One that I agree with. The number I read was 1 IBB every 2.6 games or so and that it took a minute, if we’re being generous. It’s such an insignificant amount of time that nixing it for pace of play reasons is stupid. If they wanted to frame it with different reasoning I might come around.
Now, if we want to discuss limiting the amount of time allowed after a play to decide if a team wants to challenge (30s, imo) or how long a challenge is allowed to roll on until it’s automatically deemed inconclusive, sign me right up. Alternatively we can contract the Red Sox and Yankees.
At the bottom, we have the Twins and White Sox. They will play 19 games against each other this year. That reads like a missing verse from “Eleanor Rigby.”
Since we don’t have an “MLB 1918 - I Hope The Influenza doesn’t take my whole family” thread, I just want to share my obsession with the pitching delivery of Walter Johnson, a/k/a the Big Train. He apparently was 6’ 1", tall for a ballplayer from the 1900’s through 1920’s, but not extraordinary (Ruth was 6’2", Mathewson was 6’ 1"). He weighed 200 pounds, and from video it looks like it was pretty well distributed on his frame.
But man. What a delivery. He threw harder than anyone in his generation, perhaps as high as low 90’s on his fastball, and he did it chucking the ball in with a low sidearm delivery.
Watch his arm in those frames. In the upper right corner, look how HIGH he’s reaching there, like he’s picking an apple out of a tree while not looking. And then watch his arm action. You can see how it buggy-whips forward. Johnson may have been a shade over 6 feet, but it looks like his arms were the arms of someone four or five inches taller. They’re freakishly long, and flexible.
His delivery looks a little like the way you see shortstops and third basemen throw, but not quite that either. It’s just a cool looking way to pitch. You can imagine with the ball jumping out of that deliver at 91-92 mph that a hitter at the time would just be like “Yeah, no way.”
[quote]* Managers will have 30 seconds to decide whether to challenge a play and invoke a replay review.
With some exceptions, replay officials in the Replay Operations Center in New York will have two minutes to render a decision on a replay review
[/quote]
Jump forward to the late 30s - early 50s and the sharply contrasting delivery of Bob Feller. Classic full wind-up, high leg kick and over-the-top motion.
He was also not big by today’s standards: 6’0’', 185 lbs., but the crude devices of the day measured one of his fastballs at 104 mph. His career record was 266 - 162, with almost four full seasons of his prime years lost to WWII. For the two seasons before the war and the two seasons afterward he averaged 24 wins. So the war almost certainly denied him 300 wins.
KC is currently playing Team Venezuela, which has Jose Altuve, Miguel Cabrera, Salvador Perez, VMart, Alcides Escobar, and Martin Prado in its lineup. It’s weird to be getting phone updates that Salvy and Escobar are driving in a bunch of runs while the Royals are losing 10-0.
