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Scott & Wes Frog Fan Forum
2021 MLB Thread
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<blockquote data-quote="BrewingFrog" data-source="post: 3000599" data-attributes="member: 28"><p>Would a player benefit from knowing what pitch is thrown? Well, firstly, my experience in this area is limited to being a lousy Little League player, and even lousier Beer League player, but from what I understand, hitting a thrown baseball is about the hardest thing to do in Sports. As others have pointed out, "hitting a golf ball is hard enough, and the damned thing's just sitting there!" Each pitcher has different stuff, release angles, types of pitches, speeds. The variations are huge. A good clue, however, would be speed. Each catcher has a strategy to get the hitters in the lineup out, and the strategy extends through three at-bats and is based on their perceived weaknesses and tendencies. Changing speeds effectively breaks up a batter's rhythm, gets him to commit early to a slow pitch or, v-v. So, with all that said by way of the game that goes on between pitcher, catcher, and batter, the element of "seeing the signs" is yet another thing that can be toyed with. Once the can banging was figured out (and it didn't take long), <em>catchers simply changed their signs</em>, rendering the whole scheme useless. This was already worked out, in that signs are changed when there's a guy on 2nd because he'll peek and give a tell to the batter. Further, according to rumor in Houston, the scheme didn't work terribly well, and was (as noted) a distraction more than a boon, so they quit it after a while because it wasn't working like it was thought it would. </p><p></p><p>In the case of Altuve, I was actually watching the Astros at that point, and the guy is a natural hitter. He is blessed with excellent vision and a very quick bat, and often he gets hits on balls that are out of the zone simply because he "sees" them and is able to get the barrel on the ball. He was not a power hitter, but a scrappy singles and doubles guy that didn't strike out much and nearly always made contact. It's easy to say, "Oh, well. He cheated." The reality is that he is a truly gifted player who had a magnificent season. I don't see how the limited tells he would get could shape an at-bat, given his propensity to swing at things out of the zone, and because the instant you have to judge swing-<em>don't</em>-swing is a tiny fraction of a second, and to mess with the instinctual nature of hitting would mean that every batter would be using a fraction of that already tiny fraction trying to think. (See: OODA Loop) Thinking is bad in baseball.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and Judge was cheating, too. That sort of evens it out. Remember: The Yankees, and the Dodgers had "cheating" schemes going at the same time. They just weren't punished. Additionally, the Astros managed somehow to win the final two games of the Series <em>in</em> LA, where they didn't have a friendly trash can to bang, or the fancy video apparatus to see the signs. The Dodgers <em>did</em>, but managed to lose anyway.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BrewingFrog, post: 3000599, member: 28"] Would a player benefit from knowing what pitch is thrown? Well, firstly, my experience in this area is limited to being a lousy Little League player, and even lousier Beer League player, but from what I understand, hitting a thrown baseball is about the hardest thing to do in Sports. As others have pointed out, "hitting a golf ball is hard enough, and the damned thing's just sitting there!" Each pitcher has different stuff, release angles, types of pitches, speeds. The variations are huge. A good clue, however, would be speed. Each catcher has a strategy to get the hitters in the lineup out, and the strategy extends through three at-bats and is based on their perceived weaknesses and tendencies. Changing speeds effectively breaks up a batter's rhythm, gets him to commit early to a slow pitch or, v-v. So, with all that said by way of the game that goes on between pitcher, catcher, and batter, the element of "seeing the signs" is yet another thing that can be toyed with. Once the can banging was figured out (and it didn't take long), [I]catchers simply changed their signs[/I], rendering the whole scheme useless. This was already worked out, in that signs are changed when there's a guy on 2nd because he'll peek and give a tell to the batter. Further, according to rumor in Houston, the scheme didn't work terribly well, and was (as noted) a distraction more than a boon, so they quit it after a while because it wasn't working like it was thought it would. In the case of Altuve, I was actually watching the Astros at that point, and the guy is a natural hitter. He is blessed with excellent vision and a very quick bat, and often he gets hits on balls that are out of the zone simply because he "sees" them and is able to get the barrel on the ball. He was not a power hitter, but a scrappy singles and doubles guy that didn't strike out much and nearly always made contact. It's easy to say, "Oh, well. He cheated." The reality is that he is a truly gifted player who had a magnificent season. I don't see how the limited tells he would get could shape an at-bat, given his propensity to swing at things out of the zone, and because the instant you have to judge swing-[I]don't[/I]-swing is a tiny fraction of a second, and to mess with the instinctual nature of hitting would mean that every batter would be using a fraction of that already tiny fraction trying to think. (See: OODA Loop) Thinking is bad in baseball. Oh, and Judge was cheating, too. That sort of evens it out. Remember: The Yankees, and the Dodgers had "cheating" schemes going at the same time. They just weren't punished. Additionally, the Astros managed somehow to win the final two games of the Series [I]in[/I] LA, where they didn't have a friendly trash can to bang, or the fancy video apparatus to see the signs. The Dodgers [I]did[/I], but managed to lose anyway. [/QUOTE]
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