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MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

thelibertyline.com

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Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#201

Post by dagw »

lesuorac wrote: post #136
zappb wrote: post #124

Earlier 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.

There's also a huge list of rules about things you're not allowed to do to make your car faster. F1 is quite far from simply building the fastest car, it's building the fastest car that adheres to this long list of 'arbitrary' rules and regulations.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#202

Post by jjmarr »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #32
daedrdev wrote: post #4

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.

It's interesting to me, who is not a baseball player but a software engineer, that even at the level of professional sports the solution is not to just train the athletes to swing the ideal bat "correctly" but to redesign the bat to be sub-optimal but such that when the players use it "wrong" the right thing happens. The physicists and swing coaches and trainers and teammates have probably been telling Volpe and Chis…

It makes more sense if you consider the baseball player as a multimillion-dollar factory that cannot be brought down for maintenance.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#203

Post by eszed »

mjrpes wrote: post #139
jparishy wrote: post #14

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…

> 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?

Padded gloves do throw off your swing / bat "feel". You do now see a lot of guys wearing a little rubber donut thing on the thumb of their top hand. That helps a lot with absorbing the vibration from a mis-hit. It still shivers your hands, but you don't get the piercing pain focused right at the base of your thumb.

[Edit] You do build up some crazy calluses swinging a bat for hours upon hours of practice. They absolutely don't help, like at all, when you strike a ball in on the handle of the bat. It always hurts.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#204

Post by next_xibalba »

impossiblefork wrote: post #191
next_xibalba wrote: post #108

Earlier 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.

But it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be a good sport to participate. It would just be blood entertainment for the viewers. Sports should be for those doing them, and then if people end up caring and commercial competitions end up viable, then that's a bonus but we shouldn't design them for entertainment of the audience. Customization of equipment should always be fine unless it increases injury risk or completely dest…

I suspect you've never known anyone who participates in the elite levels of popular sports. They are very rarely having fun.

All the major sports alter their rules every year to increase their entertainment value. Here is a short, non-exhaustive list off the top of my head: NBA flopping penalties, NBA player resting policy, MLB base stealing rule changes, MLB free base runners, MLB pitch clocks, NFL changing overtime rules almost every year, NFL challenges and reviews, etc.

There is nothing wrong with not having much knowledge of sports, but it might be worth reconsidering your strident opinions if that's the case.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#205

Post by mb7733 »

next_xibalba wrote: post #108
jorvi wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of the problem is that it trickles down and affects sport at lower levels. I was an age group swimmer (ages 10-18) when those suits came out. I can't remember exactly but it at least 10x'd the minimal equipment budget for the season. The suits were not only much more expensive but they wore out after a small number of races.

Suddenly a line was draw between have- and have-nots based on whose parents could and would buy this stuff. (My club, like many, practiced in a small municipal pool and it was very budget friendly. The fancy suits would be a large fraction of the annual cost to a family.)

In my opinion banning the suits was great for the sport at the age-group level, and thus the sport in general.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#206

Post by jagged-chisel »

dylan604 wrote: post #192
91bananas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That would be an interesting Show HN. A camera(s) setup with something like OpenCV and some ML processing to analyze a batter's swing, find their best bat shape, then use some sort of automated lathe to cut their bat based on the findings. Lather, rinse, repeat until you've iterated through to the "perfect" bat for that hitter.

It wouldn’t take long to have a tight selection of bats for every player to try and based on each swing, the system can predict the best bat.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#207

Post by conductr »

perlgeek wrote: post #199
kaycebasques wrote: post #12

If only the Yankees get access to it (e.g. they patented it and won't let other teams use it) then I could see it as an unfair advantage. In most other areas of America life, though, this innovation would be allowed or even celebrated. I imagine it will go the way of the brilliant strategic innovation a few years back of shifting defenders heavily depending on the batter's statistical hitting patterns. It'll get bann…

> If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. So you're saying baseball gets more boring when people get better hitting the ball? Sounds like there's something fundamentally wrong with the sport.

So long as it's not a one sided advantage, the game will be fair and way more exciting. Even now, there's a huge difference in attending, and watching on TV, a game that is 1-0 going into the 9th inning versus a game that is 5-4 going into the 9th. Even though those are even matches at that point in the game, one of them feels painful the other has had some excitement. Good defense is not as exciting as productive offense.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#208

Post by impossiblefork »

next_xibalba wrote: post #204
impossiblefork wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be a good sport to participate. It would just be blood entertainment for the viewers. Sports should be for those doing them, and then if people end up caring and commercial competitions end up viable, then that's a bonus but we shouldn't design them for entertainment of the audience. Customization of equipment should always be fine unless it increases injury risk or completely dest…

I suspect you've never known anyone who participates in the elite levels of popular sports. They are very rarely having fun. All the major sports alter their rules every year to increase their entertainment value. Here is a short, non-exhaustive list off the top of my head: NBA flopping penalties, NBA player resting policy, MLB base stealing rule changes, MLB free base runners, MLB pitch clocks, NFL changing overtime…

I've actually even played sports against ex-elite players in the sports they were once among the best in the world in, although it was pretty obvious I had no chance. I've also played other sports with friends who were professional ice hockey players and professional association football players. I think what characterizes them is that they once at a time really hated losing, and you can question whether that is 'having fun' but I do think they were having fun at one point too.

But I agree that sports at the elite level aren't about health. It's not unusual to be doing things that at least risk injury.

I think these kinds of rule changes are destructive though. They certainly are in tennis.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#209

Post by eszed »

tedunangst wrote: post #153
adzm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the "tush push". It's not a particularly complex play, but for some reason the Philadelphia Eagles can pull it off astoundingly better than anyone else in the league I looked this up and am still unclear why only the Eagles seem to be able to perform this maneuver effectively, other than having an exceptionally strong person at the front?

Contrary to popular belief, it requires a fair bit of practice to get right, which is why you see hater GMs saying oh, yeah, it's so simple we could do it if we wanted, but then they try it in a game after one practice and it fails. The Eagles spent several years practicing it, so now they're that far behind.

They need to get some rugby coaches in to teach it. That's a super-basic rugby technique, which even I (as only a very casual rugby fan) can see most teams getting wrong.

Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

#210

Post by duderific »

meroes wrote: post #157
ARandumGuy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While home runs are exciting, there are limits to that. For several years the MLB has been dealing with "three true outcomes", where a large percentage of at bats end in either a strikeout, walk, or home run. While this can be exciting for individual at bats, it becomes pretty boring if it's too common. This is because it invalidates every role except the pitcher and batter, and removes a lot of strategy from the gam…

I don't quite get what the difference is between now and when Sosa, Bonds, and McGuire were hitting homers, where apparently homers are monotonous. Are we pretending that wasn’t peak baseball? I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout. There are no grand slams without base hits true, but without the home runs base hits are…

Close plays on the base paths are pretty exciting.

> I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout.

The problem is that the strikeout or walk is much more common than the home run.

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