No matter how many times Verducci whines and cries about it, it takes awhile for ingrained strategies to adapt to new environments.

Most of the players now in baseball grew up in the steroid era. That era changed the environment. The constant, excessive danger of home runs made pitchers more defensive, so, with the exception of the very best (Maddux, Pedro, Johnson) they nibbled to excess.

Therefore, the hitters naturally learned to take pitches, because a higher percentage were outside the strike zone than in the era that came before. You don’t chase bad pitches. You set up hitters’ counts. You run up starting pitchers’ pitch counts. You get the other team’s weak middle relief into the game earlier and for more innings. And then you annihilate them.

Well, pitchers are learning that without widespread PED use, they can challenge more. And they’re throwing harder, because now, FB can be thrown more, with less danger of getting hit out of the park. So the ratio of strikes/balls is increasing. And therefore fewer BB’s. More K’s. More pitcher’s counts. Fewer cripples to hit. And it becomes a feedback loop leading to less and less home runs, and offense in general.

And now it’s the pitchers’ turn to take the advantage, and the hitters who must adjust. And that takes time; evolutionary change is…evolutionary.

So Verducci will just have to wait for hitters to figure it out. Too bad for him.

==================================

Is it a better game this way? Yeah, maybe. However, fans don’t like less offense, and attendance will go down.

How do I know? Throughout major league history, whenever offense has soared, so has attendance. Whenever offense declines, so has attendance.
Pitching and defense is keeping stuff from happening; hitting is making stuff happen. Non-purist fans like to see stuff happen. When offense disappears, so do a lot of those fans.

Many of the “deans of baseball writing” on the national scene grew up in the 1960′s, and most of ‘em think that’s the way baseball is supposed to be. But the support for the game grew weaker and weaker, and in 1968, pitching dominated to such an extent that they had to lower the mound, contract the strike zone, and, withing 4 years, the DH was born.

Me? I wasn’t really happy with Manny Ramirez’ game (just to pick the paradigm of the steroid era), but I sure as heck wasn’t happy with Horace Clarke’s game. The 80′s were reasonably balanced.

To me; I’d be happy with slightly more offense than was the case for most of the 80′s. I hope that’s where the game settles, but I worry we’re headed back to the 60′s. That’s going to be a deadly dull version of baseball, no matter what Verducci thinks.

Asking somebody, not something.

Greg H. wrote:

Per Donnie Baseball:
“Part of it is your mixture of your competitiveness too,” Mattingly said. “It’s not just all, ‘Let’s go put an All-Star team out there and play games and the team with the All-Star team wins.’
Roughly Translated:
“I think I’d be more comfortable with a different job.”
It’s absolutely true, but it’s just about the last thing Magic & Co. want to hear from their skipper.

Yeah, that sounds like Donnie asking something to drop the axe.

Yanks have no room at DH.

He’s obviously not a major league catcher, which is why the Yanks decided to trade him in the first place.

No, let’s stay with Pineda, and see if he can reach his ceiling as a front of the rotation starter.

And another thing…if the Blue Jays are so awful, how come they’re a .500 team when not playing the Yanks?

If the rest of the AL East is better than the Yanks, how come they’re only 10-10 vs. the Jays? (4-3 vs. the Rays, 4-5 vs. the Sox, 2-2 vs. the O’s)

77yankees wrote:

And all that with five infielders and a starting catcher going down, one of your starting OF missing 40 games, and a makeshift bullpen after Mo & Robertson.

I think I heard the following (crazy) stat: the Yankees have started four different players at SS and 3B, respectively, thus far this season.

SS: Nix, Nunez, Gonzalez, Brignac
3B: Nelson, Nix, Youkilis, Adams

Think about that for a moment. The Yankees suck so bad and are run so poorly that they’re currently enjoying a first-place season with seven different players starting on the left side of their infield.

Of course MLB says their proceeds from the cap & jersey sales will be donated to veterans charities.

No mention of what Majestic & New Era will do with their cuts of the pie.

Ten over .500 going into Memorial Day weekend and 2nd best record in the AL.

And all that with five infielders and a starting catcher going down, one of your starting OF missing 40 games, and a makeshift bullpen after Mo & Robertson.

And, on the discussion of the thread-starting post…do you know what 20-17 is?

It’s 88-74 for the season. And that’s not too bad, all things considered.

Mr. October wrote:

The record over the last seven games is not a selective endpoint – it’s the subject line of the discussion and the number of games since Granderson came over the hill as part of the cavalry. Surprisingly enough, he’s only K’d 5 times in 26 ABs. And it’s not Francisco he’s taking most of his ABs from(?)

It’s the very definition of a selective endpoint.

Why bother to mention the Yanks have dropped four of seven? What’s significant about the last seven games, or to put it precisly, more significant than the last five games (Yanks are 3-2, a .600 pace) or the last 9 (Yanks are 5-4, a .555 pace)?

If you choose the last seven, you’re choosing to make it look like the Yanks are in a losing skid, rather than meandering around .500 for a relatively brief period after a prolonged period of playing well over .500 baseball.

While each of the outfielders has lost a start, Francisco’s seen his playing time drop to nearly zero. He’s lost the most playing time.