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Blue Jays GDT: 2021 v10 | Next: Sat, Sept 11| @ Bal |*DOUBLEHEADER*| 4:30pm ET/1:30pm PT | Ryu vs Kremer

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Man Bear Pig said:
I'd give the guy with an 1.051 OPS this month the green light, but maybe that's just me.
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In plenty of situations yeah, not in that one.
You have to make the pitcher throw strikes, and hill cant.
You try to get the free one with one pitch every time.
 
Man Bear Pig said:
That was such a "back in my day" old man moment. Call me crazy, but you've still gotta throw strikes to pitch in the majors. Higher velocity doesn't equal less control then guys from 30 years ago.
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There have been guys who succeeded by throwing the ball past people with limited control since the dawn of the sport. Bob Feller couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn but went to the BHOF based on just purely overpowering opposing hitters.
 
MS said:
There have been guys who succeeded by throwing the ball past people with limited control since the dawn of the sport. Bob Feller couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn but went to the BHOF based on just purely overpowering opposing hitters.
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Sure, you can get away with blowing the ball past hitters, but even most guys who throw 100mph still need some kind of control. It's just so silly to me that Buck thinks pitchers of yesteryear were all Maddux.
 
Man Bear Pig said:
That was such a "back in my day" old man moment. Call me crazy, but you've still gotta throw strikes to pitch in the majors. Higher velocity doesn't equal less control then guys from 30 years ago.
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Over Buck's career from 1969 to 1986 there were 196 individual pitching seasons where a starter qualified for statistical leaderboards and walked at least 10% of the batters they faced.

The top 5 in that span were:
1) 1971 Sam McDowell (Cle) - 16.2%
2) 1977 Nolan Ryan (Cal) - 16.0%
3) 1975 J.R. Richard (Hou) - 15.4%
4) 1976 Nolan Ryan (Cal) - 15.3%
5) 1975 Nolan Ryan (Cal) - 15.3%

Over the same number of years from today back to 2004 there have only been 97 qualified starter seasons where the pitcher recorded a walk rate of 10%+

and your top 5 in that period were:
1) 2008 Daisuke Matsuzaka (Bos) - 13.1%
2) 2012 Edinson Volquez (SD) - 13.1%
3) 2004 Kazuhisa Ishii (LAD) - 13.1%
4) 2009 Clayton Kershaw (LAD) - 13.0%
5) 2004 Al Leiter (NYM) - 12.9%

(for posterity, Ricky Romero's 2012, his final full year with the Jays and MLB, was 7th at 12.7%)

McDowell, Ryan, and Richard were all fireballers with scattershot command

By comparison none of the top 5 on the modern list had average fastball velocities that topped 95 mph at any point that Fangraphs has data to track their careers (this is mostly an issue with Leiter as it appears velo/pitch type data doesn't start popping up until around 2000/2001). Leiter, Ishii, and Matsuzaka in particular were not hard throwers by the data available (Leiter and Ishii fail to even break 90 over the spans that have data present).

Yes, there are more guys who throw harder now than there used to be. But this idea that it's only terrible modern coaching and managing (likely driven by those dastardly analytics) that have led to spikes in awful feel-less pitchers shotgunning balls to the plate with no idea where they're gonna go is silly.

Of course, that's pretty much what we have to expect from Buck nowadays.
 
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