AL Notes: Astros, Kahnle, Abreu

Mprck – Totally agree. Hate the pace of play crap. The game isn’t meant to have more action than Football, Basketball and Hockey. It’s still light years faster than Soccer the most popular and boring sport in the world. Not all fans have ADD or ADHD so relaxing and talking to the person you came to game with while the batter steps out and scratches his nuts isn’t a bad thing. If the temperature is 32 with a wind, sure a 2 hour game is great, but otherwise, who cares if it’s 3 hour or 4 hours if the ball park is comfortable, the weather is great and the teams have good players.

Adjustments to shifts should be what hitters due to combat the shifts but rather than making players more complete hitters, it’s easier to ban shifts for the impatient people in the stands and watching at home. The direction of baseball is to make up crap rules to limit what the defense can do so moron hitters don’t keep pulling the ball into the hands of the defense. It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing to old time players who understood how to beat a shift.

I’m waiting for the league to put metal in the center of the baseball and huge magnets in the wood bats to ensure strikeouts are reduced!!

The direction of baseball keeps getting impacted by fads. I remember when Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz were reminding baseball fans that chicks dig the long ball. All Selig had to do was swap out the dead ball that existed in baseball until 1993 to the super juiced ball of 1994 to 2010 and POOF chicks were happy because there were more long balls and the fan base grew. Then, Selig nearly destroyed the game by diverting the attention from his juiced ball to steroids and POOF he became the savior of baseball and wrongfully threw the great players of a generation under the bus..

These rules are for Manfred not the betterment of baseball. He wants a spot in the HOF just like Selig (the little weasel). Bigger bases? How about making them with a synthetic substance that when wet will allow a player to step on it without skiddding? Maybe a new way to make the shoes so they don’t slip on wet bases. So many non baseball rules are now being implemented to hurry the game and create action rather than improving the skills of the players to adjust to changes made by the other team. It’s laziness and ignorance on the part of the MLB to keep tweaking things that aren’t broken.

Basketball did similar goofy things. No zone defenses, a certain number of players in the paint on defense and how close they must be to a player. It’s all so the teams can have more offense or action in the game. It’s not about the game at that point, it’s about the business just like the MANFRED RULES.

The juice in the baseball over the last decade accounts for the HRs in the game.

2013 – 0.959
2014 – 0.861
NEW BALL IMPLEMENTED
2015 – 1.010
2016 – 1.155
2017 – 1.256
2018 – 1.149
2019 – 1.395 *** Highest in the history of baseball
2020 – 1.283
2021 – 1.224
2022 – 1.073

When you consider the peak number for Bonds, McGwire and the wrongly accused HOF players from the 1990s was 1.172 in 2000 you can understand why guys making the majors since 2016 have hit so many home runs. It’s got nothing to do with launch angle it has everything to do with the baseball.

I agree that Spring Training may suggest a higher juice level in 2023. That will lead to new inventions by the pitchers to improve velocity and break on their pitches.

The current generation of fans are far more simulation oriented than in the past. They want to know whether Trout could hit against Sandy Koufax. What never gets mentioned in these fictitious what-if scenarios is the juice in the ball during different eras. There is a reason May and Aaron hit so many home runs compared to the batters in the 30s and 40s, the juice in the baseball. There is a reason Bonds started slowly and finished with huge HR numbers, the juice in the baseball grew 50% from the start of his career to the end of his career. The opposite happened to Aaron so his big numbers in the 50s fell back in the lower juiced era of the 60s.

Your point about the baseball was outstanding. More people need to comprehend how radically different the ball has been over time. The MLB controls the sourcing of the baseballs, the storage of the baseballs, the distribution of the baseballs and by doing so has full control over the juice in the baseball.

Just look at the last decade and recognize the juice growth from 2014 to 2019 was

62%!!!! That is more percentage growth than from Ruth’s era to Aaron’s era. That’s double the growth rate from Aaron’s era to Bond’s era!! Nobody was shouting steroids in the 1970s when they were frequently used, nobody was shouting steroids in the 1980s when they were prevalent in baseball and nobody was shouting steroids before Selig’s introduction of a juiced ball in 1995!! Today, nobody is shouting steroids when the ball is the most juiced ever. For all you who believe steroids had a significant impact on HRs, take a mathematical look at the facts.

The HRs/Game/Year did not grow during the first 20 years of steroids but when the ball changed in 1995 the HRs jumped by over 20%. They stayed at a new plateau until the late 2000s then a new ball was introduced that dropped the juice below the levels that existed in 1994 before the new ball was introduced.

The baseball accounts for the misconception that steroids impacted the HRs. The data shows conclusively that IT DID NOT AFFECT HRS!!! The new baseball did just like in every year since 1871.

Mprck – Thank you so much for pointing out the juiced baseball. People need to educate themselves and dismiss the fallacy of the steroid era..