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CapricornusRex said:
Snell won the Cy in 2018, Verlander won it in 2019. Garret Cole has never won a Cy Young. It wasn't just Cole who went from mediocre to Cy contender. Charlie Morton did it as well upon arriving in Houston, and Verlander went from a 3.82 ERA in Detroit, to a 1.06 the rest of the year with the Astros in 2017, 2nd in Cy voting in 2018, and winning it in 2019. Just about every pitcher uses something sticky when they pitch.

I forget who said it, but someone said that you can tell who is dirty when they don't lick their fingers. If they're licking their fingers they're probably just using rosin on their fingers, which baseball has been fine with forever. Those who aren't doing that are people like Bauer and Cole. Bauer is so gung ho about it there's video of him during warm ups taking the can of shit he uses out of his shorts pocket and smearing it inside of his glove.

By the way, for those who are unfamiliar, this is how easy you can get a grip without cheating by MLB standards:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SQesez-5J_A
And yet teams apparently have chemists on retainer creating sticky shit for their pitchers. So says the Angel's clubhouse guy who got fired for providing "go go juice" to pitchers, including Garret Cole and Justin Verlander.
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The Angels clubhouse guy getting fired was terrible, and part of me hopes he sues the league. I've thought about it a bit over the last month or so, and I think MLB just needs to mass produce an acceptable grip substance for all teams, using the same chemists teams are employing. Idk how you necessarily stop pitchers from using their own shit under my idea though.
 
Ralph Cifaretto said:
The Angels clubhouse guy getting fired was terrible, and part of me hopes he sues the league. I've thought about it a bit over the last month or so, and I think MLB just needs to mass produce an acceptable grip substance for all teams, using the same chemists teams are employing. Idk how you necessarily stop pitchers from using their own shit under my idea though.
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They do. It's called Rosin. They give players a big bag of it on the mound. As Pedro demonstrated, it takes less than 4 minutes to have your fingers tacky and sticking together. Players today want to throw fastballs as hard as they can with the ball practically glued to their fingers for maximum spin. Stars are out with injuries because the pitchers are losing control of their fastballs because of this. Trevor Bauer started using this concoction that was a mix of rosin, pine tar and Coke cooked down in a coke can which seems just way overdoing it, but the players want as much spin as they can get.

Now the league has come down with the hammer and banned ALL sticky substances, including the fucking rosin, and the damn shame of this is that it's the MLBPAs fault. If they weren't a nightmare for the league to work with, the league would have already been in talks with the union to get this shit fixed. Now the players have to suffer while the union scrambles to get their rosin back.
 
CapricornusRex said:
They do. It's called Rosin. They give players a big bag of it on the mound. As Pedro demonstrated, it takes less than 4 minutes to have your fingers tacky and sticking together. Players today want to throw fastballs as hard as they can with the ball practically glued to their fingers for maximum spin. Stars are out with injuries because the pitchers are losing control of their fastballs because of this. Trevor Bauer started using this concoction that was a mix of rosin, pine tar and Coke cooked down in a coke can which seems just way overdoing it, but the players want as much spin as they can get.

Now the league has come down with the hammer and banned ALL sticky substances, including the fucking rosin, and the damn shame of this is that it's the MLBPAs fault. If they weren't a nightmare for the league to work with, the league would have already been in talks with the union to get this shit fixed. Now the players have to suffer while the union scrambles to get their rosin back.
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I'm totally willing to be proven wrong, but I'm almost certain the rosin bag is still on the mound. From my understanding, the shit with the spider tack and whatnot started with the major velocity movement in pitching 10-15 years ago. Like you mentioned with injuries, pitchers were just absolutely hurling the ball at 96+ and sometimes it would slip and plunk the hitter. Batters were sick of getting beaned by near triple digit heat, as was the MLB, so the league started looking the other way when it came to foreign substances just to limit HBPs on insane fastballs. Baseball being baseball, analytics stepped in and figured out that you could majorly increase spin rates and movement on pitches by using some combination of sunscreen, pine tar, vagasil, what have you. While all this experimentation and development was going on, MLB was still using the juiced ball, so it wasn't really an issue. Then they unjuiced the ball and now the league is hitting under .240 as a whole and here we are now.

I think Manfred making this change midseason is not only stupid, but frankly dangerous. Changes like this need to be made in the offseason. You could go back to just the rosin bag, but I think an MLB-approved spider tack that a pitcher can keep on his pants or glove or hat wouldn't be the worst thing.
 
Ralph Cifaretto said:
I'm totally willing to be proven wrong, but I'm almost certain the rosin bag is still on the mound. From my understanding, the shit with the spider tack and whatnot started with the major velocity movement in pitching 10-15 years ago. Like you mentioned with injuries, pitchers were just absolutely hurling the ball at 96+ and sometimes it would slip and plunk the hitter. Batters were sick of getting beaned by near triple digit heat, as was the MLB, so the league started looking the other way when it came to foreign substances just to limit HBPs on insane fastballs. Baseball being baseball, analytics stepped in and figured out that you could majorly increase spin rates and movement on pitches by using some combination of sunscreen, pine tar, vagasil, what have you. While all this experimentation and development was going on, MLB was still using the juiced ball, so it wasn't really an issue. Then they unjuiced the ball and now the league is hitting under .240 as a whole and here we are now.

I think Manfred making this change midseason is not only stupid, but frankly dangerous. Changes like this need to be made in the offseason. You could go back to just the rosin bag, but I think an MLB-approved spider tack that a pitcher can keep on his pants or glove or hat wouldn't be the worst thing.
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Maybe. I dunno. Pedro didn't need it and he was tiny while dominating the roided out Yankees, Orioles, and Indians. Spider tack and substances like that didn't start becoming a big thing until recently with the new cameras that could capture RPMs and pitchers finally understood what all that extra spin will do. Troy Percival brought the "go go juice" formula to the Angels, and the Angels guy was making it and either selling it, or giving it away to any pitchers who wanted it. I am curious when Troy brought it.. when he came to the team from the minors, or did it happen in 2001 because his '99 and '00 season were really mediocre, then he went right back to being old Troy.

I personally feel like pitchers just told hitters they did it so they had better control, but when you watch pitches that hit players these days it's either an errant curve (meh), or it's a violently thrown fastball the pitcher has no control over even with their fingers damn near glued to the ball.
 
CapricornusRex said:
I personally feel like pitchers just told hitters they did it so they had better control, but when you watch pitches that hit players these days it's either an errant curve (meh), or it's a violently thrown fastball the pitcher has no control over even with their fingers damn near glued to the ball.
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Yeah I think you're onto something with this as far as pitchers bullshitting the safety argument. I don't have a source because I heard it on the radio, but supposedly HBPs are at an all time high this year. It's crazy you mention Percival, and I believe it, but I thought this was a relatively new phenomenon. Fucking baseball man.
 
Ralph Cifaretto said:
Yeah I think you're onto something with this as far as pitchers bullshitting the safety argument. I don't have a source because I heard it on the radio, but supposedly HBPs are at an all time high this year. It's crazy you mention Percival, and I believe it, but I thought this was a relatively new phenomenon. Fucking baseball man.
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I may have been listening to the same thing as you were as I did hear the same thing a few nights ago while I was driving. I can't find anything from 2021, but here's a 2019 article from Fangraphs on the subject (with loads of graphs and charts which I'm too lazy to summarize at such an hour here.) I thought the quote below and the table in the article were of interest:
In 2018, baseball’s hit batsmen per plate appearance rate was the highest it has been since the 1900 season, and in 2019 so far, we’ve come even closer to reaching that ceiling. In fact, eight of baseball’s 10 top HBP% seasons have come in the last 18 years:
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Highest HBP% Since 1900
SeasonHBP%
19001.180%
20191.113%
20181.038%
20011.011%
20030.986%
20040.981%
19010.976%
20060.966%
20050.965%
20170.951%

Now looking at these league stats (which are in the picture below) from Baseball Reference we can see that regarding the number of times that a player gets hit during a game 4 of the top 12 seasons have come from 2018 onward.

Untitled.jpg


As of writing this 1.16% of plate appearances result in a hit batter in 2021, down from 1.23% in the shortened 2020 season. Both seasons were up notably from the last two full MLB seasons: 2019 (1.06%) and 2018 (1.03%). I would theorize that as the season progressed in 2021 we'd see the rate creep up as pitchers break down over the year in addition to more young pitchers being called up. The new rule regarding substances will throw a wrench into knowing for sure what would have happened if things had stayed as they were.
 
Local Fed said:
As of writing this 1.16% of plate appearances result in a hit batter in 2021, down from 1.23% in the shortened 2020 season. Both seasons were up notably from the last two full MLB seasons: 2019 (1.06%) and 2018 (1.03%). I would theorize that as the season progressed in 2021 we'd see the rate creep up as pitchers break down over the year in addition to more young pitchers being called up. The new rule regarding substances will throw a wrench into knowing for sure what would have happened if things had stayed as they were.
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Like you said, HBP should slowly start to creep up to the normal rate given regular season injuries. I'm pretty sure you're on point with that prediction given the large sample and piling up injuries, but I'll play the waiting game. I honestly think they should just juice the fucking balls again.
 
If anyone is looking for a game to tune into on Tuesday night, the Rays and Red Sox game should be of interest. Yesterday Tampa announced that they're promoting their 20 year-old infielder and consensus #1 prospect (since the start of last year) in all of baseball, Wander Franco, to the big league club. In 39 games this season with AAA Durham he's hitting .315 with 7 homers, 6 triples and 11 doubles while striking out in just under 12% of his plate appearances.
 
Looks like the Orioles are going to try to compete with the Dbacks this season to see who can push the all-time road losing streak record the furthest. They lost their 20th road game in a row during a 9-0 blowout to the Blue Jays last night. They play the Jays through Sunday so there's a decent chance that they hit 23 games (the number that Arizona currently holds as the record.) If Toronto can fend them off for the sweep it doesn't really get any easier as Baltimore heads to Houston after that.
 
Brooks Robinson sacrificed his body just for the Orioles to be a joke for over half the fifty years after his career.
 
The Cubs just finished a 4-0 combined no-hitter of the Dodgers in LA. Zach Davies started the game and gave up 5 walks through his 6 innings, and then relievers Ryan Tepera, Andrew Chafin and Craig Kimbrel each pitched an inning (while issuing a walk apiece.) This matches the modern era record for the most no-hitters thrown in one season (7) and we're not even at the All-Star break.

Speaking of Kimbrel, he's really gotten his shit together again after his first two atrocious years (only 36 innings, but still) with his Cubs. After tonight's game he's got an 0.59 ERA on the year through 30.1 innings with 20 saves and a whopping 52 strikeouts (that's 15.42 K's per 9 innings.) He's undoubtedly a lock for his eighth All-Star Game, barring an injury.
 
The 2021 All Star Game jerseys have been revealed and they're absolutely hideous.

news.sportslogos.net

2021 MLB All-Star Game Uniforms Unveiled, Worn In-Game for First Time

Major League Baseball today unveiled the uniforms that players will be wearing during the 2021 All-Star Game to be held next month in Denver… and yes, I said “worn during” the All-Star Game. We’ll get to that bit of news after we take a look at the designs. Despite the
news.sportslogos.net news.sportslogos.net

The uniforms will also be worn in the All Star Game itself instead of the Home Run Derby.
 
Preferred Penne said:
The 2021 All Star Game jerseys have been revealed and they're absolutely hideous.

news.sportslogos.net

2021 MLB All-Star Game Uniforms Unveiled, Worn In-Game for First Time

Major League Baseball today unveiled the uniforms that players will be wearing during the 2021 All-Star Game to be held next month in Denver… and yes, I said “worn during” the All-Star Game. We’ll get to that bit of news after we take a look at the designs. Despite the
news.sportslogos.net news.sportslogos.net

The uniforms will also be worn in the All Star Game itself instead of the Home Run Derby.
Click to expand...
Uni-Watch went into an autistic fit of rage about them, too. (To be fair, they are hideous.)
 
Toronto's bullpen blew a 5-1 lead on Friday to Baltimore which ended the Orioles' road losing streak at 20 games. Toronto proceeded to go and blow them out again on Saturday, and are track to win again this afternoon barring another bullpen implosion. Meanwhile, Arizona beat San Diego on Saturday to end their MLB record road losing streak at 24 games.

Today the first ejection of a pitcher for using a foreign substance happened. Hector Santiago of the Mariners got kicked out in the middle of the 5th inning while playing the White Sox in Chicago.

And if you want to feel old, Derek Jeter turned 47 years-old yesterday.
 
As far as New York sports go:

>Knicks eliminated from first round playoffs
>Nets eliminated from second round playoffs
>Islanders won’t make it to Stanley Cup this year

I’m wondering if the Mets have the chance to make it to the Wild Card this year. The Yankees are having a (slightly) rough season right now.
 
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