141–150 of 432 posts
Since golf has had all sorts of changes in clubs over the years and baseball hadn't, I had assumed the only reason this hadn't been done years ago is because the rules were very prescriptive.
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Every sport hits this sort of threshold where they ban optimization. Swimming did it with 'sharkskin' suits and long distance running with Nike's Alphafly and Vaporfly shoes. Maybe that's where advanced baseball bats will end up eventually.
Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs and all the equipment is engineered to the very limits of nature. We draw oddly arbitrary lines what is and isn’t ok in sports.
Custom drugs seem like a step too far IMO. As far as the suits go that's to level out body shapes as an issue.
This seems to most help with guys who were hitting the ball most often not at the sweet spot. By moving the sweet spot to where they are hitting the ball, they might gain some power. A bat needs to be round, a solid piece of wood, less than a certain length and less than a certain diameter. The actual shape is not defined.
By moving the sweet spot to where they are hitting the ball, they might gain some power Could we end up with custom bats for each player designed around where they tend to hit the ball?
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You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before. People only watch baseball out of tradition. MLB didn't even have a play clock until 2023, letting batters step out of the box at whim and create even longer periods with no action.
> You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before What the heck is this confident assertion based on?
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I'm fine with it as long as they don't change bats in between pitches.
I'm picturing a caddy standing off to the side of the batter with a bag full of bats, sizing up the last pitch and say "May I suggest the pine with the conical twist sir?"
Baseball is the king of misleading small samples. It’s usually best not to jump to any conclusions as the article does so early in the season (ban them! After 3 games?!). There is a lot of randomness in the data. And if the season proves that these bats are indeed juicier than others? Probably MLB will let it lie. Offense is down enough already and all of the recent rules changes are intended to support offense.
I think it's quite cool (disclaimer: I am indeed a dirty Yankees fan) Hitting is really hard. If you feel up to it, and can find a public batting cage near you that has a fast pitch machine (usually maxes out 75-85mph which is 20+ mph less than your typical MLB fastball), give it a shot. When you hit the ball away from the sweet spot, especially on the parts closer to your hands, it really freaking hurts and throws o…
I genuinely can't understand the thought process of a Yankees fan. If it's just a tradition thing, then sure whatever. But someone who watches them play and goes "yeah that's my team" is just mindblowing. They'll have a batting lineup that costs more than the opponents entire field, knowing full well they are all just hired guns who will be gone the moment the contract is up, and then you watch them in the playoffs a…
There is very little free agency in American sports fandom. People are (for the most part) fans of the team local to where they grew up. (This kind of bums me out as someone raising kids in New England, which is not where I'm from, and so not whose teams I root for.)
if it leads to more solid hits and plays in the infield, i'm for it.
unclear which one, i look forward to finding out more.
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If every player ends up with a bat custom tailored to their swing this will get very interesting.
Every sport hits this sort of threshold where they ban optimization. Swimming did it with 'sharkskin' suits and long distance running with Nike's Alphafly and Vaporfly shoes. Maybe that's where advanced baseball bats will end up eventually.
Always wondered why the NFL doesn't ban sticky gloves.
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I'm fine with it as long as they don't change bats in between pitches.
I'm picturing a caddy standing off to the side of the batter with a bag full of bats, sizing up the last pitch and say "May I suggest the pine with the conical twist sir?"