LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[1776]

“While exact plans are not finalized, MLB and the MLB Players Association intend to hold multiple bargaining sessions — perhaps every day — as early as Monday, sources told ESPN. Multiple owners and players expect to fly in for sessions leading up to MLB’s stated Feb. 28 deadline.”

-Jeff Passan

Edited February 18, 2022 by 1776

[Tiger337]

13 hours ago, Edman85 said:

His credibility is going in the shitter right now.

For a while now, I have seen Sheehan as some guy on twitter with contrarian opinions.  He seems to be just living off his past work and is no more credible than anyone here.  

[1984Echoes]

15 hours ago, chasfh said:

... Contrast thus with the wRC+ for pitchers in the 1972 AL, which was 6. No, that's not a fat finger typo—it is the number six....

In addition: National League pitchers wRC+ :

2021 : ranged from -49 to 1. 

2010 : ranged from -40 to 40. 

2000 : ranged from -33 to 22. 

1990 : ranged from -35 to 16. 

1980 : ranged from -21 to 40. 

1970 (with both AL and NL Pitchers): ranged from -24 to 38. 

 

Pretty horrific.

Basically, an average close to zero, across the decades, in either league.

I'll take the DH thank you. And the arguments for other positions are specious, at best.

[1984Echoes]

Here's another damning post about pitchers wRC+ (average 2000-2018 = -13):

 

 

[oblong]

Plus I'm not a fan of slippery slope type arguments... "We can't do X because then someone will want to do Y".  X and Y are different.  You can deal with Y later on.

Besides... how many quality catchers do you think you'll find who don't want to hit?  Of course there's the exception like Zach Greinke who wants to hit but again you don't set rules to the extreme example.

 

 

[chasfh]

14 hours ago, casimir said:

Hey, I’m an idiot.  Shocking, right?  I read “non-zero” as “near zero”.  I apologize.

I think the best way to realign is start with Seattle and work towards the East.  It’s probably reasonable to assume nothing happens until expansion. MLB has plenty of other items to deal with.  But I think if you group Seattle, the Los Angeles teams, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Diego, that’s 7 teams in a division.  That helps the Ms avoid those trips to Texas as a division foe.  Plus, there’s wiggle room for an 8th team, either an expansion team or Arizona.

As far as the Eastern corridor is concerned, there’s probably a way to construct it such that teams still have a bit of travel to deal with to even things out with other divisions.  Obviously they’d put the New York’s and Boston together.  Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia probably get grouped together.  From there, it’s a matter of who gets grouped up with teams like Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, vs Atlanta, Miami, and Tampa.  Again, expansion teams could affect things, maybe Tampa relocates.

I like your idea of lumping together the west coast teams, and I think you might be able to add Arizona and a Vegas expansion team to that. That’s eight Pacific time teams you could put into two divisions, maybe within a time-zoned conference. Maybe SEA, OAK, SFG, LAA in one division and LAD, SDP, LAV, ARI. That would leave the other 24 teams back east, including an expansion team in Nashville, with all but one in the Eastern and Central time zones.

If they were interested in evening travel out, something I’m guessing is low on their radar, I was wondering whether there’s a way to set up divisions for the 24 teams that would create as close to equitable travel as possible. Putting NYY and BOS in a division is a no brained, I agree, but putting NYM there too would create far too easy a travel situation for those teams. I’m thinking a way to even that out is to put Central and Eastern teams in a division together. For example, maybe:

• NYY, BOS, CHW, MIN
• NYM, PHI, DET, CHC
• BAL, PIT, CIN, MIL
• MIA, TBR, ATL, NSH
• TOR, WAS, STL, CLE
• COL, KCR, HOU, TEX

I didn’t think the configuration here through for more than a few minutes or measure distance, but as an example, if Baseball wanted to even out the travel more equitably, this might be a way to approach that. Nothing can be done about all the miles out they have to travel out west, especially Seattle, unless maybe they put a team in Portland instead of Vegas, which, lol.

[Tiger337]

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

Then we don't have to watch pitchers who can't hit and we don't have to watch old slow boring DHs.  We also get to see the best hitters come up more often.  The argument is that it goes goes against tradition, but so didn't the DH when it first started.

If they have to have a DH, they should limit the number of plate appearances a hitter can have at DH.  What would be most logical is to pair the DH with the pitcher. When the pitcher leaves the game, you have to get a new DH for the new pitcher.  If you are designated to hit for someone, you leave the game when they do.  I have never liked the idea of a professional DH who only hits and does nothing else.  That's not a baseball player.  

 

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, HeyAbbott said:

At the beginning of the lockout, I thought July 1 was a reasonable starting date for the season. Given what has transpired so far, I am convinced there will be no season. Neither side is "negotiating" at this point. There has been too much negotiating in public and both sides are looking for a PR advantage.

I have found the owner's various offers laughable and insulting . When the MLPA increases its demand on the pre- arb pool, goes in the opposite direction with no off setting changes elsewhere in their latest proposal, we are not going to see baseball for a very long time.

I think Players would argue that the increase in arb pool is offset by the proposed reduction of year 2 players going to arb from 100% to 80%. But yes, you’re right, this proposal was not meaningful movement toward Baseball, any more than any of Baseball’s proposals were meaningful movement toward Players.

[chasfh]

11 minutes ago, oblong said:

Plus I'm not a fan of slippery slope type arguments... "We can't do X because then someone will want to do Y".  X and Y are different.  You can deal with Y later on.

Besides... how many quality catchers do you think you'll find who don't want to hit?  Of course there's the exception like Zach Greinke who wants to hit but again you don't set rules to the extreme example.

 

 

My buddy is a Mets fan and an NL diehard, and I swear to you that his go-to data point for keeping pitchers hitting is the Bartolo Colon homer, every time. Whenever implementing the DH for the NL is discussed, he texts me a video of that homer yet again. He would gladly scorch the baseball earth with negative wRC+s and dishonest at bats to maintain the possibility of that one outlier event.

[gehringer_2]

7 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

 

and if you cut the batting order to 8, maintain the '3 times through the order' paradigm and the game ends at 8 innings. That's one way to cut 15 minutes of the games....

[oblong]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

Then we don't have to watch pitchers who can't hit and we don't have to watch old slow boring DHs.  We also get to see the best hitters come up more often.  The argument is that it goes goes against tradition, but so didn't the DH when it first started.

If they have to have a DH, they should limit the number of plate appearances a hitter can have at DH.  What would be most logical is to pair the DH with the pitcher. When the pitcher leaves the game, you have to get a new DH for the new pitcher.  If you are designated to hit for someone, you leave the game when they do.  I have never liked the idea of a professional DH who only hits and does nothing else.  That's not a baseball player.  

 

I'll go back to my idea that a player can only get a certain # of plate appearances at DH per season, or series for that matter.  If it's a 2 game series, they can go up 5 times.  A 3 game series, 10 times... I don't know.  Play with the numbers.  But then you get into things like extra innings and having to sub him out...  I don't like rules like that.  Just spitballing.

Then you can use the DH as a health slot to give guys rests.  Make it a platoon device rather than a place to store a fat tub of goo like David Ortiz.

 

 

[chasfh]

10 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

Then we don't have to watch pitchers who can't hit and we don't have to watch old slow boring DHs.  We also get to see the best hitters come up more often.  The argument is that it goes goes against tradition, but so didn't the DH when it first started.

If they have to have a DH, they should limit the number of plate appearances a hitter can have at DH.  What would be most logical is to pair the DH with the pitcher. When the pitcher leaves the game, you have to get a new DH for the new pitcher.  If you are designated to hit for someone, you leave the game when they do.  I have never liked the idea of a professional DH who only hits and does nothing else.  That's not a baseball player.  

 

We always think of big lumbering behemoth DHs roaming the baseball earth, like Giancarlo Stanton and JD Martinez and Nelson Cruz, but taking a cursory glance at the 15 AL teams this year, I think most teams already distribute DH at bats among maybe 8 or 10 or 12 guys during the season, with the #1 guy getting fewer than half of all those at bats on several teams. Even Miggy, our own resident big lumbering behemoth DH, had only 53% of all Tiger DH plate trips. So the limitation regulation might be an answer to no real problem.

[chasfh]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

and if you cut the batting order to 8, maintain the '3 times through the order' paradigm and the game ends at 8 innings. That's one way to cut 15 minutes of the games....

I prefer faster, snappier baseball over less baseball, thank you.

[gehringer_2]

Be careful what you wish for though, guys that can hit are going to play even if they can't field, they will just play and be lousy 1Bs or LFs. Ortiz would still have played, Boston just would have been a much worse defensive team for it. That may be the way it should be, but it's not an unalloyed blessing.  🙄

[Tiger337]

37 minutes ago, chasfh said:

We always think of big lumbering behemoth DHs roaming the baseball earth, like Giancarlo Stanton and JD Martinez and Nelson Cruz, but taking a cursory glance at the 15 AL teams this year, I think most teams already distribute DH at bats among maybe 8 or 10 or 12 guys during the season, with the #1 guy getting fewer than half of all those at bats on several teams. Even Miggy, our own resident big lumbering behemoth DH, had only 53% of all Tiger DH plate trips. So the limitation regulation might be an answer to no real problem.

This means that it should be easy to regulate.  

[Tiger337]

36 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Be careful what you wish for though, guys that can hit are going to play even if they can't field, they will just play and be lousy 1Bs or LFs. Ortiz would still have played, Boston just would have been a much worse defensive team for it. That may be the way it should be, but it's not an unalloyed blessing.  🙄

I actually like that.  I like it when teams have to make roster and line-up decisions about their unskilled players.  That is an interesting part of the game.  

[chasfh]

18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

This means that it should be easy to regulate.  

I take it to mean there's no need to regulate.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I take it to mean there's no need to regulate.

Roughly only five guys are professional DHs each year, but that's about a third of the league.

I remember when the DH first started in 72.  I was young, so I may have the details wrong, but I remember there was discussion as to how it would work.  Would the DH be connected to the pitcher or would he be a tenth position with no relation to the pitcher.  Some felt the former was more logical.  Others thought the latter would be good because it would help extend the careers of old players who couldn't play a position anymore.  They went with the latter and I wish that they hadn't.      

[HeyAbbott]

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

Then we don't have to watch pitchers who can't hit and we don't have to watch old slow boring DHs.  We also get to see the best hitters come up more often.  The argument is that it goes goes against tradition, but so didn't the DH when it first started.

If they have to have a DH, they should limit the number of plate appearances a hitter can have at DH.  What would be most logical is to pair the DH with the pitcher. When the pitcher leaves the game, you have to get a new DH for the new pitcher.  If you are designated to hit for someone, you leave the game when they do.  I have never liked the idea of a professional DH who only hits and does nothing else.  That's not a baseball player.  

 

Very sensible. I would prefer the 8 player approach myself.

[Motor City Sonics]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Be careful what you wish for though, guys that can hit are going to play even if they can't field, they will just play and be lousy 1Bs or LFs. Ortiz would still have played, Boston just would have been a much worse defensive team for it. That may be the way it should be, but it's not an unalloyed blessing.  🙄

In 1978 the Red Sox had Butch Hobson at 3B.  He made 43 errors and had an .899 FPCT.     They lost the division in a Game 163 vs. the Yankees. 

If they had even an average defensive 3B that year, they probably don't have to play a game 163.  

[HeyAbbott]

59 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Roughly only five guys are professional DHs each year, but that's about a third of the league.

I remember when the DH first started in 72.  I was young, so I may have the details wrong, but I remember there was discussion as to how it would work.  Would the DH be connected to the pitcher or would he be a tenth position with no relation to the pitcher.  Some felt the former was more logical.  Others thought the latter would be good because it would help extend the careers of old players who couldn't play a position anymore.  They went with the latter and I wish that they hadn't.      

The AL, at the time was having attendance issues when compared to the NL. Some people savored the prospect of extending the careers of hitters, Ron Bloomberg, IIRC, was a very popular player that helped his club's attendance by having him bat. Basically it extended the careers of popular hitters and aided sagging AL attendance, or at least that is what Sparky said in one of his books.

[RedRamage]

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

My annual upopular opinion about pitchers hitting:  Just don't have them hit and let the other eight players bat. 

Then we don't have to watch pitchers who can't hit and we don't have to watch old slow boring DHs.  We also get to see the best hitters come up more often.  The argument is that it goes goes against tradition, but so didn't the DH when it first started.

If they have to have a DH, they should limit the number of plate appearances a hitter can have at DH.  What would be most logical is to pair the DH with the pitcher. When the pitcher leaves the game, you have to get a new DH for the new pitcher.  If you are designated to hit for someone, you leave the game when they do.  I have never liked the idea of a professional DH who only hits and does nothing else.  That's not a baseball player.  

 

That thought actually popped into my head yesterday and I didn't hate it.  I didn't dwell on it too much cause I don't see it happening in the real world, but it's not a bad idea.

I also like your idea of limiting a DH, like you can only DH twice a week or can only be a DH once every three games... 

[Tigeraholic1]

 

[Jim Cowan]

1 hour ago, HeyAbbott said:

The AL, at the time was having attendance issues when compared to the NL. Some people savored the prospect of extending the careers of hitters, Ron Bloomberg, IIRC, was a very popular player that helped his club's attendance by having him bat. Basically it extended the careers of popular hitters and aided sagging AL attendance, or at least that is what Sparky said in one of his books.

The AL had suffered a serious talent deficiency since the late 60's and there were some big name NL players, like Orlando Cepeda and Rico Carty, who were not able to play in the field anymore, who were suited to the new rule.  The new rule also suited the Tigers who, as one writer put it, had "an entire roster of DH's".

[Jim Cowan]

Ron Blomberg by the way was just a young kid and just happened to be the first DH.  He had played parts of 2 seasons before that and was a guy that almost no one outside of New York had ever heard of.