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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

#361

Post by DrFalkyn »

szvsw wrote: post #53
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The biomechanics involved are insane. You are hitting a baseball-sized object (ha) moving at 90+ mph with massive break, often very late and over two axes, with something a couple of inches in diameter, and need to make decisions and react and adjust your swing path in a handful of milliseconds. And that’s just to make contact, let alone good contact, let alone contact that can find a patch of grass. It’s the single…

More stark is the difference between 700 and 800 OPS …

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

#362

Post by ecshafer »

gerdesj wrote: post #335
scoofy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of associations who do this: https://worldhickoryopen.com/ I still play with my grandfather's persimmon clubs about 25% of the time. It's just a coordination problem... but once the dominant professional association the game changes forever, because the vast majority of people just want to emulate the pros, because they grew up dreaming of becoming pro. Golf is finally trying to do something about th…

I am not a golfist at all and unfortunately I feel that I must instinctively hate the game - that is really my problem and not golf's. Golf is a decent sport and not deserving of my opprobrium. So why do I feel the need to dislike golf? I'm a white skinned, middle aged male and my job title is Managing Director. Obviously I should be a passionate small white ball smacker. No I'm not. I love the idea of golf but hate…

If you go to a public course with some friends, drink like a fish, and just have fun. Golf doesn't have any of that environment. Now I take it you are in the UK from what you say, so maybe its different. But I can go to a public course for $10, spend $20 on a cart rental, and spend the same on booze. Definitely not high class.

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

#363

Post by gamblor956 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #267
scoofy wrote: post #243

Earlier 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…

Everything you described about golf has already happened in MLB. Babe Ruth’s wood bat was 44 oz. Today’s wood bat in MLB are ~33 oz. The bat Babe Ruth used was so heavy he literally had to swing the bat different than how players can swing the bat today. There’s a short video on this here: https://youtu.be/P_uiHUJg7zs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_bat —- Fishing has even undergone this technical change. FF…

Baby Ruth was known for using a heavy bat. Most players used lighter bats.

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

#364

Post by tqi »

"you can’t just make a new bat and ruin over 100 years of baseball"

If this jabroni was in charge of sports, there'd be no forward pass, no three-point line, no fosbury flop. Sports should be frozen in a specific moment of this guy's choosing. MLB batting averages have been on a steady, multi-decade decline as pitching quality and strategy has improved[1], so God forbid we do something to add some offense.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/mlb-vanishing-offense-allstar-b48...

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

#365

Post by vessenes »

metalman wrote: post #334
vessenes wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rowing family here : what’s the current state of the art in oars?

what we were building was radical @ the time, and may still be. The design of the blades was essentialy flat on one side, and had a more complicated profile on the back the shaft was an I beam made from strait grained spruce, capped with ash, and then capped again in beach through the oar locks, and we snuck carbon fibre between the spruce and ash. the longest oars were 18', and it was possible to put a handle under…

I’ve passed this on to the coach. She’s pretty traditional, but we’ll see what comes of it! Update: she’s impressed.

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

#366

Post by 13_9_7_7_5_18 »

scoofy wrote: post #243
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…

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…

[dead]

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

#367

Post by its_down_again »

scoofy wrote: post #243
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…

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…

People have had similar sentiments in tennis about how racket and ball technology has changed the game over the years. Moving away from wooden rackets led to a massive increase in power and a larger sweet spot, which transformed the game from finesse to powerful serve-and-volley play. John McEnroe began with wooden racquets, while Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi adjusted to carbon fiber frames. Then poly strings took things even further, players generated extreme topspin to deliver aggressive swings with much more consistency, pushing the game back towards the high-powered baseline style.

For me, Roger Federer's style represents tennis at its most beautiful. His all-court game feels effortless and graceful, almost like a dance. But from a court-level view, it's more of a high-speed chess match built on calculated aggression, constantly pressuring opponents and waiting for the slightest opening to strike a point-winning shot. That level of sophistication and precision wouldn’t be possible without modern racket technology.

I still feel emotionally tied to classic matches from my childhood, especially Federer versus Nadal. But there's no objective reason, because tennis keeps getting better. People worried finesse was disappearing, but players like Alcaraz have brought back drop shots and clever cat-and-mouse tactics against deep-baseline defenders like Zverev and Medvedev. It’s a technique that was once considered too risky to rely on consistently.

In golf, tennis, baseball, basketball, running, & any other sport will keep evolving as technology & athleticism improves. Clinging to older styles feels more like holding onto the past than genuinely appreciating progress. If you can’t enjoy Curry hitting daggers in the Olympic finals or Kiplimo breaking 57 minutes in a half marathon, maybe the problem isn't with the sport itself. Maybe it’s the comfort of past memories holding you back from appreciating what’s happening now.

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

#368

Post by RandallBrown »

pasquinelli wrote: post #254

> Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them? "Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them", isn't a question; adding a question mark just makes me read you with an obnoxious up-tone.

The question is implied. "How could they possibly have done that?"

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

#369

Post by philwelch »

DrFalkyn wrote: post #354
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why can’t teams just defend the three better?

It’s effectively illegal based on how they call shooting fouls and ban hand-checking.

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

#370

Post by TheCleric »

capital_guy wrote: post #359
presidentender wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there similar optimizations available for basketball? Shoes can only do so much.

For professional basketball, the statistical advantage of 3-point has completely warped the game. There are a lot of articles online about it

Yeah there’s a pretty clear distinction between the NBA (and even college somewhat) from before Steph Curry and after. It’s been as revolutionary as the addition of the line in the first place and the shot clock.
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