New to Baseball (Questions, etc)

[BigMac1212]

I could be way off here, but i swear in recent years there was a website that showed future years interleague opponents. Now it didnt have the date obviously, and i don't think it said home or away, but at least showed the future opponents.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Do they have a site they use? Google's come up dry.

Wikipedia to the rescue!

Interleague play - Wikipedia

I hope this helps.

 

[CoyoteUgly]

Wikipedia to the rescue!

Interleague play - Wikipedia

I hope this helps.

Thank you!

 

[Spikey]

And here....from a fan with a sense of humor..

View attachment 247873

Sure was creative by that fan!

 

[BigMac1212]

This is going to sound clunky, so I will apologize in advance.

How do pitchers know how to grip a baseball after getting the sign from the catcher?

 

[GIN ANTONIC]

This is going to sound clunky, so I will apologize in advance.

How do pitchers know how to grip a baseball after getting the sign from the catcher?

I don’t get what you mean. Like they know how to hold the ball for every pitch they throw. They know how it feels and can find the grip while being blindfolded in the dark in the trunk of a car at midnight.

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

This is going to sound clunky, so I will apologize in advance.

How do pitchers know how to grip a baseball after getting the sign from the catcher?

You have a general grip and then you can feel around the seams and get it into the right position. These guys have been throwing these pitches for years and there are only so many ways to grip it so it's not really something that's hard to do.

Like I haven't pitched in 10+ years and I could easily take a baseball and flip it around in my hand and get the grips I would need to throw the pitches that I threw in 2009.

 

[BigMac1212]

This is going to sound like a dumb question, but what would be a perfect OPS?

 

[GIN ANTONIC]

This is going to sound like a dumb question, but what would be a perfect OPS?

Well it would basically be hitting a homerun everytime you had an at bat. The OBP portion of the formula is easy. A perfect on base is 1.000. Slugging % is calculated as follows...

Total Bases ÷ At Bats = SLG

Since a HR = 4 total bases and unless I can't do math (which is possible) the perfect SLG % would be 4.000

Add those together and 5.000 would be the tits as they say.

 

[rent free]

Well it would basically be hitting a homerun everytime you had an at bat. The OBP portion of the formula is easy. A perfect on base is 1.000. Slugging % is calculated as follows...

Total Bases ÷ At Bats = SLG

Since a HR = 4 total bases and unless I can't do math (which is possible) the perfect SLG % would be 4.000

Add those together and 5.000 would be the tits as they say.

funny enough, mike trout's OPS is 0.9999

 

[BigMac1212]

Add those together and 5.000 would be the tits as they say.

Thank you, Gin.

 

[BigMac1212]

When did home run horns/sirens become trendy in baseball?

 

[McDeepika]

How has the infield shift impacted defensive value of infielders? Are good defensive SS and 3B's more or less valuable?

 

[Filthy Dangles]

I don't think it's changed much, they're still very valuable and you need guys who can go get the ball at those premium positions, like the analytics say. Shifting is just playing the odds and giving yourself a better chance, it's not gonna magically make a guy who can't field the position play it because he's being put in a better spot.

 

[spintheblackcircle]

....I was 10, I cut class to watch the game on TV back when baseball was my favorite sport, I don't even follow it anymore. But I will be able to recite the lineups until my mind goes on me

 

[BTO]

hard to throw and repeat your delivery. plus you'd probably have to alter your arm slot and get more over the top to really throw it, tipping hitters off. It's sort of an exaggerated circle change, which a lot of guys throw and has the same effect of running away or fading from a batter of the opposite handedness.

Oliver Drake throws some crazy pitch that moves like a screwball would, I think it's technically a splitter as classified by Trackman/Pitch F/X or whatever the system is called nowadays but his delivery is so over the top and he does something with the grip that it gets crazy movement.

I had a buddy when we were kids who threw a screwball. Got so he could't throw the ball straight after a while. Was weird.

 

[Mongo]

....I was 10, I cut class to watch the game on TV back when baseball was my favorite sport, I don't even follow it anymore. But I will be able to recite the lineups until my mind goes on me

Funny I randomly checked this forum and seen this today.

I was talking with my wife the other night because there was a youtube video I put on randomly that had valuable baseball cards from the early 90s. Which was my prime baseball card collecting years. I was born in 81 and collected for about 3-4 years in the early 90s.

Anyways, I was just rattling off stats of the players for the years and telling her how much I loved baseball back then. I literally used to read and memorize the baseball encyclopedias (Asperger's/ASD) from the 80s and early 90s. I was telling her about the lineups from the different years of the red sox and how my favorite player was Mike Greenwell (because my favorite color was green, and he played in front of the green monster). I still remember the day he drove in all 9 of the red sox runs vs Seattle in 1996.

My wife then asked me how I can remember all this stuff from 30 years ago but I can't remember what day we met or our first official date? Oops...

I haven't watched a full game of baseball in about 10 years now. I try to check in here and there, but the game is just not fun to watch anymore.

 

[KevFu]

How has the infield shift impacted defensive value of infielders? Are good defensive SS and 3B's more or less valuable?

They just banned the shift, so the infielders are going to have to be on the dirt when the pitch is thrown, with the SS on his side of 2B, and the 2B on his side of 2B.

That's going to change the 2B position a lot. You used to have smaller guys who couldn't hit that well playing 2B (or guys who could hit but had speed/range). And when the shift became more and more popular, you could put a bigger guy at 2B who had less range because any lefty who came up, he was playing short RF. Against righties, the SS got it, or it was basically a hit.

Teams put guys who no one thought of as a 2B because of their size and slowness -- like Travis Shaw and Mike Moustakas -- at 2B to get better hitters in the lineup.

Now that's going away, someone like Luis Arraez, who can hit but is a thicker dude who is slow and has limited range, is now going to be a lot less valuable as a 2B and might have to play 1B or DH.

 

[BigMac1212]

What exactly is the sweeper pitch that is en vogue this season?

 

[#37]

From What Is A Sweeper? Inside Baseball's Newest Pitch

Simply put, a sweeper is a slider with more horizontal break than the cookie-cutter slider that we’ve all become accustomed to seeing in nearly every pitcher’s arsenal.

As Petriello notes, not only does a sweeper have roughly nine more inches of horizontal bend to the glove-side than the traditional slider, but the league-average sweeper is also about three miles-per-hour slower than the league-average slider.

 

[BigMac1212]

From What Is A Sweeper? Inside Baseball's Newest Pitch

Thank you.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Quick question that's not worth a new thread, and this one sorta fits. I started following baseball in 2005-ish. The topic of top athletes and Bo Jackson came up the other day. Was he any good? I know he famous for being the two-sports "superstar", but was he really THAT good?

 

[eojsmada]

Quick question that's not worth a new thread, and this one sorta fits. I started following baseball in 2005-ish. The topic of top athletes and Bo Jackson came up the other day. Was he any good? I know he famous for being the two-sports "superstar", but was he really THAT good?

He was very good. Career OPS of .784 and was an all-star in 89 who hit 30+HR and 100 RBI and stole almost 30 bases. The perennial question around him was whether he would commit to just one sport, because he could have probably been a hall of famer. He had a cannon of an arm...sprinter speed...and could hit 30+HRs. The only thing he couldn't do was hit for high average, and that would have certainly been achievable if he stuck to playing just baseball.

 

[Cas]

Quick question that's not worth a new thread, and this one sorta fits. I started following baseball in 2005-ish. The topic of top athletes and Bo Jackson came up the other day. Was he any good? I know he famous for being the two-sports "superstar", but was he really THAT good?

Bo Jackson was pretty good and improving (how much further improvement could be expected is debatable, considering his age), but I believe he got hurt playing football and that pretty much ruined his baseball career.

Jackson was very fast, had a tremendous throwing arm, and a ton of power. However, he was a very free swinger, didn't really get on base very much because he didn't walk, and never really utilized his speed well because he was splitting his time between two different sports, rather than trying to master baseball (he was never better than a mediocre baserunner despite his speed, and he was a poor fielder despite his speed and arm). His football commitments also meant he missed playing time, which is a drag on his value.

He was never a true star player - he had the talent to be, but not the commitment. He was more famous than his baseball career itself deserved, but then, he was more than just a baseball player.

I also can't speak to his football career at all, because I don't care about and know virtually nothing about football.