My son - a baseball player - saw these in use this past week and noted:
“ That was dumb… They should have saved them for the playoffs…”
… and I can’t help but agree.
MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
161–170 of 432 posts
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
In both cases why not? 1. Make the kicker kick from farther out in that case. Pretty simple change. 2. 1 yard is kind of nothing in this league now when the referees have so much leeway to change yardage. They get the spot wrong ALL the damn time now. So what if it's automatic for some teams. And so what if the offense has the advantage there. That's sport. Same thing in soccer on penalty kicks, the kicker has the ad…
the rule for FG/XP attempts is for the safety of the long snapper, not the kicker
Right, but if the kicker needs to move further back in response, the tactic doesn't work anymore so the snapper is safe as well.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The line isn't purely arbitrary, it's a reflection of the reality of what most people expect from sports: we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team. We also want underdogs to have a chance, which is very hard without some sort of limits. You could probably accomplish something similar by strictly capping spending per te…
> we want them to be a contest of human skill on the part of the athlete, not just the amount of money someone is willing to spend on the team
This is simply not reflected very well in how professional sports are structured. If this were really a priority teams wouldn't be privately owned. It has extremely negative effects on each sport, easily dwarfing the influence of performance enhancing drugs.
Anyway, I would absolutely love to see what the human body is capable of. To me, hearing a ban of performance enhancing drugs is a guarantee of a more boring and less competitive game. I understand the impetus of protecting children, but we're already buying and selling humans. How good of an influence was this to begin with?
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#164My son - a baseball player - saw these in use this past week and noted: “ That was dumb… They should have saved them for the playoffs…” … and I can’t help but agree.
You'd have to make the playoffs first
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#165Two players used the bats. I'm not a Yankees fan, but all these articles are making it seem like the bats are the reason. That does not explain why the rest of the lineup went off. Perhaps poor pitching is the better explanation. Too much is being made of these bats. Also, golf club technology basically does the same thing. Everything is about making a bigger sweet spot. Oversize drivers and irons didn't seem to ruin…
There’s a lot of debate in golf if the game had been spoiled at professional levels because of modern gear. Courses have been made longer to accommodate and it’s very likely there’s less reliance on skill today. All the optimizations are around speed today because with such huge faces and low MoIs guys won’t miss when swinging even harder.
In fact you could argue golf should be more like baseball in that lower skilled players and amateurs use large metal clubs whereas pros use small wooden clubs.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#166I 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…
> it really freaking hurts and throws off subsequent swings. Totally ignorant about baseball, but would wearing thick padded gloves help? Do major leaguers build up calluses to help?
The problem isn't friction from the grip (that can occasionally pop up), the issue is when you hit the wrong spot and the energy of the ball gets dumped entirely into your hands instead of evenly distributed through the bat.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Formula 1 is supposed to be like that except without the drugs. It’s a competition for both the racers and the manufacturers.
It's not though. F1 introduced a cost cap to stop the top manufactures from being able to test and develop everything they want to.
It's never been the same without the cigarette & booze sponsors.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#168I 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…
To be fair, a pitching machine is pretty unnatural compared to a human pitcher (can’t see when it’s about to launch) and they are typically closer than 60 feet. On the other hand, a real MLB pitcher is not just throwing fastballs down the middle.
Very true. I dream to be able to hit off one of the fancy ones the players have at the facilities
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
If every player ends up with a bat custom tailored to their swing this will get very interesting.
FWIW they already for the most part do have bats tailored to what they like to feel in their swings as far as where weight is, where the barrel begins, what shape it is, what the grip/knob feels like. I can't say how much data goes in to deciding what is used vs what they like to feel, this feels like more of a renaissance in attempting to use data somewhere else than brilliance in design. My intuition tells me this…
The placebo effect is absolutely a thing. Players still get in trouble for corking bats even though it's been proven to have no effect (or a negative one) on hitting.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#170I 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…
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