Remember when the NBA tried a new basketball, and the response was so negative that the league switched back to the old ball mid-season? If you fall into the Venn diagrams of baseball and basketball fans, you may recall this story, but if you were actually a baseball player, what happened was that the ball bounced less. , it strangely cuts the player’s hand and is more slippery when wet. compared to its predecessor.
It was a viral experiment that fortunately succeeded in the NBA’s sleeveless fashion. The reason why I bring it up is that the reaction to these new baseballs is a bit negative. My colleagues Sam Fels recently wrote about deflated balloons againand the Mets were concerned about safety after three hitters were knocked down in a game against the Cardinals on Tuesday night.
New York pitcher Chris Bassitt, who has been outspoken about how much people hate the new balls and essentially accused MLB of negligence.
He didn’t specifically say what was wrong with them, so allow me. Apparently, the new balls, combined with the crackdown on illegal substances, were so much harder to hold, that fast balls were getting further and further away from pitchers. Pete Alonso has been hit in the head twice this season, including again on Tuesday night.
G/O Media may receive a commission
Overall, the Mets have had more pitches than any other team this season. It may be that the opponents are annoyed because the Mets are actually being nice and are blaming them defiantly, but when the players and managers are more annoyed with the balls than with the people who throw them, there is a problem.
Buck Showalter and catcher James McCann similarly criticized the new device, McCann suggested the alliance work with players to find a solution (every USA Today).
“Let’s sit down with the players and see what the players want,” McCann said. “Don’t take opinions from people who aren’t the ones trying to throw it out. Don’t talk to someone who isn’t trying to stay in the box when a guy throws 100 mph and has no feeling for the ball. That answer is to talk to the players and see what the best outcome is. ”
While it was a good idea, it was mid-season, so there wasn’t much time to conduct R&D to determine shipping rates and seam heights. The reason I brought up the NBA was because when it became clear that the rollout was a failure, they just went back to the old ball. Baseball doesn’t have an old ball, they have at least a few old balls (hehe), so it’s hard to decipher which one they have to bring back.
Max Scherzer said he felt as if he were throwing a cue ball after a particularly cold night in San Francisco on April 19. And a new experiment was not unusual for Scherzer, who was last year. told NBC Sports that there has been some variation in recent seasons.
“The ball has changed for me in the last five years. So who knows what the ball will be like. They say it will die, there was a time when it was more alive, who knows. We all face it, so for me, mistakes always happen. Whether it’s a home run or not, you still have to pay for it. You have to start your game and worry about what you do with baseball, how you serve the baseball versus what the nature of baseball is. ”
See, it makes sense: Worry about not making mistakes and live with the results when you serve a meatball. When it became more of a matter of how far a balloon flew and entered joke territory with airports at more than 100 mph, that needed to change. Any pick is better than the current pick, so take your pick and play through the rest of this season with it.
There are many ancient rules in baseball, but perhaps the most serious one is that there is no standard for the ball. We talk about them in the ages as if they were 3-pointers or forward passes. This is an aspect that should be a constant.
Imagine if the NFL was like that, we’d need to be more upright and deploy one of those Nerf footballs with the tails on it. Everyone will rightfully lose. There is a report that MLB swaps balls mid-season last year. The federation didn’t know what it wanted; Its desires can change more than a child passes through Toys R’ Us and is often dictated by logic on par with an 8-year-old.
I agree with McCann’s opinion that the players and the federation should work together to find a reasonable standard. (I also agree with his use of foreign substances. If MLB is adamant about this unpredictable ball, at least allow pitchers to use natural products found in baseball like sunscreen and turpentine for better command.)
Gather a team of veteran pitchers, hitters and catchers and give them plenty of options and let them pick their favorite game. No one has a better sense of what should or shouldn’t be a home run, or how many spins are borderline criminals than the players.
Debating which ball is the best ball is a debate often held by a group of people trying to discern which basketball is ideal for a game of draw – and they may find a winner after a few plays. dribbling and a few jumps. I know baseball is a completely different sport, but if eight strangers could decide that a little used baseball is the best option and still play a game in less than an hour, it would there’s a bunch of people who get paid to figure out which baseball game is ideal. could do it in less than 150 years.
