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So, this is interesting: take a look at his Savant this year versus last year. He's basically Bizarro TORK! so far.

So I'm reading this thread and I'm seeing a fear that TORK! might end up being like Rob Deer: super low batting average, quite a few homers, a ****-ton of strikeouts, along with a hope that he won't be so bad and he'll end up like guys who had similar profiles but still decent careers. So I look up his numbers and I see eight strikeouts in 49 trips, and I'm thinking, huh. That doesn't seem so high. I look at his SO% and BB% specifically, and they are coming in at 16.3% and 6.1%, respectively. Those are both lower than MLB overall, but also lower than his last season's numbers. And I'm like, huh. So I go to his Savant card, and I see that he is swinging less on first pitch but swinging more overall; making more contact in the zone but less outside it; his overall chase rate is up, but he's letting more middle-middle pitches go by him unswung at. But most concerning, I think, is that both his exit velo and max velo are way down; his hard hit rate is also way down after being among the best in baseball last year; he has zero barrels in his first 49 plate appearances (he should have four or so instead); and his XSLG, based on quality of contact, is half what it was last year and is among the lowest in baseball overall. Add that all up, and it looks to me as though there's an attempt to remake his overall plate approach to be more selective and to concentrate on putting his bat on the ball when he does swing, versus letting 'er rip. That might not be the worst thing for him, specifically, since he probably has the kind of power where he can jack a ton of bombs without putting everything he has into his swing. If he eases up and concentrates on meeting the ball better, he can cut his Ks down and raise his batting average while hitting just as many homers off the increased number of balls he puts into play. That may be the hope, anyway. But so far, the results are less than whelming. Granted, this is a small sample size and he could have gotten these same results in less than 50 plate trips without trying to change a thing. But given all the differences in these various metrics and how they relate to one another, it looks to me as though there's a conscious effort to re-do his approach, and these are the results so far. I don't know what this means for his future, but I think this is worth keeping an eye on to see whether he continues along this path, which I would assume given it's so early in the season, and whether/when they abandon it and let him go back to what brung him to the Show in the first place.

I would think that along with the improved defense we got at the other positions, it would raise the team's defense overall.

I think we all knew the outfield defense was gonna go get it, but I think we all expected Keith to be meh at 2B. Honestly, if he can end the year with at least 0 DRS and 0 OAA—that is, not negative—with 100+ wRC+, he’s gonna get votes, and I’ll be thrilled.

I don’t see any way in which pitchers en masse, outside of maybe an handful of exceptions, lay down their arms and lay up on pitches and allow batters to put balls in play on purpose. I believe they would basically regard it as career suicide to do so, and I think in most cases they would be right. It’s the game that’s creating the incentive to throw max/max on literally every pitch, because getting a chance at a career in the big leagues is based on outstanding performance, meaning, standing out from the crowd. I see no way a pitcher coming up through college or the minors is going to decide to ease up on his pitching to preserve his arm for the sake of his long-term career when he doesn’t even have his career in the first place. If it comes down to laying up to worse results and not making the majors to reduce the possibility of arm injury, versus going max balls out to better results and having a chance to make the show in the first place, I think they’re gonna choose the latter, if not exactly 10 times out of 10, then probably 99 times out of 100. To paraphrase a now-famous saying, don’t blame the player, blame the game. Therefore, change the game. Just my 2¢, OMMV.

Of course, and it's a big "if", which I implied in the parts you excised. Single-digit percent, if at all. But speaking only theoretically, I think it could work for Trump if he could ever pull it off, and that's a scary thought, because you know on November 6, once he's president-elect, all the moderate talk goes right out of the window and Buyer's Remorse sets in immediately for 70% of the country.

This. It will take a generation of players to adjust to any dramatic change, whatever they land on, if they land on anything. Always remember, too, the financial incentive Baseball has to maintain Next Man Up.

That is the other thing he said that will create a problem even if they do deaden the ball in the majors: kids, meaning travel ball all the way up to college, are incentivized to maximize strikeouts in order to get noticed and drafted, or recruited. So unless use of a deadened ball could be forced on various levels all the way down the line, immediately and without exception—which I don't see as being a practical, workable solution in the short term—young pitchers are always going to throw max/max in order to improve their chances to make life-changing money very young. This is a quandary that extends far beyond the major leagues itself.

Like in the 1960s? Pass.

It's a good interview and it touches on all the points we've been discussing the last couple of pages. One thing I do part company with JV on is the idea of merely incentivizing starting pitchers to go deep into games, which is obviously an issue he is close to. Things like tying them to a DH, or shortening bullpens to force managers to keep starters in games longer, which are ideas we have seen discussed by Baseball before, do nothing to alleviate the need for pitchers to throw with max velocity and max spin on every single pitch to avoid contact by hitters. The only possible type of solution I can imagine is one that mitigates the damage hitters can do on when they put the ball in play, one that reduces the possibility of home runs and allows pitcher to lay up on most hitters and let them put the ball in play without giving up homers left and right. I'll bet you, though, that moving fences back, or pushing plates toward the back wall, will come up as serious options before they ever consider changing the ball.

It's been a Tale of Two Small Sample Sizes. Five-and-oh, then 1-4. Pretty much how .500 teams play.

Yes, this could happen. It did happen, actually. I believe it was 2016.

I'm sort of a wait-and-see on this one, seeing as how collective amnesia has been shown to be somewhat of a factor among broad swaths of the electorate in the past. I do believe that if Trump put on a good enough show of seeming like he's reoriented to something closer to normal—not a good show, necessarily, but good enough—the moderate Republicans would flock to vote for him, because they desperately want someone anyone seemingly normal that's not a Democrat for vote for. The wild card on that is whether he could keep the hardcore MAGAs after such a reorientation. Seems like a bind to me for him. But it is one potential way for him to win, as unlikely as it seems.

The fact that they're even dragging their feet on something that should be so clear and obvious, in an apparent bid to aid a fascist-in-all-but-name, is diseased enough.

You are born again hard, romad1.

It is a clear bid to moderates, especially those in swing districts who are thrilled to have him back the Party off strict abortion bans. Trump is also doing so far enough ahead of the election that it may give them enough time to successfully implement the Oceania strategy, i.e., Trump is against a national abortion ban, Trump has always been against a national abortion ban. It's up to Biden to keep pressure on the issue by continually reminding voters of what Trump did, versus what he says, which is always changing. The wild card is whether Trump threaded the needle well enough in his statements so that Republican moderates and independents can parse the difference between "Trump got Roe overturned to send it back to the states so they can make their individual choices based on local standards", which sounds reasonable on the surface; versus "Trump overturned Roe in advance of banning abortion on a nationwide basis", which makes him look way out of touch with how the majority of people feel about choice.

I also don't think he will be able to successfully violently overthrow the US electoral system, but I can't think of anyone else who could come closer to doing so.

Idle speculation: TORK! spent at least a year being regarded as the Next Big Thing and that can really go to some people's head. I do kind of wonder whether he is the kind of guy who is so full of himself and such a believer in his press clippings from college that he feels he doesn't need to take any serious direction on his hitting. After all, it did get him eight million bucks before he ever put on a professional uniform. Maybe he thinks he can become the best hitter in the game by doubling down on what brung him to the draft in the first place: swinging out of his shoes and hitting homers. I'm sure it'll all just click one day, right? Hope I'm wrong about that, but we're going on, what, four seasons by now? And he did miss an entire season due to the pandemic. More snake bites.

You make some good points, and we are talking about a Fisher team, so they might have already blown their chance. An expansion team there probably stands a better chance of carving out a national fan profile. I feel as though the baseball team may have more opportunity to pick up people as fans who are Vegas-crazy and don't care much about baseball in their hearts. People who don't really care about baseball tend to be Yankee fans when they do well; a Vegas team could fill that niche somewhat. I think one difference might be that most everyone has an NFL team they follow more than a baseball team, since NFL football is so much more popular than any level of baseball. And hardly anyone in America cares about hockey, so who cares about any team. I have no evidence for any of this beyond my general feel based on my living in America as a sports fan for a long time.

It's only going to get more like that as we get closer to November. The main thing we have to hope for is that the Trump party doesn't find religion and put on sheep's clothes so they can look like a normal political party until November 6. And, also, that they don't violently overthrow the election system altogether and take power by force.

I don't think changing the composition of the ball is necessarily a de facto confession to all prior accusations of doctoring the ball. But they defintiely do admit doing it in 1920 gto make the ball livelier, and I think they could admit it this time as a once-in-a-century sea change, as that was. The debate is all hypothetical, of course, because ain't no way they're gonna change it. The economic incentives to maintain the status quo of massive homers, wipeout strikeouts, and next-man-up pitching staffs are too compelling to give up.

Erstwhile closer Alex Lange now getting garbage time down five in the ninth.

God is punishing red states because he is mad that they allowed Democrats to steal elections nationally and in other states.

This is my take on the issue. Why do pitchers throw at max velocity with max movement on literally every pitch? Because they want to induce swing and miss. Why induce swing and miss? Because any hitter in a lineup today can jack bombs, and giving up bombs is the worst outcome a pitcher can experience. Part of that is due to the increased size and more powerful swings of hitters. Part of it is because of shorter fences. But the biggest, most controllable part of that equation is the live baseball. So, to me, the easy answer is: deaden the baseball. If the home run becomes less of a threat, pitchers won’t have to induce swing and miss on every pitch. Sure, they’ll still have to throw max effort to get swing and miss out of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. But they could actually pitch to contact to down-the-order hitters. That would mean less need to throw at max velocity and max movement. For the lesser hitters, it can be more like “here you go—hit it and get yourself out.” Less velocity/movement means less stress on elbows and shoulders. Less stress means less injury. Less injury means better careers, longer careers, and more engagement by fans with players across their careers than is possible in the current “next man up” era. And bonus: more pitching to contact means fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, more action, and a better, more aesthetic game overall. One counter argument to this is: chicks dig the long ball, and dudes dig strikeouts. That’s why they make up 60% of all highlights on the Quick Pitch clip show, and Quick Pitch is nothing if not a marketing tool. And longer careers also mean higher salaries that the owners—who own the whole game, including how the game will be played—would have to pay. And they definitely don’t want that. Another counterargument, which you brought up, is that pitchers will not necessarily want to … ahem … lay down their arms. And I can see this point. If the ball were deadened today, pitchers would not change their pitching approach tomorrow, or next month, or maybe even next year. Certain pitchers today would never change and would keeping maxing out until they limp away from the game. But eventually, pitchers coming up to the majors would figure out, probably in concert with their data science coaches, that maxing out indiscriminately is a bad long term strategy, even if it’s the right thing to do in certain situations, or to certain hitters. Max effort wouldn’t go away completely. But if a #9 hitter comes up who’s slugging barely .300, pitcher could lay up on the guy and invite him to put the ball in play, if he can. So who knows what Baseball will do. I don’t know, I’m not psychic, man. All I know—all I think I know, anyway—is that deadening the ball would eventually make a big dent in the problem of way too many pitcher injuries.

I like Bobby Scales because I think he adds to the broadcast with his commentary. But to your point, maybe my baseline for him is different than it might normally be.