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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Bear with me since I only started really understanding baseball a few years ago, but I've never understood why people like the idea of a designated hitter. It hides a guy in the field and protects a pitcher who can't bat. Why would you want to discourage all-round skills? No pitchers can bat. They are uniformly terrible, even everybody's favorite MadBum. Their plate appearances are boring at best, and season-ruining at worst, just ask Jimmy Nelson. That said, production from the DH spot on AL rosters has been dreadful the last couple of seasons, too.
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Jan 5, 2018 17:19
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I like the idea of pitchers batting because it would be like making an NHL goalie be one of your shooters in a shootout. My home team has the DH and my only real beef with it is they usually suck rear end. I think it's weird when people get super mad about the existence of the DH though.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:58
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The Berzerker posted:I like the idea of pitchers batting because it would be like making an NHL goalie be one of your shooters in a shootout. I think most people are just taking the piss because it's fun to pretend to have a super strident opinion about something trivial.
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Jan 5, 2018 20:03
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:OK, that makes sense if you consider that match ups should be about players doing what they do best, although I'd argue that it's no different to batters needing a fielding skillset. I guess I just like the idea that a spud with a .200 average can come in and hit a game-winning RBI off Kershaw or something.
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Jan 5, 2018 20:29
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ego symphonic posted:I think most people are just taking the piss because it's fun to pretend to have a super strident opinion about something trivial. no I have met people IRL who are super militant about how the DH ruins the poetry of the game or whatever nonsense, I don't mean people on SA saying "gently caress the DH" as a meme
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Jan 5, 2018 21:32
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I like the DH but also don't have any problem with it not being in both leagues, but when people pretend that AL pitchers "don't know how to hit" with the implication that NL pitchers do, it's infuriating. Modern pitchers are bad hitters, and not having the DH doesn't change that. EDIT: Not even just modern pitchers. Pitchers in general. Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 21:40
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I hate the DH but I also think football shouldn't allow substitutions. Make Tom Brady kick the field goals!! 
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Jan 5, 2018 23:20
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I dislike the DH because the pitcher dinger is the closest baseball has to the goalie goal, but also because it seems like it sometimes gives relievers a chance to play another inning while on an NL team they might be pulled for the night for a pinch hitter. I have no evidence to support this and would be interested in real research, but because of the above it seems like NL teams thus would blow through their benches faster. And the whole "not enough mans, let's just start asking people to play positions outside of their comfort zone and hope for the best" desperation of a manger running out of reserves is one of the greater infrequently-seen moments of baseball. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jan 6, 2018 |
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Jan 6, 2018 01:49
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Anything that gets us more position players pitching is good.
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Jan 6, 2018 02:08
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How many truly great DHs have there been? Offhand I can think of Frank Thomas, Ortiz and Edgar. In a hypothetical where your pitchers could give league average hitting, would you still want a DH?
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Jan 6, 2018 02:59
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Shiroc posted:How many truly great DHs have there been? Offhand I can think of Frank Thomas, Ortiz and Edgar. In a hypothetical where your pitchers could give league average hitting, would you still want a DH? Yes? You can get league average hitters at DH, and then a pitcher doesn't have to do extra physical work and have less exposure to injury. It's just that that's boring, pitcher injuries from hitting are rare enough as it is to not be worried over (though it does happen, sometimes in the dumbest ways; Santiago Casilla injured himself by actually trying to get a base hit after he was explicitly instructed to strike out.)
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Jan 6, 2018 03:05
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Shiroc posted:How many truly great DHs have there been? Offhand I can think of Frank Thomas, Ortiz and Edgar. Harold Baines, and I guess there were a few years when Travis Hafner hit like a moon monster?
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Jan 6, 2018 03:51
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I keep forgetting that Nelson Cruz is great on the Mariners as the DH, in spite of him being my favorite guy on the team. He's only been a full time DH for a couple seasons though so I don't know if he quite counts in the same way as being a Great DH as Edgar or Ortiz. Maybe if he keeps it going for a bunch more years.
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Jan 6, 2018 04:32
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Shiroc posted:In a hypothetical where your pitchers could give league average hitting, would you still want a DH? This is a hell of a hypothetical here. Late career Jim Thome is probably one of the better arguments (other than Edgar) for having the DH. He was still a useful player and fun to watch, and not having to have his knees deal with stretching and stuff at first base might have kept him around a few extra years.
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Jan 6, 2018 04:37
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anyone who is pro DH should consider how much entertainment we've all gotten out of forcing kyle schwarber to impersonate an outfielder
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Jan 6, 2018 04:40
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Defensively, the difference between anything short of Goldschmidt at 1st and the DH is negligible. There is no "DH skill set" other than "tattoos the gently caress out of any baseball he sees"
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Jan 6, 2018 04:59
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Ok true Rick and Tony here, just finished Big Data Baseball so this has been on my mind: Rick is a league-average pitcher with one very special skill: He gets 1 out via pickoff per start. Tony is a league-average pitcher with a different special skill: Runners have a 0% basestealing rate against him, because magic reasons. Who's the more valuable guy, the one who generates an extra 36-40 outs over the course of the season, or the guy who reduces the opposing run game to 0%?
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Jan 11, 2018 12:16
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ego symphonic posted:Because pitching and hitting are two completely distinct skills and the probability of a single person being good enough at both of them to excel at the major league level is vanishingly small. It's not that pitchers could be better at hitting if they just practiced more. I think the DH isn't just an ingame concept, either. It allows hitters who are really amazing at their craft to stick around the league longer and allows for some players to get into the big leagues when they would normally be blocked because the stereotypical DH can really only play first base. It also allows for more versatility in the positional player side of an AL roster construction (since you can rotate players through the DH spot to give them days off or rest). The concept of the DH was proposed to increase offense, which fans seem to like a lot more than watching pitchers hit and, as far as I can tell, history has proved that fans like more offense. There's a nice summary of the history of the DH here: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-league-adopts-designated-hitter-rule
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Jan 11, 2018 16:14
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Elizabeth Mills posted:Ok true Rick and Tony here, just finished Big Data Baseball so this has been on my mind: If I did the numbers right just now the league average in steals this season was 84. So is Tony turning every steal attempt into an out? Because that would mean 84 extra outs, making the choice clear. Or is it just that base runners can't run on him, meaning they won't even try? That would mean 84 less extra base hits basically which I imagine would also still make him more valuable than the pick off guy.
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Jan 11, 2018 16:59
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84 over the whole season but Rick and Tony only play every 5 games so its more like 17. Rick gets 35 guaranteed extra outs he wouldn't otherwise get. League average pickoffs were 9 a year, so an average starter might get 2. I'd say that Rick is more valuable. 1 pickoff per start is alot of extra outs. Having a baserunner never attempt to ever ever run on Tony would be 17 less times when a baserunner did not go from 1st base to 2nd base but depending on the base-outs matrix that might not matter. Also caught stealing average is 31 per team so Tony would be losing out on outs that he would have gotten had a baserunner attempted to steal but got caught. All of this is also assuming that these starters are pitching complete games. Baserunners tend to go wild late in games with relief pitchers, 7th 8th and 9th innings have much larger SB% so those numbers we talk about (84SB, 31CS per team last season) had a larger amount in late game when Rick and Tony would be out of the game. Rick gets his 1 out per start no matter what, but Tony might just have baserunners wait until he is out of the game before attempting to steal.
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Jan 11, 2018 17:22
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Good Dog posted:84 over the whole season but Rick and Tony only play every 5 games so its more like 17. Rick gets 35 guaranteed extra outs he wouldn't otherwise get. League average pickoffs were 9 a year, so an average starter might get 2. ^ Yeah that's true. My early morning lizard brain didn't factor in the 1 every 5 games factor.
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Jan 11, 2018 17:44
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Elizabeth Mills posted:Ok true Rick and Tony here, just finished Big Data Baseball so this has been on my mind: 36-40 outs is pretty generous. Starters who throw the whole season are more likely to have 30-35 starts so 1 out per start would give you an extra 30-35 outs. That being said, Rick probably has the edge. He is absolutely more valuable if he gets to choose when his 1 pick-off per game occurs because, if he gets a pick-off out during a high leverage situation, then his influence on win probability would be quite significant. Imagine all the high run probability situations that could be ended or drastically altered by just adding one more out and one less baserunner to the mix. If he doesn't get to choose, he probably still has more value as he will generate an extra out per game plus the running game behind him will still be suppressed at a given rate. If the team on average throws out 25% of steal attempts, you get the outs from the CS rate and the out from the pick-off as well. To put it another way, the opposing team has to surrender an out before they can even try something they only have a 75% chance of succeeding at. That's not a good trade for them. But there's probably also a confounding factor where a pitcher with a good pick-off move will suppress the run game on their own AND lead to more CS situations as well. Rick is probably closer to Tony's 0% base-stealing rate than you would initially assume. Ginette Reno posted:If I did the numbers right just now the league average in steals this season was 84. So is Tony turning every steal attempt into an out? Because that would mean 84 extra outs, making the choice clear. Or is it just that base runners can't run on him, meaning they won't even try? That would mean 84 less extra base hits basically which I imagine would also still make him more valuable than the pick off guy. I'm assuming that's 84 steals allowed by each team? If so, you gotta remember that not all those steals are going to be given up by one pitcher. It's more likely that a starting pitcher sees 15-25 steal attempts a season so, even if those steal attempts all convert to outs, Tony will lag behind Rick in total outs. Interestingly enough, ESPN ran an article that's a good source for information about this hypothetical. 3DHouseofBeef fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 17:46
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3DHouseofBeef posted:
That's what I keep coming back to. If he was on pace for 30+ pick-offs in a season, he'd be almost 20% of the way to the career record after just 1 season. People wouldn't risk running on him after that first year.
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Jan 11, 2018 18:02
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Originally I was going to say Tony because it would mean less guys in scoring position overall probably, but I think it's Rick because even in addition to the deterrence aspect and all that, you're talking about for-sure, 100% outs with him.
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Jan 11, 2018 18:41
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In regards to pitchers getting an extra out or not allowing steals, it reminds me of deciding on if you would rather have a better then average pitcher who can't throw to first or an average pitcher who can. It is a dumb cheap John Lester joke. But to be fair and without doing any real math, I think the meta game of "you can never steal on this guy ever and the other team knows it" might make a bigger impact, sort of a reverse Lester effect. Just because Tony doesn't get one guaranteed out doesn't mean he can't throw baserunners out, and knowing you can never steal off of him would limit leadoffs a bunch I would think. So, players who were running from first to second or whatever might get out more often on a non pickoff situation say from a throw from a grounder to third because they have further to run more often. This is on top of never allowing steals which can limit scoring position in addition to creating outs if anyone was foolish enough to try. It's an interesting question either way and I'm still not completely sure, but I was trying to think about it on something more then just crunching numbers.
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Jan 12, 2018 11:11
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Rick and Tony are actually Mark Buehrle and Pudge Rodriguez
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Jan 12, 2018 17:26
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My favorite Verlander fun fact is he attempts more pick-offs than almost anyone and almost never gets anyone. At least, last I checked. This is not a fun stat to track down.
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Jan 12, 2018 19:58
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tadashi posted:My favorite Verlander fun fact is he attempts more pick-offs than almost anyone and almost never gets anyone. At least, last I checked. This is not a fun stat to track down. That's not very fun at all!
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Jan 12, 2018 20:00
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Where is the MLB gif thread? I can't find it and I am very sad. Also, is there a site to watch NPB game highlights? I went to some of the team sites but they don't have video sections.
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Mar 20, 2018 11:15
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