who formally were just hanging onto a job while rotting in the pen, or who were in the minors. While turning over the game in the ninth, eighth, and perhaps seventh innings to a fresher, dominant closer or set-up man would most likely make hitting more difficult, the demands put on these releivers often make them less than effective when overused, or require them to be rested and replaced by the lower level relievers, which would help batting numbers. That's my theory, anyway.
If it weren't that this would mean the cheap seats moving back along with them, I'd think that would be great. One of the drawbacks of the generously-dimensioned ashtray parks of the 1970s was that the outfield seats could be pretty far even from the outfield. The "home run porch" in Arlington, by contrast, is a fun place to watch a game from, but the price one pays is lots of home runs.
Are there any current parks built, like Shea Stadium, with no outfield-wall seating at all? What's the closest alignment? In a park like that you can move the fences with wild abandon :)
1. Enforce the strike zone that's in the rule book, and fire any umpire who won't go along.
2a. Refuse to award a base to any batter who gets hit by a pitch while leaning across the plate; OR
2b. Outlaw all protective body armor above the waist and below the head.
If there was no good reason to lower the mound after 1968, there is no good reason to raise it after 2009.
Ditto, except 30 feet seems kind of excessive.
Never going to happen.
Also never going to happen.
How bout we stop bringing these two ideas up when the "how to diminish offense" discussions start? We all know that the owners will never agree to move back all the outfield walls because of lost seating and that the union will never agree to outlawing body armor because it's a safety issue (also, I don't think it would actually affect offense all that much at all).
This is the purpose of the humidor in Denver, which, near as I can tell, has been a success in every single way. While it's still a hitter's park, Coors is now more analogous to Wrigley Field in the 1970s than the Baker Bowl in the 1930s. It increases most facets of offense except that it's neutral for homers, which has led to a more exciting version of the game.
And it may be coincidental, but the team has been more successful in the humidor era as well.
They use the same specifications, and they measure the balls. I think the balls are machine-stitched now, though, and they are almost all up against the liveliest end of the specs, instead of being all over the range.
They might agree to make a rule that if you get hit on the armor, other than the helmet, it's a ball and not a HBP.
1) If you get hit on the armor (except head armor), it's merely a ball. Tough for you if you wear an ankle guard.
2) MOVE THE BATTER'S BOX AWAY FROM THE PLATE. One inch a year for the next three years. As long as Eric Gregg doesn't show up to give the pitcher a strike 6 inches off the outside corner.
It's a shame that this has to distract from the point about the strike zone, which is probably the easiest way to effect change in the run-scoring environment.
It's not the HBP that matter really. It's that the batters can lean over the plate without fear. They take the outside pitch away by leaning over the plate, and the inside pitch away by leaning into it and taking their base.
While this may be within the realm of possibility, it is still highly, highly unlikely for two reasons. One, the union will oppose it as it discourages players from wearing body armor. Two, MLB will be hesitant to implement a rule like this because it would be a subjective call for the umpires to make and something else for them to watch for when they already have a lot to pay attention to.
Also, I don't know that it would make that much difference anyway. There are many, many players who lean out over the plate and wear no body armor. Andy just opposes body armor because Bonds wore an elbow guard and to Andy, Bonds = Satan.
Also the size of the population and expansion have a negligable effect on talent levels. Population is pretty irrelevant compared to other factors. See San Pedro de Macoris.
Since baseball is pretty clearly a learned skill (which is why the minor leagues exist at all) expansion increases the number of major league quality players by giving them the opportunity to learn on the job. There might be a short term dip but that gets washed out very fast.
My guess is that a pitched ball striking body armor makes quite a different sound from a pitched ball striking flesh.
Right, and I remember reading that that in and of itself is enough to push the average fly ball some 10-15 extra feet. That's a lot of balls that were warning track flies in the 80s that are home runs now.
If all the balls are going to be uniform, that's fine, but they should be uniform in the middle of the range, not at the top end.
They need to outlaw whip-handled bats, too, by introducing a minimum bat diameter.
Depends on the specific design of the body armor in question and where it hits it. Still more for the plate ump to pay attention to when they already have a tough job.
Which would help the other problem of maple bats breaking in a dangerous manner.
The point is that balls in play are where the entertainment comes, except for the case of a real artist striking people out.
Disagree. I like K's and HR's. I grew up in the 80's and 80's baseball sucked.
As for Ks and HRs, sure, they can be dramatic. But they're relatively static plays. You hit the HR, and then trot around the bases. Everyone else trots also. The fielders watch. You strike out the batter, and he trots back to the dugout. The runners stay where they are. The fielders watch. On the other hand, you hit the ball in the gap, and everyone on the field is involved in the action.
If I could make any changes I'd get he umps to call a legit strike zone- watching players beg the guy with the chest protector stuffed in his shirt for a free pass is one of the only negatives I can find with the current version of MLB.
Absolutely. TTO might be the most effective way of building an offense, but it is the least appealing from an aesthetic standpoint.
The very, very obvious solutions to the too many walks, too many K's problem, as already said many times in this thread, are to thicken the bat handles and call a real strike zone.
Someone's going to have to die from a bat splinter in the throat before they'll consider thickening the bat handles, and even then they'll likely as not figure some other way to keep the whip handles and make them safe. Simple fact is modern baseball sells just fine, and no one's about to make any significant change to it.
But if I wanted to start an upstart independent league, that's exactly the strategy I'd pursue to make my product different from Major League Baseball--I'd call a real strike zone, have a minimum bat handle thickness, establish minimum park dimensions around 340-380-430, and put the mound at around 62.5 feet. There would be few strikeouts, few walks, few home runs, and tons and tons of balls in play. The game would reward athleticism a lot more than MLB does, and would present a different--and to many people, more exciting--brand of baseball.
Going to have to write an article about this for Friday...
What does Dutch Leonard have to do to get some respect?
I'll second that motion.
Right. To some extent, I think that television, with its focus on the pitcher-batter matchup, has encouraged fans to pay more attention to the three true outcomes, but the real excitement comes from the ball in play.
I'll third it.
One more amen to that. And then there are the walks, which seem to have increased markedly with the spread of the formerly esoteric skill of fouling off pitches to stay alive. As a Yankee fan I appreciate Johnny Damon, but when he was in another uniform he'd drive me absolutely nuts.
watching players beg the guy with the chest protector stuffed in his shirt for a free pass is one of the only negatives I can find with the current version of MLB.
Well, that and the bullshit that they throw on you between pitches and between innings. But that's not so much the game as it is the godawful marketing.
Though that is how I read it the first time.
A bit off topic but I always wonder at what point that ceases to be the case if you get a larger strike zone. At some point (I would think) the walks and HRs hit while comfortably ahead in the count become rare enough in a "strike rich environment" that attempting to accumulate them becomes sub-optimal.
I'd like to get to that point not just because I'm not a big fan of walks, but rather because I think the "strike poor environment" has a nasty impact on the pace of the game. Pitchers aren't in any hurry to throw when the zone is tiny- this tends to lead to the 4 hour stuff- which doesn't look like good baseball to me.
Is there a way to tell which eras were more heterogenous than others? Some professor who is also a SABR member once did a poster on quantifying the unusualness of players' seasons. I figure his methods might come in handy. He used a measure called Mahalanobis distance.
If homeruns were harder to hit then pitchers would have an incentive to pound the strike zone. The answer is to move hitters off the plate to take away their opposite field power, to move the fences back, and to standardize the ball. I think the strikezone is fine.
In baseball, it's TTO. In football, it's the 'ball control, running game, defense' style. And in basketball, it's... well, the "Pistons and Spurs" style over the "Suns and Warriors" style. It's odd.
Then you're not trying. It's really quite easy to feel hate for Youkilis, in the same way that it was remarkably easy to feel hate for Paul O'Neill.
I'm not a big fan of any of these guys either, both because of their tendencies toward macho bullshit, and their general "Proud to be ignorant" attitudes.
Apparently, the Red Sox have decided that unlikeable players are the new market inefficiency.
I meant, TTO is the most effective way now, not that it always has to be that way.
In hockey, it's the 'neutral zone trap', which makes for incredibly unwatchable games.
Thank God they finally took steps to render it ineffective. This past Cup Finals was absolutely wall-to-wall awesome--people who abandoned hockey 15 years ago should consider coming back to it now. Though I still wish they'd enlarge the net and/or shrink the goalie equipment just a wee tad; 4-2 games are better than 2-0 games, but 5-3 games are even better IMO.
This is true. I stopped watching hockey for a decade even though it was my favourite as a kid. Nineties hockey was unwatchable but the playoffs this year were great. Now the problem is that the city I live in, the team of my youth, and my hometown, all have bad teams that are getting worse.
And 2-0 games were better than the frequent 0-0 going into OT games that were seen during the peak use of the neutral zone trap.
I don't miss the trap at all (even though some teams still use some variant of it).
Toronto, Edmonton, and Ottawa? All are facing potentially ugly seasons.
You've got the order wrong but yeah it's going to be ugly. You could combine those three teams and you still wouldn't have a team that was that great.
Ouch. Harsh, but true. How many guys from those three teams combined would even crack the Red Wings' lineup? Five, six, tops?
You're not kidding. The best offensive forward on the Leafs is someone who would be a (respectable) third line winger on an offensively competent team.
On the Leafs, Kaberle, and maybe Kubina. On the Oilers, Hemsky, and for the Sens, Alfredson, Spezza, and Heatley.
So you're right - five, maybe six.
I don't like the idea of outlawing the armor, though. You can pretty much have the same effect by actually calling HBPs properly and enforcing KEEPING THE ####### BATTER IN THE BOX. If that was done, it wouldn't matter if the guy came up in a suit of plate armor - it's just not good for baseball to risk injury to a player when they don't need to have that risk.
Since when does the nanny censor "head games"?
widening bat handles would help too, and would make the broken bat problem a lot less urgent.
don't have a problem witht the idea of raising the mound a little. hitters are so far ahead now. and wouldn't that help starting pitchers stay in longer? so relief pitchers wouldn't be so important? so maybe staffs would go down a spot or two?
wouldn't calling the strike zone help? it would make hitters swing more, wouldn't it? that would increase balls in play, wouldn't it?
and i agree with banning the DH.
Who do you think is our best forward? Antropov? Leeman?
Beauchemin, Komisarek, and Schenn would also crack the Wings.
Gaelan, the Leafs may not make the playoffs this year, but they are pretty clearly getting better, not worse.
Really, it just betrays how little I've been paying attention to them this offseason. I should have remembered that, with all the defensemen they've been adding, they had to move at least one contract out (and they've been trying to move the Kubina contract since about five minutes after they signed it).
I had a co-worker who hated Antropov so much that he actually did a little dance in the office when he found out Antropov had been traded.
Beauchemin would. I doubt that Komisarek and Schenn would crack the current roster if the Wings were already taking on Beauchemin and Kaberle.
Beauchemin would. I doubt that Komisarek and Schenn would crack the current roster if the Wings were already taking on Beauchemin and Kaberle.
Well, the standard was 'guys who are good enough to make the Wings', not 'guys who would be #2-3 on their depth chart.'
Also, while the Leafs certainly don't have a lot of guys you'd take high in a hockey pool, their pathetic offence somehow managed to place a respectable 10th in the league in goals scored. Factor in improvements from the young forwards (Grabovski and Kulemin especially, Tlusty and maybe Bozak could also help), a much better defence, a more abrasive team, you have to conclude the Leafs are going in the right direction.
With improved goaltending (can a healthy Toskala return to solid? Can Gustavsson be good and challenge for the #1 job?) it's certainly reasonable to expect they could make the playoffs.
I'm not interested in defensemen who can't score. Every signing this year was bad. Take a bad team and add a bunch of third and fourth line players and you still have a bad team. Unlike in baseball an average hockey player is basically a replacement player since the minors are full of guys just as good. There are only three things that matter: 1) Stars, 2) goaltending, 3) teamwork. In hockey teamwork is a function of coaching not players. With the right coach a minor league all-star team (the definition of replacement level) would handily beat the Leafs.
If you really think Komisarek and Beauchemin are 3-4 line level D you don't watch nearly enough hockey.
In arguments, credibility is a function of evidence, not bluster.
I've never seen any research but I've long thought that the pass-pass-pass style is the way to score an ungodly amount of points and win games. I'm thinking the Kurt Warner Rams and the 2007-8, 18-0 Patriots (first half only, as for whatever reason they stopped passing like crazy in the second half).
fixed
I interpreted it as "If the Wings could grab any of these guys to play on this year's team, who would they grab." with the understanding that each one selected would displace someone else on the current roster. While the Wings would undoubtedly want a guy like Schenn for the future, he would be well behind Kaberle and Beauchemin for the current season, and behind quite a few guys already on the Detroit roster.
I don't know much about football, but I think the problem with this is that you need to have a lot of good talent (offensive line, quarterback, receivers) to carry this out, and most teams don't have that.
Two of the best indications for a winning team in football are first half passing yards, and second half rushing yards. Basically, you run up the score in the first half, and run out the clock in the second half. It's a great way to win but, as Dewey notes, it does require a ton of talent (at high priced positions) so it's hard to put together and even harder to keep together, because of the cap restrictions. In most cases, a team who can put together an offense like that also suffers from a bad defense (Rams, Vikings) again due to cap restrictions.
* One reason Ben Roethlisberger racks up so many late-game comebacks is because the Steelers don't like to open up and throw the ball until they're trailing. They're really good at throwing the ball, though.
But the notion that 'you win championships by running the ball' is bunk. Even the Steelers have won their recent championships with offenses that were actually, in terms of actual efficiency, excellent at passing and bad at running. You protect leads by running the ball. If you can't throw, you won't often have a lead to protect.
Defense generally sets up the fastbreak in basketball, which is arguably the most exciting part of basketball.
Good talent helps, of course, but I think the bigger problem is that coaches get married to the "ball control, running, defense" strategy to the detriment of their teams.
I have a theory in NFL football that the game plan matters as much as talent does. In-game strategy permeates the game in a way that it just doesn't in a sport like baseball.
When the run-and-shoot was in vogue, there were some decently successful offenses led by guys like Erik Kramer, Scott Mitchell, and bunches of mostly forgettable receivers.
In football, my sense is that the most successful offenses are often the ones doing something completely different from anyone else, because presumably defenses have to prepare completely differently for such an offense. For example, the run-and-shoot forced teams to play their nickle and dime backs all the time and leave 1-2 linebackers on the sidelines. Paul Johnson's been extremely successful at the college level while being almost alone in running in an offense which, as far as I can tell, resembles the veer/wishbone option offenses that stopped being in vogue 20 years ago. But nobody runs it now, and so it's apparently really difficult to prepare for.
<3 the chuck-and-duck. Actually, the chuck-and-duck is making a slow comeback... the '07 Patriots more or less ran the shotgun chuck-and-duck (4 WR) as their base offense, and many teams now use a 3-WR base offense (even the Steelers now use a 3 WR base and don't employ a fullback).
I don't know much about football, but I think the problem with this is that you need to have a lot of good talent (offensive line, quarterback, receivers) to carry this out, and most teams don't have that.
What always impresses me about the truly great football teams is their ability to adapt to their talent. The Lombardi era Packers are thought of as the embodiment of the four yards and a cloud of dust style of offense, but in fact that was only true when they had Taylor and Hornung in their primes. By the end of their dynasty they were leaning much more heavily on the pass. And through it all the one constant was Bart Starr, the most underrated quarterback in history, whose yards per pass attempt was always among the league leaders.
The 1982 Cardinals were last in the league in homers with 62. Hendrick hit 19, Porter hit 12, and no one else hit double digits for them. And that was a World Champion team.
That's because it works, and also because a huge number of coaches can trace their coaching careers back to Walsh, or someone who apprenticed under Walsh.
Just an aside, but the Rams' defense was not bad in 2 out of the 3 years they were lighting up the league. It was pretty damn good in fact.
I think Michael Lewis said that almost every current NFL coach can be traced back to either Walsh or Parcells.
RandyRyan. But you lose some diversity when everyone tries the same style. BTW, here's an article from my favorite football blog.It wouldn't be that surprising. The NFL (like most leagues) likes to imitate success, and both of those guys had a ton of success. I'm sure you could find less extreme examples of the same thing in the other major sports.
Trust me. I know. The NHL suffered from a collapse in diversity, when the coaches all realized that the best way to give their team a chance to win was to play the previously mentioned clutch-and-grab neutral zone trap. Now that the league has acted to stomp out that style, there's been a lot more diversity in style of play again (and types of players).
I don't think the park is neutral for HR, unless another big change was made this year (which I've not heard about):
Home runs in Rockies home/road games
(2009 totals pro-rated to 81 home/road games)
2009:
home: 159
road: 163
2008:
home: 174
road: 134
2007:
home: 185
road: 144
2006:
home: 168
road: 144
The big outfield does seem like it should push them towards speedier OF's, like the Fowler/Carlos Gonzalez/Spilborghs types they have now, rather than the Bichette (and Hawpe) type. The 2003 UZR article gave the Coors OF park factors of .93/.91/.91 left to right, I believe.
Interestingly, I think the Walsh style was a response to rules that opened up offense.
That would make sense. Given that the system uses a lot of short timing based passes, I'm guessing those were changes to just how badly the defensive backs were allowed to manhandle the assorted receivers.
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