Balls are flying out way too easily

More pitchers are throwing harder now
More players are swinging for the fences every AB
Slap hitters are basically extinct

This is why there are more home runs.

DO AWAY WITH THE OVER SHIFT!!!! I hate when team employ the over shift, they complain about batters stepping out of box slows game, so does a 3rd basemen playing in shallow right field have to walk back to 3rd. Juiced balls are here to stay MLB thinks HOMERS ARE SEXY!!No hitters are great games, but seeking a no hitter is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Whatever happened to a pitcher going 9 for a complete game?????

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Originally Posted by WOwolfOL

If only we had pitch fx and the like back in the bicentennial. I'd love to see how those hitters would fare if 80% of the pitchers they faced were throwing 95+ with 85+ "offspeed". Or if all those lefty hitters faced a shift every AB and pinpoint precise defensive alignment for every hitter. You'd be looking at a lot less hits.

What's interesting is that throughout the 70s the league BABIP hit a high of .287, once it was .286, and in no other season did it eclipse .283. This year it was .292, but it was a short season. Throughout the last decade it never dropped below .295.

So you had a lot of guys that put the ball in play not worrying about contact efficiency. You now have a league-wide concerted effort to eschew the "put it in play" mindset, in favor of the work the pitcher & let it rip mentality. The fallout was inevitable. And to me its still an extremely exciting sport to watch.

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Indeed, the game has changed. Four or five different pitchers per game, all throwing heat, etc. Analytics. Constant shifting. Launch angles and exit velocity. Efficiency. Juiced balls. Smaller parks. It all adds up to a new formula for success. I get it.

And to me, it drags.

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Originally Posted by Crovash

Indeed, the game has changed. Four or five different pitchers per game, all throwing heat, etc. Analytics. Constant shifting. Launch angles and exit velocity. Efficiency. Juiced balls. Smaller parks. It all adds up to a new formula for success. I get it.

And to me, it drags.

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I'm starting to get to that point too. I'm a brewers fan and I watch alot of brewers games but I rarely watch any non brewers games anymore. Depending on who's there, the world series isn't even appointment TV for me anymore.

And it's all combined for sure. Because balls are flying out at a historic rate, pitchers refuse to throw meatballs. Not saying everyone threw meatballs back in the day, but walks used to be basically the worst thing pitchers could do. If you're down 3-1 you usually threw a fastball for a strike to "make em use the bat" with that mentality. Now, even the 7 through 9 hitters a a threat to turn that 3-1 fastball into a dinger, so pitchers nibble more. They'd rather run a 2 seamer off the edge and hope you chase.

I'm sure the analytics exist, but I'd be curious if there's been any major shifts in strikeouts looking vs swinging. I anticipate more guys these days still lock in on a pitch and location when they have 2 strikes than they previously did. Guys would rather strikeout looking if they guess wrong than get defensive and put it into play. And the analytics say that's the correct thing to do. Over the course of the season, the times you guess right and hit a ball hard for extra bases will probably outweigh the few extra hits you may get that trickle through the infield.