Knicks Morning News (2025.08.04)

Batting averages are lower now, OPS’s are higher now. Neither by enough to really care. I’d trade the fewer singles now for the walk-up music we have now and didn’t have then every day and twice on Sundays.

Watching a major league shortstop in person go into the hole, or circle a slow grounder and throw on the run to get the batter at first by a step, was awesome in 1985 and it’s awesome in 2025.

Baseball has actually changed less than basketball, where large swaths of the offensive court have essentially become Chernobyl.

There are so many guys who throw high nineties now it’s ridiculous. Those guys didn’t exist basically in the eighties.

Different job description. “Get through nine innings even if you have to throw 160 pitches,” versus “Throw as hard as you can for 90 to 100 pitches.”

Eight man bullpens now, maxing out at an inning; four or five man bullpens then, expected often to go 2-3.

Not better, not worse — just different.

Usain Bolt runs faster than the Olympic marathon champion, too. Doesn’t make the 800 or the 1500 or the marathon a shit event.

Teams in 1969 would be completely uncompetitive. Other than a handful of guys, players couldn’t even afford to devote full-time to their sport. They worked in the offseason.

(I found out a few days ago that the kids these days call that era of the NBA the “plumbers era.” Works for me. Same idea applies to all the sports, including baseball. Mantle and Mays and Aaron, even though they could afford it, most likely didn’t bother with full-time offseason training and made extra money working in other ways.)

This is almost all “nature/nurture.” If you can afford to devote 24/7/365 to a sport and buy or be provided all the best coaching/psychology/nutrition, you’re going to axiomatically be “better” all else equal than if you can’t afford that, or don’t have the dedication. (Or because there’s like 1/100th the money swimming around, even the coaches that are there or that you can afford are dumb asses.)

In a more narrow sense, if you time yourself to hit 96 you’re going to be better at hitting 96 than someone who trains and times themself to hit 89. (There wouldn’t be any reason for someone to train themselves to hit 96 in an 89 environment; their timing would be fucked up.)

The interesting question is who, if anyone, gets sorted out as the environment moves from 89 to 96 and why.

Another interesting question is who gets sorted out/sorted in as the environment moves from a strongly-enforced norm against striking out (the 80s and most of the 90s) to one where no one gives a shit if you strike out and some people think it’s even better with men on base because it means you won’t hit into a double play. (2010s/2020s)

Dick Schofield (the younger) looked like he might be heading towards something when he OPS+’d 96 (4.2 WAR) as a 23 year old good fielding SS (and probably got some Eckstein-ian bonus points for the Angels winning the West).

That “something” never fully panned out; that said, he remained a 2+ WAR player consistently through his age 29 season and then fell off a cliff, which happens all the time.

Over 18 career WAR, certainly no star, but hard to see how he’s the poster boy for the archetype.

The old-line starting pitcher isn’t coming back, absent some kind of major rule change. I don’t even think the idea of losing your DH if the starter comes out before “X” innings will even do it. No one’s sending a pitcher through the lineup a third time anymore.

As with the three pointer in the association, the cheat codes of pitching have been figured out. It’s way more efficient to go balls out on every pitch and use more pitchers.(*) That isn’t changing. If anything, rotations are going to get even bigger. I wouldn’t be shocked if someday, 80% or something like that of games are “bullpen games.”

(*) Even if you have to eat the year out for the way more blown out elbows the strategy leads to.

David Peterson, pretty much yeah. In no sense were the ’61 Yankees trained or in tune to hit 96.

Dom Smith is a big, massive stretch. “He hit .250 (*) against 96, he therefore would have raked against 89” is a logical fail.

Generally speaking, there are plenty of guys who spanned multiple generations and eras and performed consistently in both, particularly when adjusting for their older age in the later era. Reggie Jackson OPS+’d 1018 and 817 at 23-24 against pitchers who worked in the hardware store in the offseason, and then OPS+’d 926 and 995 at 33-34 against full-time pitchers with way better stuff making well into six figures even in 1980 dollars.

(*) Placeholder estimate. I don’t know Dom’s career BA and am not going to look it up.

It really doesn’t have much to do with any of that. It’s just not athletically accurate to say .250 against 96 translates to raking the shit out of 89. Nothing more complicated than that.

Players routinely continue to perform 15 and 20 years into careers when the pitching they face, axiomatically, improves significantly. I’m sure you can find plenty of examples of guys who started out before the late velocity revolution and who rake every bit as well now as pre-revolution. Reggie is an example from an earlier time.

MLB pitchers actually change speeds and throw off-speed stuff *way* more than they used to.

Movement statistics are available on Statcast. (https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/pitch-movement?year=2025&min=q&pitch_type=SL&hand=&sort=pitcher_break_z_induced&sortDir=desc).

Tyler Rodgers’ slider does move a lot, as JK noted, but I don’t see that that really explains what it purports to explain. At the end of the day, hitters still see slow stuff from him. There’s no real sense in which his slider is something like Rivera’s cutter or prime Jansen’s cutter.

And I know this is going to probably start sounding “quibbly,” but I’ve seen Tyler Rogers pitch a bunch of times and seen his BB-ref page more than once. He’s had a good last couple years, but he’s not really *that* impressive. I already posted the FIP and K numbers. He strikes out a low amount of hitters. He’s inducing relatively light contact, but so likely could a bunch of other “crafty” non-submariners out there who GMs don’t want to deploy. Can’t begin to see how that’s so obviously untrue.

Austin Slater lasted one AB before getting hurt.

I vaguely knew BITD that there were “fast” guns and “slow” guns, and vaguely knew that the modern Statcast measurements differed in technique from BITD, but had no idea it was as pronounced as it is:

For decades, comparing pitch velocities has often been an apples-and-oranges discussion. The first radar guns that began appearing at ballparks in the late 1970s and early 1980s measured pitches much closer to the plate. The Speedgun, developed by Decatur Technologies (a long-time maker of police radar guns) measured closer to the plate than the JUGS gun. For scouts, the Speedgun was known as the “slow gun” while the JUGS gun registered faster readings and was the “fast gun.”

Then Stalker came out with its Pro Sports radar gun in the early 1990s. It measured velocity closer to the pitcher’s release point than the JUGS gun, so the JUGS flipped to being the slow gun.

A 90 mph pitch on a Speedgun could register at 92 on a JUGS gun and 93-94 mph on a Stalker. The tech continued to improve. A 94 mph pitch on the Stalker Pro registered as 95 on the Stalker Pro II.

So when you read of 85-90 mph fastballs from the early 1980s, realize that they would be registering much faster with current measurement tech. An 85 mph fastball (if registered by a Speedgun at the plate) would be roughly 93 mph if measured by Statcast out of the pitcher’s hand.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/the-measure-of-a-fastball-has-changed-over-the-years/

Ryan was never measured, at least according to the article, at 100 at the plate. I’d highly bet against him throwing 108. I have little doubt he hit the 105 Chapman hit, though, and even if he didn’t hit that (*), he’d routinely be at triple digits on Statcast.

(*) Which he did, but just for conservative discussion’s sake.

I’m gonna go with “Nolan Ryan didn’t throw 105 MPH”

Objection noted, but he was basically measured doing that.

There were more control pitchers because there were fewer power hitters. Miss by an inch against Bud Harrison and worst case dude hits a line drive single. Today’s Mets run out a #9 hitter that can hit the ball 450 feet.

If you pitch to contact today and succeed, it’s a rarity.

All he said was that it was artistic and beautiful. Not exactly sure why you had to “correct” him.

At this point, you’re denying measurements and badly overcompensating in the opposite direction of what you perceive as misplaced nostalgia. (*) Your objection to the Nolan Ryan data is appearing ideological. He was measured throwing 100.

(*) That really isn’t.

If you miss by an inch today, that #9 hitter is pummeling that ball 400 feet.

No, he’s not. Nine hitters and hitters throughout the lineup swing-miss or don’t barrel or weakly ground mistakes routinely in major league baseball. They always have and still do today.

Actually, I’m disagreeing for obvious reasons that missing your spot by an inch on a pitch at 85 or 95 or 80 or 75 is automatically going to result in a nine hitter or any hitter hitting it 400 feet into the seats because that isn’t baseball reality.

I’m not disagreeing that there is more power throughout baseball lineups now than BITD, because that’s obviously true. It’s mostly because no one subscribes to the idea that middle infielders should just focus on defense and stealing bases, which wasn’t very smart to begin with and I’m glad to see it disappear.

I have no vested interest in seeing guys throw 85. It was a throwaway line, irrelevant to the broader discussion.