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

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

#211

Post by parineum »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #80
islewis wrote: post #22

I've always wondered what the technological development of F1 would look like in other sports. This feels pretty close.

It's actually fairly common. Other sibling comments have a lot of examples, but one I'd like to focus on is the swimsuit arms race in competitive swimming. It really got started with Speedo's LZR Racer suit at the 2008 Olympics, where 98% of swimming medals were won by someone wearing one of these suits. However, there were serious issues with cost and accessibility. These suits cost a lot of money to develop and man…

> 98% of swimming medals were won by someone wearing one of these suits.

> This gave a huge advantage to ... teams and swimmers with ... sponsorship deals

Is the former caused by the latter or caused by performance enhancement?

Speedo sponsoring all likely medal winners into their new product seems like a reasonable explanation. Given that I've never heard of another brand, I assume speedo has a fairly large budget for sponsorships. I don't know anything at all about swimming though, just wanted to throw that out there.

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

#212

Post by impossiblefork »

dylan604 wrote: post #198
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…

Professional sports are all about entertaining the fans. If they can live a gladiator's life and ask "are you not entertained" and want to die in the lions den, then might as well let them. Amateur sports like colleges or olympics could continue to have the traditional rules to keep things "competitive", but might as well let the pro-sports just go full tilt.

If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling. Professional sports are interesting because there's something fundamental, something challenging where someone's skill can shine.

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

#213

Post by demosthanos »

kevinventullo wrote: post #155
demosthanos wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the discussion at hand, is there reason to believe this new bat shape will be too expensive for other teams to copy?

I don't know enough to know, but my guess would be no. I was thinking of the swimsuit bans—my understanding is that the banned swimsuits are extremely expensive and wear out extremely quickly.

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

#214

Post by daedrdev »

Larrikin wrote: post #7

He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. He briefly alluded to a valid point but went no where with it about how it may affect little league and college with less money, but that is completely separate from MLB teams using millions of dollars for custom bats.

I thought little league and college use metal bats since they are cheaper so there won't be any effect.

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

#215

Post by triceratops »

dylan604 wrote: post #200
rglullis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dangerously experimental PEDs Would you be willing to be the guinea pig?

Why would you ask someone reading HN that question? That's like asking a 'roided up athlete if they wanted to rewrite grep in Rust. Ask the athlete if they'd be willing to take PEDs if it would be allowed.

You only need one athlete that's willing to. The others will have no choice after that.

It's no different than asking if workers should be allowed to work without PPE.

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

#216

Post by triceratops »

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.

> Which is so silly. I would love to watch a sport where all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs

It's called worker safety.

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

#217

Post by tayo42 »

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.

> dangerously experimental PEDs

Brazilian jiu-jitsu /submission grappling is like this right now

The biggest events don't test. That's adcc and ibjjf tournaments only test the winners of black and belt and they can skip the testing somehow

Personally I think it's bad for the sport and hobby. Downstream effects where it normalizes ped use for hobbyist tournaments and delusional parents have their kids on steroids and try. The best don't win neccesarily, just who handles the drugs the best

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

#218

Post by basisword »

pests wrote: post #176
basisword wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. Bad players should continue to suck unless they put in the effort to be better. If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat (especially experienced guys like Chilsolm) you're simply bad at your job. This is like getting a crappy NBA player and putting s…

> If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat But that is what they are doing? The bat is within size and volume limits. Many bats come in slightly odd shapes or weight distributions. Is it because this is "optimized" that it's bad?

It feels like one of those things where even though it’s within the limits of the rules, it just shows they need to tighten the rules. The end result is everyone having their own customised bat and it’s just a big waste of time. Better to tighten up the rules. If I had my way there would be one legal bat that everyone had to use. Sport should be about the athlete, not the tool.

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

#219

Post by dagw »

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.

all the athletes are on cutting edge, dangerously experimental PEDs

The problem here is of course that you probably won't get the best athletes in the world to sign up for that. So you'd be watching desperate and quite mediocre athletes who feel they have literally no other option in life.

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

#220

Post by parineum »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #38
paulcole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

From showing basketball to people who haven't watched a basketball game before.

But what if I have watched basketball and I don't watch it. Basketball is a boring game until there's 5 minutes left.
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