6/7 7:05 Tigers @ Pirates

[mtutiger]

They gave Barnhart the double and RBI there? 

[gehringer_2]

Didn't completely see how much angle he was running at, but that could have been one of those plays where the dive was ill-advised. Stay on your feet, try to basket catch it and if you don't get there you at least probably block it out in front of you.

[mtutiger]

Just now, gehringer_2 said:

Didn't completely see how much angle he was running at, but that could have been one of those plays where the dive was ill-advised. Stay on your feet, try to basket catch it and if you don't get there you at least probably block it out in front of you.

Exactly 💯 

Hold him to a single, get the next guy out. 

[gehringer_2]

3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

They gave Barnhart the double and RBI there? 

I don't think you can make an OF error in modern baseball unless you drop a ball you already caught. That's about it.

Edited June 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

Just now, gehringer_2 said:

You can not make an OF error in modern baseball unless you drop a ball you already caught. That's about it.

The ball also bounced in front of Mitchell, who took a very ill-advised dive. The only error here was mental, and they don’t assign errors to those.

[chasfh]

Walks are Lange’s Achilles heel. If he licks that, he’ll be a consistent world beater.

And just like that, double play!

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

Schoop! Noyce.

[gehringer_2]

Just now, chasfh said:

The ball also bounced in front of Mitchell, who took a very ill-advised dive. The only error here was mental, and they don’t assign errors to those.

right, which makes no sense to me. Every physical mistake is mental too, what is the difference if you make the mistake far enough in advance that you don't get close enough to make the other kind.

[holygoat]

Bucs matching the Tigers blunder-for-blunder.

[mtutiger]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The ball also bounced in front of Mitchell, who took a very ill-advised dive. The only error here was mental, and they don’t assign errors to those.

This is right, although I am surprised there wasn't an error on the throw at least, which allowed Barnhart to advance.

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

This is right, although I am surprised there wasn't an error on the throw at least, which allowed Barnhart to advance.

I'd call it a single and an error. The single is what 'ordinary effort' by the fielder would have resulted in most of the time.

Edited June 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[holygoat]

Yup, letting it get passed him was the error.

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, holygoat said:

Yup, letting it get passed him was the error.

right. In a sense they are giving him credit for trying to make a harder play and failing, but shouldn't responsibility for that fall on the fielder if they don't do it? Seems unfair to ding the pitcher. But it's not going to change. C'est la vie.

[gehringer_2]

Miguel still getting some hits but making a lot of easy outs.

So which Soto do we get tonight?

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

WOOP WOOP!

[gehringer_2]

Nice

[holygoat]

Good Soto is good.

[mtutiger]

Don't want to jinx it, but the SS Soto seems stabilized... Tigers win!

[chasfh]

15 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

right, which makes no sense to me. Every physical mistake is mental too, what is the difference if you make the mistake far enough in advance that you don't get close enough to make the other kind.

The difference is determining the fine line between error or not. If it’s only physical errors you’re counting, whether it clanks off the glove is a big determinant, and very clear. All you have to determine is whether it would have taken ordinary or extraordinary effort to make the catch, and experienced baseball people can fairly easily determine that.

But if we include mental errors, where do we draw the line there?

[gehringer_2]

32 minutes ago, chasfh said:

All you have to determine is whether it would have taken ordinary or extraordinary effort to make the catch, and experienced baseball people can fairly easily determine that.

So - I don't buy the mental/physical distinction. The only real difference is a mistake made early or later in the process. He could have fielded that as a single with ordinary effort - period. Whether he blew it by moving his leg wrong on his 1st step in the wrong direction and didn't get there, or by moving his wrist wrong at the last second for it to clank it off his glove, is still the same thing - it's still his brain that did not do the right thing with some part of his body in both cases, and it's still obvious that he failed to execute ordinary effort. If you take on the mantel of doing scoring then it's because you have the experience to draw that line. I think that play would have been pretty easy for instance. If you throw up you hands and say you can't judge ordinary effort unless it clanks off a guy's glove just fold up the process and quit scoring because that's such a trivial standard for mistakes that it's meaningless. After all, the actual point of the exercise to supposed to be to determine if a run was earned, so by rights the quality of the struck ball should also figure into it. That would be the key to making a judgment on that play, not only what the fielder did/didn't do, but that that ball was hit in such a way that it only merited one base given a competent fielder.

That said, it's purely an aesthetic argument. Scoring doesn't make any difference to anything in the game play so in the end nothing is affected by anything the scorer does, and as long as scoring is fairly uniform on team's player's stat are not dis- or ad-vantaged.  And good modern stats bypass. scoring. I remember the Tigers we actually one of the last parks that kept scoring tougher when things where shifting and I imagine they got pushback from the team about it. But it's good fan grist. 

Edited June 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

7 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

So - I don't buy the mental/physical distinction. The only real difference is a mistake made early or later in the process. He could have fielded that as a single with ordinary effort - period. Whether he blew it by moving his leg wrong on his 1st step in the wrong direction and didn't get there, or by moving his wrist wrong at the last second for it to clank it off his glove, is still the same thing - it's still his brain that did not do the right thing with some part of his body in both cases, and it's still obvious that he failed to execute ordinary effort. If you take on the mantel of doing scoring then it's because you have the experience to draw that line. I think that play would have been pretty easy for instance. If you throw up you hands and say you can't judge ordinary effort unless it clanks off a guy's glove just fold up the process and quit scoring because that's such a trivial standard for mistakes that it's meaningless. After all, the actual point of the exercise to supposed to be to determine if a run was earned, so by rights the quality of the struck ball should also figure into it. That would be the key to making a judgment on that play, not only what the fielder did/didn't do, but that that ball was hit in such a way that it only merited one base given a competent fielder.

That said, it's purely an aesthetic argument. Scoring doesn't make any difference to anything in the game play so in the end nothing is affected by anything the scorer does, and as long as scoring is fairly uniform on team's player's stat are not dis- or ad-vantaged.  And good modern stats bypass. scoring. I remember the Tigers we actually one of the last parks that kept scoring tougher when things where shifting and I imagine they got pushback from the team about it. But it's good fan grist. 

The flip side of the whole debate is: why assign errors in the first place? As long as the batter puts the ball in play, hasn’t he done literally everything he needs to do to earn the hit? So as long as he reaches first base before he is put out, why shouldn’t he be awarded the hit?

There are innumerable examples of plays in which nearly everyone agrees that the fielder should have given the error, yet the batter is give a hit instead. Miggy’s hit on Saturday is the perfect example: line drive right at Kiner-Falefa, it glances off his glove, Miggy gets the hit—which cost Severino the no-hitter, by the way. I mean, come on, the batter hit the ball right at the guy! Any minor leaguer could have made that play, let alone a major leaguer! You gonna tell me that was a hit!? We see that shit all the time.

So in many, too many, cases, it really comes down only to official scorer fiat. So why not take the discretion out of that single person’s hands and treat all cases as equal by giving the batter the hit in every case? I know it sounds stupid the first time you hear it, but the more you think about it, the more there is some validity to the discussion. Or at least the more I think about it, there is for me.

You and I are old enough to seem to remember official scorers being freer and easier with the assigning of errors, which perhaps is the idea you are channeling by suggesting that such plays be expanded to include non-physical errors born of bad decision-making. On a per game basis, teams average 25% fewer errors today than just 25 years ago; half the errors of 75 years ago; and one-third the errors of 100 years ago. How much of that is due to better fields and equipment, how much to players improving, but also, how much to the shifting vagaries of official scorer fiat through the generations? Is there any way to know, outside of the living memory of old geezers and their anecdotes? I don’t think there really is, is there? So why not just throw out the whole idea and just start giving every batter who puts the ball into play a hit and be done with it?

Now, personally, I’m fine with the way they do it all now: it must be a physical miscue on a play requiring ordinary effort. But if we’re going to talk about changing the system in a dramatic way, might as well put all options on the table, right?

[gehringer_2]

19 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The flip side of the whole debate is: why assign errors in the first place?

I agree with a lot of this, esp from the stand point that if it's that hard to get an error, if you are only going to count one type of error (off the glove) out of the whole universe of actual fielding mistakes, then you might as well quit because what is the point? I believe the only original value of scoring was that there was some belief at one time that earned vs unearned runs was important to understand. If the error standard being used doesn't serve that purpose, and I don't believe scoring today does, why still do it indeed? Today we look at pitchers peripherals/barrel/exit velo to get a much better picture of whether a pitcher is getting hit around than earned vs unearned runs.

You raise another interesting point around BaBIP and 'if the batter puts the ball in play.' Again that may be a shift both in the way the game is perceived as well as how it is actually played. Today we tend to see BaBIP more as outcome of general exit velo and FB/LD/GB ratios instead of any per at bat intentionality on the part of the batter to "hit it where they ain't" so why deny a batter a hit on a hard hit ball because it found a fielder who hacked it rather than the spot between the fielders? There was time in the game when there were large numbers of slap hitters who did place the ball around the field, and even a very few more recently - Gywnn, Ichero maybe the last of the breed but it certainly has largely disappeared compared to 50 or 100 yrs ago. So that's another evolution in the game and that also shifts perceptions.

I think the reduction in the numbers of errors charged speaks for itself. It is the scoring. At least for the last 60 yrs the ball and gloves have not changed significantly - (if anything the bigger OF gloves worn further down the fingers should be leading to more clankers - not less) and the quality of MLB field has been very good for a long time - though they do rake the dirt more often in a game than they used to. But OTOH there are fewer artificial fields that played even more true than there were 30 yrs ago.  If anything you can argue that in our youth they didn't give enough credit for how hard a ball was hit on the IF when giving errors. I actually have less argument with the giving more hits on IF smashes than the state of OF scoring which is what I think has really become pointless.