owbc

Why would hitters somehow get better in 5 or 10 years from now? All indications are that if nothing is done the strikeout rate will continue to increase. It’s nowhere near a plateau. Nobody knows how high it could get. 30%? 40%? 50%? Do we want to wait 10 years to find out? Pace of play...that’s entirely related to time between pitches. Increasing/decreasing offense has nothing to do with pace of play.

Yes yes yes. The current offensive strategies WORK. That’s what people don’t understand. Is it garbage to watch? Yes. But it works. Imagine how bad it would be if guys were trying to bunt these 92 mph breaking pitches. Sorry, but you can’t magically increase the reaction time of hitters. Blaming it on the hitters makes no sense. They are doing exactly what they should be doing. Moving back the mound by 1 ft works because it increases the reaction time enough to reduce the perceived pitch speed by 1.5 mph or so. Which is equivalent to how much velocity has increased in the past 20 years. Plus, longer distance means breaking pitches are more likely to break out of the zone. It’s the best idea by far to tilt things back toward hitters a bit. Every other sport has figured this out already and tinkers the rules every year. There didn’t have to be major changes, we could have moved the mound back by one inch every year. But now we’re so far behind the curve that drastic adjustments need to be made, and it can’t be garbage like changing the baseball without telling anyone and then lying about it. Set up a process and get owners and players (and the media+fans) to buy in. How about putting someone like Jomboy on the rules committee as well?

I agree with turbo, we need to have the discussion about how to get this team to the World Series. However, we can't put all of our chips into 2021. The playoffs are too random. We need to get this rotation 2 or 3 chances in the playoffs in the 2021-2024 range. So... (1) Buy into our young guys. Urías is our starting SS for the rest of 2021. No trading for Story or other help at SS. Hiura will probably be back at some point this season and getting the majority of the starts at 1B. If not, Vogelbach is fine, he's getting better with regular playing time. No trading for Aguilar. (2) We NEED Yelich back hitting at an all-star level. And we need Bradley Jr to perform at the level he's capable of. There are no replacements coming for them. (3) Don't get your hopes up for a splashy deadline move this year. That's not how we operate. I'm guessing we might target a #5 starter/bullpen option and possibly corner IF/OF help. But it will either be a cheap rental or someone with a few years of control. Doug Melvin isn't going to suddenly appear and go 'all in' on 2021.

I’d rather trade for Nelson Cruz who I know for a fact can still hit MLB pitching.

Wait, I thought people were asking for more mediocre hitters who can hit to the opposite field, bunt, and steal bases? Or I guess we could have signed Mookie Betts...

They were facing an ace with the roof open and wind blowing in. Not exactly the kind of day that is going turn around the offense. I don’t get the approach complaints...Vogelbach is an example of a guy who has a really great approach at the plate but he should probably be trying to hit more home runs and quit trying to poke the ball to LF which never works.

No way we were scoring a run against that guy.

I thought that throw was headed to the third row. It would have been if Hiura or whoever else used to play 2nd was out there.

It's fun to watch JBJ actively try to avoid drawing walks. With a .175 batting average it's probably not the best strategy in the world.

The 2021 Brewers have -1.3 wins above average at 1B, -0.6 at 3B, -0.6 at SS, and -0.3 at CF. They are fine everywhere else (league average or better). Out of those 4 positions, the only one I really worry about is 1B. Hiura has been a complete and total failure. Vogelbach at least provides replacement level production, but if you're not going to get a .750+ OPS at 1B you need to make it up at one of the other corner IF or OF spots. And with Yelich out that isn't happening.

I'm not a professional hitter, but from what I've seen I think that some MLB hitters are trying but not succeeding to consistently drive the ball to the opposite field. Even Yelich failed at hitting the ball the other way enough that everyone started shifting him--and he has the perfect swing and approach for it. Vogelbach is another guy who tries to shorten his swing all the time but largely fails at it--all his value is derived from doubles and HR. Even if you succeed at hitting the ball the other way, there's still an infielder and an outfielder over there who are perfectly positioned to gobble up a large number of opposite field hits. And if they miss it, the best you do is hit a single or rarely a double. You're much better off trying to draw a walk. You need an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher for your xBA to be above league average. Almost everything less than that results in a single. Around 98-99 mph xSLG increases rapidly. I don't know how often balls are hit above 98 mph the opposite way but I don't think it happens often. Could hitters adjust their approach to do it more frequently? Maybe. But would it even matter? Probably not. I assume the pitchers would change their approach, the defensive positions might move around, and at the end of the day it would still come down to exit velocity.

definitely - increasing the zone would force hitters to not only adjust their swings, but likely also change their equipment to increase the amount of contact they make. People will point to pitchers having better stuff and more velocity now than they ever have as a reason why hitters focusing on making contact wouldn't work - but that premise fails to see how hitters could drastically alter their approach at the plate to improve their chances. If a hitter isn't trying hit a HR or at least lift and separate on every swing, a much quieter approach focused on making the pitch's velocity supply the power would look markedly different in the batter's box. One other thing on shifting, it essentially came about well after the 3TO approach started getting widely incorporated into major league offenses. If hitters weren't hellbent on swinging for the downs on everything, they don't become so pull-heavy on balls hit on the ground, their swing paths don't evolve into being mostly beer league softball clones, and spray charts don't skew nearly as much to the point where shifting players from their traditional positions across the board provides a statistical advantage to run prevention. I've seen a tendency on this forum and others to blame hitters for a bad approach when in reality they are doing exactly what they should be doing given how pitching and defense has adapted. MLB offenses are absurdly efficient at scoring without getting hits. Imagine how low offensive numbers would be if hitters did not adapt!!! (1) Both the shifting and the added movement on pitches favor hitters to prefer a 3TO approach. Hitters have almost no control over where the ball goes off the bat. One interesting result is that foul balls have increased. (2) The relationship between exit velocity and xBA is strong. Trading exit velocity for bat control doesn't work. A guy like Eric Sogard with an elite eye at the plate and elite contact rate ends up being below replacement level. (3) Shrinking the strike zone would lead to more hitters taking the Max Muncy / Yasmani Grandal approach. Both hitters are no longer trying to hit, their only goal at the plate is to draw walks. Check out this reddit post on 'Muncyball':

No, time per 9 innings is 3:07, tied with 2020 for the longest ever. I suspect it will continue to get longer if nothing is done as batters continue to try to draw more walks to compensate for the lack of hits. MLB needed a pitch clock 10 years ago. It’s like basketball without a shot clock or football without a play clock at this point. Batters step out after every swing and miss these days. A pitch clock is the least radical of the proposed rule changes.

Moving the mound back one foot turns out to be quite significant: --- I strongly disagree, it's been shown conclusively that the time taken between pitches is what has increased game time more than any other factor. A home run is the same as any other successful outcome of an at-bat when it comes to time of game. There was an example comparing 2 games from recent vs. the 1980s with the same number of runs, hits, pitching changes, and # of pitches thrown and the modern game was something like 45 minutes longer. Which makes sense--all it takes is 10 seconds longer between pitches to add 45 minutes to a baseball game. Decreasing time between pitches speeds up the game. It's literally that simple. No need to overthink it. Just speed up the time between pitches. The game gets 5 minutes faster for every one second you reduce between pitches. Good luck getting that return with any other type of rule change.

The wedding industry is certainly benefitting from social media, that's all I have to say about that. There's obviously a record of me bashing crypto in this topic but I certainly can't complain about the 1400% return on my small dogecoin purchase from January. Dogecoin is my favorite investment by far because I think it truly epitomizes everything that I've learned about investing in the past year. Don't bet against memes.

The basic strategy in tech (at least in the before times) was that you wanted to incentivize employees to stay at the office and work as long as possible. If you're wearing uncomfortable business clothes you want to get out of those ASAP...hence jeans and a t-shirt it is!

The Brewers' good fortunes in April caught up to them a bit, but I admire the late inning rallies the last two nights + the bullpen keeping the Phillies off the board in the late innings. I'm still confident they can get a split out of this series.

The Braun extension was a success in my view. We got quite a bit of production out of that contract and he was an irreplaceable contributor to several winning teams. As for Yelich...it's one nagging injury. Maybe it's the start of a trend, but it is also quite likely that some of these takes are not going to age well in a few years. These are essentially lifetime contracts, you're purchasing the rest of his career production knowing most of it is going to come at the front end of the contract. It's not like Christian is the only one having injury issues right now.

Keston reminds me a bit of Rickie Weeks and I worry that like Rickie, Keston will never truly live up to the hype. I think back to how much Rickie frustrated the fanbase in his age 24-25 seasons, right when everyone was expecting him to be a perennial all-star. Although looking back at the numbers we would gladly take Rickie Weeks at 1B right now. Agreed that Keston may have to ditch his weird timing routine.

Let's not forget the 1982 Brewers were probably hitting the watering hole after most of their games. Possibly before the games as well. It's not worth comparing, that was a different era and the modern game is more physically demanding than it was back then. I do think the shortened 2020 season also has something to do with the abundance of injuries this year.

Sorry to say, but they wouldn't have signed LeBlanc if there wasn't an expectation that he'll be pitching at the major league level at some point this year. I remember there were people on this forum advocating for signing LeBlanc after 2018 :) Speaking of former Mariners, it's a real shame that Felix Hernandez has nothing left in the tank, he's younger than LeBlanc but the reality is that Wade is more likely to get guys out at the major league level right now. And yes, LeBlanc is a junkballer.

I like A & E. Any ideas on how to go about making it easier to steal bases? Bigger bases. I’m serious, I believe they are testing it in the Atlantic league. Also making it more difficult to make throws to first, although I’m not sure exactly what the plan was there.

Couple things going on. First, ball has clearly been deadened, as the HR rate has dropped (but not much, only back to 2018 levels). The main thing is that BABIP is way down, again, to .283, lowest since 1989. Considering BABIP has barely budged historically (usually .295 to .300 even as recent as 2-3 years ago), we're clearly seeing the impact of defensive shifting. Given the recent obsession with exit velocity and launch angles, the drop is BABIP is significant. The value of putting the ball in play is lower than ever. 7.63 hits per game would be the lowest in MLB history if it holds for the full season. However, the changes have not been reflected in runs scored, as MLB teams have gotten more efficient at scoring runs with a low number of hits (i.e. 3TO baseball). This is the smart thing to do when you look at the numbers. 3TO baseball is the best way to score runs in an era with low BABIP. Ways to fix? Lots of possibilities... a) Make it easier to steal bases, which increases the value of singles and walks. b) Require infielders to have one foot on the dirt when the ball is pitched (controversial, but it would work...). c) Move back the mound d) Further ball deadening or move back outfield walls to reduce HR rate e) Bunts with 2 strikes are foul balls, not strikeouts

One has to imagine the Brewers' TV demographic numbers are not pretty. The Devil's Advocate in me wonders if the demographics would be prettier if more/cheaper options were available. I believe this was documented last year when Nielsen started including mobile viewership and MLB's 18-34 ratings immediately went up.

One has to imagine the Brewers' TV demographic numbers are not pretty.