I suspect this may result in more pitches away to these batters so they have to make contact on the narrower end of the bat.
I.e. it's a move that may well have a counter move.
MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
241–250 of 432 posts
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#242Two 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 skille…
With golf, there are other dimensions course designers could use to make the pro game less about distance. Tighter fairways, faster greens, etc.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#243I 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 play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot.
I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road.
Golf used to be a finesse game with moments of power. Now everyone is swinging out of their shoes on every shot, and the strategy of the game has reached Nash equilibrium where you basically want to hit the ball as hard as you can at every opportunity, despite any strategic element on the course.
Professional baseball is always what I point to when I talk about what we've lost. You don't need the most optimized equipment to enjoy the game, in fact, ultimately, you don't even want it. Just use simply, standardized equipment, accept the limitations of that equipment, and enjoy a simple game, where strategy can be used to overcome the limitations of equipment. The best thing that the MLB ever did was reject aluminum bats.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#244If 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 it gives any unfair advantage at all, the Astros will figure out a way to use them ASAP.
([1,2] For those that don't get the snide reference to cheating.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/astros-cheating.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_s...
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, but that's not a very HN way of doing it though. Bring in the AI, then add some crypto, and the code must be written in Rust. If there's a UI, then Next/React must be used to re-write the existing HTML/CSS only version, because that's just not even trying. Oh, and it needs to be done over a weekend
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#246I 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 play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
baseball is an arms race though. In golf the ball is on a tee.
In baseball, the pitchers get better every year, and throw faster every year.
There's innovation happening on both ends.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
baseball is an arms race though. In golf the ball is on a tee. In baseball, the pitchers get better every year, and throw faster every year. There's innovation happening on both ends.
If the pitchers are getting too good, just make it harder to pitch. Don't make it easier to hit better pitches.
Golf is also an arms race too. Look at the lengths of golf courses over the last 50 years. It's comical. It used to be 6000 yards was a championship course... now it's over 8000.
They used to put bunkers in front of greens to make them more challenging, but the equipment evolve to maximize height, and stop the ball on a dime. It's completely convoluted, because we just keep letting technology overcome every obstacle, but players don't like the obstacles, but you're not supposed to like the obstacles. So we let the tech overcome those obstacles, and then we build new, more difficult obstacles, and it's a never ending process of legalizing more tech, and then building more obstacles. And it continues until the game is unrecognizable from what it was a half century earlier.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 pointers are actually the opposite problem; they turn out to be more efficient but they make the game a lot more boring to watch.
> they make the game a lot more boring to watch. I disagree. Go watch some of the old games before 3 pointers. Teams would pack the defense into the key and the game would get really boring. It was also brutal --driving to the bucket on a packed defense like that would get you mugged. 3 pointers force defenses to move outward. Illegal defense penalties also helped.
I disagree, and I've been watching basketball for 40 years. Basketball with positions was more fun to watch and objectively more popular amongst the viewing audience than this current dreck with positionless basketball and basically no travelling rules. Defenders are afraid to play defense and offensive players can just step back without a dribble to create separation. It's a terrible, boring product to watch because it's reduced the best athletes on the planet to standing around waiting for an open look at a 3. They don't need to get rid of 3s, but they need to modify what they are for. They're supposed to be a bonus shot, not the fundamental aspect of offenses. Eliminating the mid range is bad for the sport.
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's a slippery slope from there to "the children yearn for the mines".
Re: MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Only among certain kinds of people. But a European PM doesn't go watch professional wrestling, but if his country is doing well enough in association football and there's nothing incredibly important going on he will go to the match.
This is because winning in this game is seen as an achievement, and a natural and reasonable achievement-- after all, there are many world records that nobody cares about.