When we weren't looking ...

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Jason Moyer

I'm sure someone else has mentioned this, but almost every year the league ERA is like half a run higher in the summer than in April or May (or sometimes even June). Did MLB crack down on spidertack in June 2017 or July 2018 when the league ERA went up half a run?

What year did the New Historical Baseball Abstract come out? It's kind of insane that Bill James was complaining about (and suggesting solutions for) the game having too many K's/BB's/HR's over 20 years ago.

One interesting suggestion I heard came from Bob Walk when he was being interviewed on the local TheFan station a few weeks ago. He suggested that they go back to the way the strikezone was called in the 70's and 80's, when everyone complained about how the plate was super wide and everything above the belt was a ball. It would probably cut down on K's and also HR's, since pitches between the knees/belt are harder to launch into the stratosphere.

So... just going back to this a little. This isn't exactly what you said but there's this similar "look guys, the Three True Outcomes have just been going up since the beginning of baseball" meme that stat guys like to trot out. The thing is, it's true in a very general sense but honestly not so true once you look at it a little further. Sure, in the 19th century the league averages 2.4 K/9 and now it's over 9. That much is irrefutable. But between 1900 and 1901, when the AL became a thing and the NL started calling foul balls with less than 2 strikes as strikes, K rates jumped from 2.4 to 3.8 and more or less stayed there for a while. They peaked at 4.0 in 1914 then dropped off and didn't reach that level again until 1952. Then they started climbing super high in amidst the Second Deadball Era, peaking at 6.0 in 1967. That was a new peak and... K rates dropped again in the 70s and rebounded slowly and it wasn't until 1993 that they were back at 6 per 9. They jumped by half a strikeout in 1994 - about the time that Bill James wrote his thing - and then kind of sat between 6 1/2 and 7 Ks until 2009. Since then, just in the past 12 years, they've blown up to over 9.

So this is the thing... sure, K rates have gone up but they've done it in fits and starts and overall rather slowly until the past dozen years or so. There have been wholesale changes in the way we view pitchers, changes I just don't see us moving back to - I don't think you can unlearn the fact that pitchers are much less effective their 2nd and 3rd time through the order, for instance (I think that was even always known, even in the deadball era; it was just assumed that the best pitchers overcame that effect with talent to a much greater extent than we think of nowadays). There's been a tremendous rise in opposite field power since the late 1980s and I don't think you can just re-indoctrinate players into thinking the only way to be a true power hitter is to pull everything either.

As for walks, just to note... well, it's maybe even unfair to lump them in with the other two 3TOs because walks have stayed between 3 and 4 per 9 innings since the Second Deadball Era, and at that, other than 1963 to 1968 the last season there were fewer than 3 walks per 9 innings was 1936 - and on the other hand the high water mark of all time was 3.8 in 2000, which is only slightly higher than it was in the early 50s. And for all the talk of banning the shift, BABIP is .291 this year, which is actually higher than it was throughout the 70s and 80s.

Anyway, though, I think the data are pretty clear that HRs and Ks have gone way, way up in the last generation, and the "it's just a trend" thing is just plain hogwash. Nothing else has gone super far up or down except fielding percentages. Other leagues in other sports are faced with issues like this from time to time and they are not afraid to make fairly big changes to make their game more exciting.

[Jason Moyer]

It's definitely been a series of increases and plateaus but there's a fairly steady trendline from 1893 to now if you overlook major rule changes. I'm not going to speculate on the cause though.

[Syd Thrift]

That's not what the graph looks like to me at all. If you started from the early 1920s it looks more like that but it honestly looks more like it was not so much change from the late 1870s until the early 50s, then a big jump into the late 60s, then a drop-off until the early 80s and a fairly even rise since then, although even at that it's clear that the rate of change has gone way up over the past 10-15 years.

[Déjà Bru]

The Pitchers Whose Spin Rates Fell Most After a Crackdown on Sticky Substances



More than a month into the era of increased scrutiny on the application of prohibited sticky substances to major league baseballs, spin rates on fastballs have fallen about 4 percent, as strikeouts have decreased and on-base percentage has risen — midseason changes without parallel in decades.

Although applying any foreign substance to a baseball has been prohibited since the 1920s, the use of sticky substances like Spider Tack — a powerful adhesive created to help competitive strongmen and strongwomen hoist enormous Atlas stones — was an open secret, in line with the sport’s tradition of winking at scofflaws until the situation gets out of control.

And this spring, baseball did appear to be out of control. Hits were near record lows. Strikeouts were at record highs. Pitchers were so dominant this spring that by mid-May — less than seven weeks into the season — they had already racked up well more than a typical season’s worth of no-hitters. And spin was at the center of it.



What’s changed:

• Typically, walks become somewhat less common as the season progresses. In 2021, walks increased after June 15 for the first time in decades.
• The share of at-bats ending in strikeouts dropped to 23 percent.
• Together, these contributed to the biggest increase in on-base percentage since at least 1990.

What 200 r.p.m. is worth:

• A pitcher’s fastball going from 2,600 revolutions per minute to 2,400 might not seem like much. But that much spin can account for an extra inch of movement on a fastball — and significantly more for some pitchers.
• And in baseball, an inch can mean the difference between a three-run home run and an inning-ending double play. “I’m the last guy to pooh-pooh an inch of movement when a bat is three inches wide,” [an expert] said.

[cephasjames]

Can't access the article without a subscription.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

Can't access the article without a subscription.

Yes. I got into the bad habit of saving NYT articles as PDF and posting them here and was informed that it was poor form to do so.

Now I just post the link and pass along a few tidbits; subscribers can see more details but non-subscribers can not.

Get used to it; I foresee a time when most if not all news and sports web sites are behind a paywall.

Please don't bother to post in the future about this.

[ezpkns34]

Wait, this version of Chi Chi Gonzalez is the cheating overpowered version? Oof

[Curve Ball Dave]

Save for the guys who were grandfathered in, spitballs were banned 100 years ago. Makes you wonder why MLB waited until last month to enforce the rules.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Yes. I got into the bad habit of saving NYT articles as PDF and posting them here and was informed that it was poor form to do so.

Now I just post the link and pass along a few tidbits; subscribers can see more details but non-subscribers can not.

Get used to it; I foresee a time when most if not all news and sports web sites are behind a paywall.

Please don't bother to post in the future about this.

I'm the type of guy that likes to read from the source rather than from short snippets of someone's choosing.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

I'm the type of guy that likes to read from the source rather than from short snippets of someone's choosing.

You are also the type of guy that likes to argue about everything, no matter how trivial, and I have finally had enough of you. Onto the Ignore List you go.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

You are also the type of guy that likes to argue about everything, no matter how trivial, and I have finally had enough of you. Onto the Ignore List you go.

Okay

[RosaRoo]

Eh, I kinda get his point on the article being paywalled, articles like this are almost always sourced from an actual scholarly report or else... just baseball savant. It'd be a lot easier to make your point sourcing those, which are usually free.

[cephasjames]

Nm

[Déjà Bru]

Pitchers wised up fast, apparently. I ran across this story and did a little bit of checking; to the best of my knowledge, Santiago is not just the first, but the only pitcher to be suspended for 10 days for using a sticky substance so far. Now he is in worse trouble.

Mariners’ Hector Santiago follows sticky stuff ban with PED suspension

[low]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

I'm the type of guy that likes to read from the source rather than from short snippets of someone's choosing.

Same.

And I will never pay for a subscription to "news."

[Amazin69]

Joey Votto has a chance to tie the consecutive-games-with-HR mark tonight against the Mets (and break it tomorrow). Move over Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey Jr.? We'll see.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Joey Votto has a chance to tie the consecutive-games-with-HR mark tonight against the Mets (and break it tomorrow). Move over Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey Jr.? We'll see.

Wrong thread? S/b "Random thoughts" thread? Or is there a tie-in to sticky substances removal here?

[Amazin69]

Is this thread specifically dedicated to that? The title sounds more like "Stories You Might Have Missed". My bad.

(If this IS a Spider-Tac only thread, the title sucks. JMO.)

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

(If this IS a Spider-Tac only thread, the title sucks. JMO.)

Heh, and here I was, thinking I was waxing poetic!

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Is this thread specifically dedicated to that? The title sounds more like "Stories You Might Have Missed". My bad.

(If this IS a Spider-Tac only thread, the title sucks. JMO.)

Meh. Threads can start as something but there's no rule that it must stay focused on the original topic. Threads evolve all the time. Just like all normal conversations.