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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

#221

Post by dylan604 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #212
dylan604 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If it's really about entertainment, then it has no appeal. Then you end up with professional wrestling.

Do you not see the contradiction here? Professional wrestling is huge. It has very loyal fans. The fans pay for pay-per-view and live event sales. They buy merch. Nobody attends a WWE event expecting Greco-Roman style wrestling. They all know exactly what they are getting.

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

#222

Post by soared »

gadders wrote: post #60
islewis wrote: post #22

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

The Aluminium Cricket bat was controversial in the 70's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComBathttps://en.wikipedia.org... I guess other (banned) examples would be the LZR swim suits ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZR_Racer ) and the Nike Vaporfly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Vaporfly_and_Tokyo_2020_O... ) I think I am also right in saying that you can buy a road bike that is better than the ones permitted in…

A very small number of teams aren’t well funded, have sponsorship issues, or whatever else and actually run less than top end components. I don’t recall who but there were bikes at either TDF or vuelta maybe last year with group sets which you could’ve just gone to the store and bought better ones.

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

#223

Post by daedrdev »

dagw wrote: post #50
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.

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?

guys already pick bats based on their height, it seems entirely reasonable everyone will do this. There probably is an optimal point to have that sweet spot at though so most hitters will probably try and stick close to it.

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

#224

Post by daedrdev »

koolba wrote: post #29

Did it really take 125+ years for someone to realize the bat does not need to evenly taper? This seems like some seriously low lying fruit.

No, different bats have been around forever, Babe Ruth's bats looks like a log compared to modern bats. However shifting the taper based on where a player gets most of their hits based on advanced tracking of their hit location is new.

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

#225

Post by pinkmuffinere »

facile3232 wrote: post #186
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about the impact of private ownership? I don’t watch sports at all, so this is news to me — what are the negative effects? Is it just you get teams with massive funding and others with none?

Yea, and to be fair the leagues try to compensate for this with varying degrees of success by regulating how much you can spend, subsidizing poorer teams, etc. But ultimately you run into issues like the colorado rockies where the owner just views it like an entertainment venue and basically refuses to invest in the team in any rational way. The entire model of competiton-through-investment doesn't make as much sense…

If I’m understanding correctly, not only do you get teams with massive resources, but also teams treated kind of like clowns to entertain their owner? That really is a crazy situation, lol.

It almost sounds like corporate ownership could help with this, something like shareholders owning the team, and then the management is obligated to do what’s best for the shareholders (and somehow that should be to win). It seems like part of the problem might also be:

- sports teams make money by selling tickets and merchandise

- teams sell tickets and merchandise by being entertaining, which may or may not involve winning

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

#226

Post by alabastervlog »

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.

That doesn't follow at all.

Imagine if, somehow, soccer players got really good at scoring goals from midfield, such that a very high proportion of goals were scored after just two touches. That's exciting or interesting for, like... one game, then it's worse than before.

Are you there to watch people score goals, or to watch people play the game?

If there's a home-run more at-bats than not, they get boring. You do want plenty of solid hits (but you also want strike-outs! And walks! And bunts! You want diversity!) but you don't want a lot of them to be homers.

A home run is only exciting if it's uncommon, otherwise it's less interesting than most other things that can happen when the ball's hit into fair territory.

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

#227

Post by dylan604 »

triceratops wrote: post #215
dylan604 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If workers want to work without PPE, then let them. Just ensure that they sign releases acknowledging that the PPE was made available to them and they chose of their own volition to not use it, and that by doing so they release everyone from any liability about what happens to them from not using the PPE.

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

#228

Post by trhway »

Sounds like those hammer head tennis rackets. Strange that it didn’t happen decades ago. And nothing wrong with such innovation just making game more fast and powerful.

The typical baseball bat's balance - very different from say a sword's - has always felt wrong to me, and i've just chalked it up to my not being a baseball player and thus not understanding. The new shape seems to improve the balance toward the centuries established for swords, etc.

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

#229

Post by daedrdev »

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.

Uhh basketball has plenty of issues, like 6 timeouts in the last two minutes, way to many 3s, traveling everywhere that make it hard to watch.

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

#230

Post by panzagl »

eszed wrote: post #209
tedunangst wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Eagles did- one of their players has a rugby background.
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