A Break. A Breather. A Respite, if you will. Where's your head at?

[Sports_Freak]

On 7/22/2022 at 10:34 AM, chasfh said:

Sure it's ridiculous, but let's play, anyway.

If the guy in question were born decades later, raised in a very different era, growing to a different size, and having a completely different set of nutritional and developmental tools at his disposal—as well as completely different educational, social, sociological and broadly historical experiences, especially from a baseball perspective—I don't see how he could still be the Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, even with similar familial experiences. He would develop in a completely different way and become a person with a completely different set of experiences and skills and points of view about practically everything, including the art of hitting. Ted Williams was a guy born in 1918, the "half-breed" son of a Mexican-American single mother who essentially abandoned him to his own devices in favor of a career in the Salvation Army. He was the unique product of his specific time and place and situation in history. Even if a person born eighty years later is named Ted Williams (and really, who in 1998 names their kid “Ted”, anyway?), I don't believe he could still the same person. Because of all the differences surrounding him, he’s a completely different person, because of the circumstances surrounding his time and place. Instead he’d be somebody like … oh, I don’t know … maybe Juan Soto.

I think an only slightly less ridiculous but fun-to-contemplate hypothetical is to imagine transporting Ted Williams out of 1942 and plopping him into the middle of Major League Baseball 2022 and trying to imagine how he would do. That would definitely be the same guy, same background and experiences, same level of development, same skill set, same everything, just magically transported into another era, handed a bat, and told here you go, try to keep up—which I think he would struggle to do, since he'd be facing pitches he'd never seen before coming at speeds much faster than even Feller. He might figure out how to make a go of it in time, but I don't believe he would be performing anywhere near his Hall of Fame level.

Once they started pitching to him like they did Brandon Inge, he would be finished. 🤣🤣

[sabretooth]

4 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

I think if you just transplanted them from then to now that they would definitely struggle particularly at first but I think if you could transplant them from when they hit puberty and let them grow up using today's nutrition, 24/7/365 type coaching with top technology, top fitness gurus etc. and had them facing today's velo and tougher pitching all throughout like today's young players do/did then they'd be just fine in today's environment especially the elite ones like Williams Dimaggio and Musial.

I think that's probably also true...the two sides of these hypotheticals is why WAR and wRC+/OPS+ are great, because they present total historical performance in its proper context.

[sabretooth]

I think its also safe to say that pitching has never been harder on pitchers or on hitters.

[sabretooth]

I also wonder if we've tapped the limit of what is physiologically possible from pitchers in terms of producing velocity, spin, and movement.

The slider has displaced the curveball as a sing/miss pitch.

But slider usage for starters is maxed at about 25%...with few exceptions.

One advantage of the apparent baseball deadening is that pitchers are able to focus on something other than producing swings/misses.

Groundball production I hope is an area of opportunity.  The emergence of pitchers who throw a significant percentage of sinking fastballs (not splitters) in the low 90s (and even a few mid-90s) I hope can advance in the game and work as an arm-saver.

Edited August 10, 2022 by sabretooth

[gehringer_2]

On 7/22/2022 at 10:11 AM, mtutiger said:

I don't think Riley is in any danger of being sent to Toledo at this point.... he's holding his own.

and the truth is, if a guy can put in his first couple hundred AB not not tail off badly as MLB pitchers take his measure is a hopeful sign. Riley has been able to hang around at about a 240 BA for ~150 PA -- so far so good.

 

(Now watch the kid tank the rest of the way....)