Posted on 10/26/2018 6:48:11 AM PDT by C19fan
The first game of the 1916 World Seriesotherwise known as the last time the Red Sox and Dodgers met in the Fall Classictook two hours and 16 minutes to play. It was slow relative to that season as a whole (or so we can infer; average time of game for 1916 is unavailable, but over the previous five years, it clocked in at just under two hours), but it was a sprint compared to the marathons were enduring in 2018. A 136-minute contest wouldve placed in the 99th percentile of game lengths from this season and was 48 minutes shy of the years average of 3:04. And its nothing compared to this postseason, when our shortest game to date has taken 155 minutes and the average matchup is a bloated 215.4 minutes longa three hour, 35-minute slog, or 24 minutes less than Games 1 and 5 of the 1916 Series combined.
(Excerpt) Read more at si.com ...
Ban velcro on batting gloves. Too many hitters stepping out to adjust them while they’re really trying to figure out what pitch is coming next. Make then stay in the box.
Don Mattingly was one of my favorite ballplayers of all time. He rarely ever swung at a first pitch -- but on the rare occasion that he did, he always seemed to make good contact. He'd later say he approached his time at bat with the idea that he'd sit on a specific pitch early in the count and only swing if he got HIS pitch.
The modern-day Dave Kingman. LOL.
Within two-three years pitchers will announce the coming pitch into a small microphone, and the catcher will have an earpiece, thus eliminating signs altogether. To complement this, batters will be required to stay in the batter's box between pitches and also prohibited from re-velcroing their batting gloves. And pitching clocks will finally be enforced. If baseball cannot solve these fundamental timewasters which occur 300 times per game, nothing else will matter.
TOO MANY REPLAYS
PLAYOFFS TOO MANY COMMERCIALS AND LONGER TIME BETWEEN INNINGS. BUT NO TOIME FOR NATL ANTHEM
I think a 3-pitcher limit rule, will make managers try to keep their starters in longer, that also mean pitchers will have to focus more on getting quick outs, which means more balls will be in play, and fewer pitches necessary, instead of going for strikeouts.
And it just might cut down on the number of injuries to pitchers.
Good post Bill. Yep, the ‘Fall Classic’ really was: THE FALL CLASSIC! then wasn’t it? The best week of the year! Day games only and if you were very, very, VERY lucky, a small black and white somehow made it into your classroom for a game or to. A long time ago but it seems like it all happened only yesterday. “Jihadi look-alikes?” You nailed that one also. I don’t get the muzzie looking huge bushy beard thing at all. Short and trimmed well do look okay tho imho. Oh well, Baseball changes just like everything else.
But how does the union go with something like that? How do you deal with injury, feigned or not? I don’t like messing with pitching changes but it does eat up most of the time.
I was toying with the idea that you don’t restrict pitching changes, but for every pitching change over three a team uses they lose an out from 27. There would be less pitching changes and shorter games when one team only has 25 outs or whatever. Probably way too radical and what do you do about extra inning and tie games?
Freegards
Quite right.
Joe Sewell struck out 114 times in his entire career! In 1925 in 608 at bats he struck out all of 4 times.
And even Babe Ruth never struck out over 100 times in a season.
As for the 2018 season there were more strikeouts than hits for the first time in baseball history. (41,207 strikeouts, 41,019 hits).
In 2018 - there were 41,207 Strikeouts, topping last year’s 40,104.
There were 6,105 home runs in both leagues last year, a record.
Since the year 2000, there have been 97,343 home runs.
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