Poor offenses league wide

[Pugger]

What do you gentlemen think is the reason why hitting is down for so many teams this year?   

[FGK]

I mean... We all know this right? They changed the ball again combined with that their turning a blind eye to a ton of pitchers using foreign substances to jack up their spin rates.

[Mesa_Titan]

48 minutes ago, FGK said:

I mean... We all know this right? They changed the ball again combined with that their turning a blind eye to a ton of pitchers using foreign substances to jack up their spin rates.

Basically this. They need to fix it fast. 

[beekay414]

It's no longer baseball, it's Manfredball and I'll be referring to it as that until he stops killing the game.

[mse326]

7 hours ago, beekay414 said:

It's no longer baseball, it's Manfredball and I'll be referring to it as that until he stops killing the game.

I don't think I'd put this on Manfred (there is plenty that can be, just not this). This is more a symptom of players just going for home runs and power rather than getting on base. Add to that the defensive shift and that results in getting less hits. We're in this inbetween age of players understanding analytics where they are realizing that strikeouts aren't as bad as people thought, but they still haven't figured out how important getting on base is.

Pitchers have become more informed on how spin rate matters, but pitchers have been using substances forever. Batters actually preferred they did because it gave them better control so they didn't get hit. It's becoming a problem now because pitchers have become smarter and how to use it. I'm all for enforcing the rules more strictly, but this isn't something that Manfred caused.

[Thelonebillsfan]

Combination of ball changes being in 1 season when guys had totally altered their swings for the old ball, COVID limited off-seasons giving an already dramatic advantage to pitchers even more height, irregular practicing, shifts not being hit against, it's a perfect storm of messy factors. They should have waited until next year to change the ball back to it's pre-2015 specs. There just wasn't a possibility during the baseball off-season, which happened entirely during the worst of the COVID spikes, for guys to make pronounced mechanical changes necessary for hitting this new stuff. 

Naturally though they'll just move the mound back rather than attempting to address any of these combining tertiary reasons.

[Thelonebillsfan]

Like you look at guys now, nobody shifts in the batters box, nobody slap hits, nobody goes for light contact and tries to barrel everything underneath to get lift. It's not "bad fundies" so much as a response to a shift in the forces of baseball, but the issue is that the MLB swung the pendulum so far in the opposite direction so quickly and abruptly at arguably the worst possible time for a bunch of guys who needed to make serious mechanical changes to do so and this is what you get.

[animaltested]

IDK, maybe the meatheads need to realize TTO is not a solution. 

Sure the NBA is maximizing offense by bulk 3PT shooting, but also, players are balancing that with more emphasis of using the stretched defense to get easy baskets (layups and freethrows). The shift is DARING hitters to take the easy stuff. Pitchers relying on their fastballs more mean they are doing all the work for you if you focus on contact. And collectively meatheads went ; BUT MUH EXIT VELOCITY 

Edited May 21, 2021 by animaltested

[Thelonebillsfan]

58 minutes ago, animaltested said:

IDK, maybe the meatheads need to realize TTO is not a solution. 

Sure the NBA is maximizing offense by bulk 3PT shooting, but also, players are balancing that with more emphasis of using the stretched defense to get easy baskets (layups and freethrows). The shift is DARING hitters to take the easy stuff. Pitchers relying on their fastballs more mean they are doing all the work for you if you focus on contact. And collectively meatheads went ; BUT MUH EXIT VELOCITY 

The thing is the ball changes in 2015-16 made swinging for the fences and gap in the OF a far more viable long term offensive strategy than hitting it where they ain't. And since a lot of guys functionally altered their entire mechanics around that it's just hard to go back now that it's non-viable right away.

[mission27]

On 5/21/2021 at 8:38 PM, Thelonebillsfan said:

The thing is the ball changes in 2015-16 made swinging for the fences and gap in the OF a far more viable long term offensive strategy than hitting it where they ain't. And since a lot of guys functionally altered their entire mechanics around that it's just hard to go back now that it's non-viable right away.

Right.  And mid-2015 when they juiced the ball is a long time ago.  We have an entire generation of players at all levels who have built their game around launch angle and exit velo because MLB did this willfully and purposefully and then spent 5 years glorifying it on ESPN and MLB Network broadcasts. 

But the bigger issue is what game are we trying to return to by nerfing the ball?  Baseball from 2010-2015 was boring as hell.  I barely watched.  World Series ratings were at all-time lows.  Post steroid era you had a major lack of star power and good teams were winning with **** like on base percentage, Juan Lagares, and pitch framing.  Guys like Mr. Boring as **** Evan Longoria were star players (btw look whose solid again).  Who the hell wants to see that?  2016-2019 was way way more fun. 

We are never going back to pre-sabermetrics and pre-steroid era baseball that some people fetishize.  Hitting singles and stealing bases was never a good strategy at any point since the 1910s.  You can't nerf your way back to that.  All you get is boring baseball.