MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot.

I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road.

Golf used to be a finesse game with moments of power. Now everyone is swinging out of their shoes on every shot, and the strategy of the game has reached Nash equilibrium where you basically want to hit the ball as hard as you can at every opportunity, despite any strategic element on the course.

Professional baseball is always what I point to when I talk about what we've lost. You don't need the most optimized equipment to enjoy the game, in fact, ultimately, you don't even want it. Just use simply, standardized equipment, accept the limitations of that equipment, and enjoy a simple game, where strategy can be used to overcome the limitations of equipment. The best thing that the MLB ever did was reject aluminum bats.

baseball is an arms race though. In golf the ball is on a tee. In baseball, the pitchers get better every year, and throw faster every year.

There's innovation happening on both ends.

If the pitchers are getting too good, just make it harder to pitch. Don't make it easier to hit better pitches.

Golf is also an arms race too. Look at the lengths of golf courses over the last 50 years. It's comical. It used to be 6000 yards was a championship course... now it's over 8000.

They used to put bunkers in front of greens to make them more challenging, but the equipment evolve to maximize height, and stop the ball on a dime. It's completely convoluted, because we just keep letting technology overcome every obstacle, but players don't like the obstacles, but you're not supposed to like the obstacles. So we let the tech overcome those obstacles, and then we build new, more difficult obstacles, and it's a never ending process of legalizing more tech, and then building more obstacles. And it continues until the game is unrecognizable from what it was a half century earlier.

Why not invent say "Field Golf" or "Lolz Golf" or whatever you fancy calling it? Set the rules and equipment to around your ideal time. Get some mates together to give it a go and refine it.

I think the toughest part will be equipment - golf bats cost a fair bit to make but perhaps a price limit might help fix that. You could define club classes akin to how sailing has standard class boats. You could even require that participants make their own for an added twist. I'd keep the current standard balls for now.

Why stop at the bats and balls? What about the format? You could do three holes with a very short shot clock and go straight to the 19th for a bladder wrecking session involving a golf themed drinking game. Instead of running in a Triathlon, do nine holes after the swim and before cycling to the finish. You could replace the cycle phase with knocking a polo ball from a pony along the course to the finish. The swim could be ... yes ... underwater croquet!

Could be a lot of fun even if it never takes off - and that is what any past time ought to be.

There’s some consensus though that currently, pitching has evolved much faster than batting due to advances like Trackman and deeper understanding of the relationship between biomechanics, pitch tunneling, spinrate/flight path/movement, and so on. In conjunction with that has been a shift towards “TTO” (three true outcomes - HR/BB/K) on the offensive side, which is a statistically motivated perspective that batting for average is suboptimal. In short, you would rather have a lower BA and a higher home run rate even if it means a higher K rate, since home runs (and 2Bs) are so significantly more valuable than singles, and fly outs are also much more valuable than ground outs (or really, less bad) due to the opportunities for sac flies and the risk of double plays. TTO tho is also partly a response to the elevated pitching capabilities - velocity and spin.

This is all just to say that batters are falling behind and there’s an argument that it hurts the on-field product from an entertainment perspective since balls in play are what we ultimately watch for - if torpedo bats make it more likely that players can bat for higher averages by barreling up the ball more consistently, it will be good for the game.

Other alternative proposals include lowering the mound (famously done in the 60s), adjusting the ball (eg lower seams, which makes it harder for pitchers to generate spin and makes the same spin rates less effective), and so on.

One good (bad?) thing is that to some extent pitchers are starting to reach a biomechanical wall, evidenced by the greatly increased rates of Tommy John surgery, though that is partly also an effect of better surgical techniques and recovery times.

Point is - it’s complicated.

There are discussions about lowering the seams (harder to generate spin and makes the same spin rates less aerodynamically effective) as well as lowering the mound.

There are plenty of associations who do this: https://worldhickoryopen.com/

I still play with my grandfather's persimmon clubs about 25% of the time.

It's just a coordination problem... but once the dominant professional association the game changes forever, because the vast majority of people just want to emulate the pros, because they grew up dreaming of becoming pro.

Golf is finally trying to do something about this with rolling back the golf ball so that it will have diminishing returns with more power, but the real damage was done in the early 80s by allowing hollow clubs to make the sweet spot bigger, which lead to it becoming absolutely huge in the 90s.

Again, once you go down this road, you'll wake up in 20 years wondering what happened.

The data show the only things that have had an impact on golf are the golf ball and speed training. And we’re rolling back the golf ball.

I don't disagree with any of this, I'm just saying that we know where this goes. It's just an arms races if you let it become one. If the pitching is getting too good, make it harder to pitch.

>In short, you would rather have a lower BA and a higher home run rate even if it means a higher K rate, since home runs (and 2Bs) are so significantly more valuable than singles, and fly outs are also much more valuable than ground outs (or really, less bad) due to the opportunities for sac flies and the risk of double plays.

Again, I see this as the tail wagging the dog. It's easy to point to home runs as entertaining, but they a ultimately rather boring. For die hard fans, you want more hits that end up in play, with more strategy, and more opportunity for mistakes and drama. You're not going to get that from home run derbies.

Again, I know it's complicated, but ultimately, most sports organizations face an extremely complicated paradigm. It's fun to follow complicated sports where anything can happen, but it's hard to follow the same sports if you're not already into them. The way you solve this is to make the sports incredibly accessible so people visit games easily and cheaply as entertainment. The American sports system doesn't allow this because there is no relegation system, and so the fan bases are too large to allow the game to be accessible to most people. You end up making decisions that make television more watchable, and by making things "important" by "breaking records." This ultimately dilutes the game because it makes breaking records less relevant over time.

We've got to the point in golf where someone setting an all time PGA scoring record is basically a yawn-fest, because everyone knows they're not playing the same game.

>The data show

It's the clubs and everyone knows it but nobody wants to admit it because the club manufacturers are the money behind the game.

You give a pro a persimmon driver and 70's blades and it doesn't matter if they're hitting a modern ball or the pre-pro v's from the 90s... you can't hit it out of your shoes because you won't be able to hit the sweet spot.

Yes, the ball is a problem, but it's not the problem. The problem is exactly that we've allowed the sweet spot to become too big, which has led to the end of the finesse aspect of the game.

Everything you described about golf has already happened in MLB.

Babe Ruth’s wood bat was 44 oz.

Today’s wood bat in MLB are ~33 oz.

The bat Babe Ruth used was so heavy he literally had to swing the bat different than how players can swing the bat today.

There’s a short video on this here: https://youtu.be/P_uiHUJg7zs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_bat

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Fishing has even undergone this technical change.

FFS (Front Facing Sonar) has completely changed the sport of fishing tournaments, since now you can literally identify where to cast (direction and depth) to catch a fish … and you can even target the fish by their size.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Dw-l_Smuqj8?si=QVvuAoNlfAb_-9F2

There’s minor leagues all over the USA. It’s pretty cheap to go to a baseball game if it’s not MLB. And even MLB if your not picky on where you sit and the game time

>that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot.

I agree completely with your synopsis, but I'm still a bit torn on whether it is a bad thing... I first golfed using my parent's 1970s era wood headed, aluminum shaft clubs that were extremely limited - it really was entirely about the golfer, not the equipment. Years later when I picked the game back up a bit - it's clear the equipment is doing a lot of work to make the user better. That said, at least at the amateur level - most of us still aren't great golfers, and given that many golfers are older and have physical limitations, it is a bad thing if better equipment improves their game and potentially gives them a few more years of enjoyment over the old stuff?

I have a parallel view on skis - man those old straight long skis were hard on knees and so many skiers were lucky to still be charging after 40. Lotta knee surgeons made good money in the 80s! Then along came parabolic skis and made us all better and safer skiers - almost anyone can shred in today's skis because they are frankly easy to ride. In that case - the technology was a positive innovation.

Your last paragraph nails it - the magic of baseball is its simplicity. Baseball games should take a long time and be an act of leisure. The idea of putting a baserunner on third to speed up a game is an abomination in the same way the addition of something other than a wood bat would detract from the skill of the player swinging it. So I'm with you - this could be some kind of equipment arms race that won't end well.

>The American sports system doesn't allow this because there is no relegation system

A few years ago a friend of mine from the UK made the observation that American Football would benefit greatly from a relegation system... every season I have the same reaction. By about the 4th week of the season, the NFL bifurcates into legitimate contenders and everybody else. You end up with Thursday nights and late season games that nobody gives a shit about because it's gonna be a blowout. For that matter - the last 2-3 weeks of the season the playoffs are already set, so half the league has no reason to even play - and the quality of the product on the field matches this. Some kind of two-tier system would go a long way to fix this, and might also help with the larger problem of the bridge between the college and pro games. At the moment, the NFL is maybe the only league that doesn't really have a "minor league" or development league - its the colleges, and between NIL and the portal system, colleges aren't necessarily producing pro-ready players.

Can't they make the courses bigger/harder?

I used to attend round rock express games a lot. The problem is because they are a minor league team, it doesn’t matter if they are good or bad. There is no one to root for because their best players are all just sent up to the majors.

It lacks generational fandom, because there is no place for hope in farm teams.

I don't know as much about golf as you, but I have the urge to object to "finesse" being used to describe being able to hit a smaller sweetspot. Thinking of tennis, I would say finesse should be used to describe being able to vary your swing, putting "english" on the ball, soft tap dink shots, etc.

pros are going to be better with any type of equipment, and they're going to be better at finesse, but doesn't a bigger sweet spot allow amateurs to play with more finesse than they could otherwise? it means more reliably being able to fade, draw, etc. rather than slice and hook, and it means more people can enjoy the game.

That’s exactly what has happened. The real issue is that it’s materially changed what the game is about.

They're never going to change this, it's the reason NFL franchises have such massively inflated valuations. Same w/ basketball + IPL franchises, very little downside risk to the earning power of the franchise.

> but once the dominant professional association the game changes forever, because the vast majority of people just want to emulate the pros, because they grew up dreaming of becoming pro

I don't want to squash anyone's dreams but I feel like "emulating the pros" undermines the "spirit of the game" a lot. Most sports are literally "bet I can" style games that have then been refined and refined. They don't intrinsically matter to life continuing.

When you've experienced "sledging" in a low skill amateur series and the defence is "the pro's do it" then the fun of the game is gone...

I think what both have in common is this: People who don't otherwise care about the sport will watch highlights of people smashing balls really far with sticks. And "people...will watch" generates revenue.

People who are passionate about either sport will find them less and less interesting, but 1) most of you will keep watching anyway, and 2) the sports can afford to lose you for the parts you won't watch if it increases the total amount of "seconds people will watch" enough by drawing in enough new eyeballs.

Hasn't baseball already turned into this with the rise of three true outcomes?

I agree about the skis. I think one important difference from the golf clubs is that they've enabled the really talented people to take things to a level previously unimaginable. Big mountain skiing is pretty bananas these days.

There’s 17 games… not 170.

Any given Sunday.

Speaking as a curling fan: the game has been greatly enhanced by the analogous technological improvements. Shots that used to be fever dreams are now routine at top levels of play, and the sport is better off for it. The change is even more dramatic worldwide than in Canada; teams from countries like Japan and Korea (perhaps the most impressive in this regard) have had to keep up with these advances while also generally becoming competitive on the world stage - in a sport where previously (say, a few decades ago) Canada, Scotland (the birthplace of the game) and maybe a couple of European countries were the only ones worth paying attention to.

I think there's very much something to be said for standardizing equipment in sports that use it, at least to a point.

> It's easy to point to home runs as entertaining, but they a ultimately rather boring. For die hard fans, you want more hits that end up in play, with more strategy, and more opportunity for mistakes and drama. You're not going to get that from home run derbies.

There's a counter-example in Cricket.

The game used to be a 5-day long battle with daily skirmishes and tactical changes required according to the ebbs and flows of the weather, the players, the score each day. Sometimes you could win just by exhausting the other team, sometimes you could gain advantage by changing your play style transiently to force the other team to react. The players all wore white uniforms, national pride was wrapped up the success of the country's team and being a Good Sport was the highest ideal.

Then, the powers that be created a shorter variant, the One-Day Match. The players started wearing brightly coloured uniforms, the crowds grew louder and entire categories of strategy were rendered useless as the game finished in 20% of the time. Viewership increased, cricket became "exciting" and the players sometimes achieved rockstar status usually reserved for sports that more easily captured the Australian sporting imagination like swimming and athletics.

The trend was clear: the entertainment value of short-form cricket games were spectacular. In came a myriad of new sponsorship categories for things like domestic household goods ("It's Australia's Favourite Air"), energy drinks and Sports Utility Vehicles that would appeal to the demographic of viewers who only had a "day's length investment" in the game. They started playing popular music in between game pauses and the Gentlemanliness of the game's spirit gave way to Victory as the highest Ideal.

Then, Cricket had it's "YouTube Shorts" moment -- an even more abridged version of the game that only lasted 20 overs per side was born. This hyper-speed version of cricket favoured fast results, flying balls and fan participation like never before. There was now fireworks and rock music and after-parties and more. It was All Killer, No Filler. The goal was to Smash It Outta The Park as much as possible, and every time they did it, a quick ad-break got to play on TV while the fans in the crowd got to sing Seven Nation Army while cheering on whoever caught the ball this time. The domestic competition is even called the "Big Bash League".

Australian Cricket's archetype went from Twelve Magnificent Fellows in Baggy Green Hats to what feels like a monster truck rally with branded personalised beers, bucket hats, and brand-safe team rivalries. Sometimes they even drive a Ute truck around the stadium at half-time.

What I'm trying to say is that popular demand or the voices of those who claim to interpret it say that Spectacle Isn't Boring. They love the exciting moments, and maybe are only willing to tolerate the slow and strategic sides of the game to get to the next Home Run. This trend towards shallow spectacle seems to be happening to all forms of entertainment and I suspect that baseball is not immune.

> It lacks generational fandom, because there is no place for hope in farm teams.

Depends if you are a fan of the Major league team, imo. I enjoyed the Round Rock Express when they were a part of the Houston Astros. I still remember being really excited to see Hunter Pence in Round Rock on his way to the Majors. Lost interest in RR once it became the Texas Rangers farm team thou

Yes, and the league produced a better product when it was 14 and 16 games a season - week 17 is painful to watch.

>they've enabled the really talented people to take things to a level previously unimaginable

And I guess that's where I wonder if golf might be a sport where equipment should be restricted at the professional level, the same way that metal bats are not allowed in MLB. Here's another weird way to look at it - you can ingest whatever you want and go play on the company softball team, but an Olympic athlete takes an aspirin and they might get a lifetime ban. It doesn't seem unreasonable to deliberately restrict professional athletics in ways that might constrain it and yet allow us to gauge the athletes in their purest form. Some in the world have advocated for the idea that we should remove all constraints - take all the drugs, use all the physics and science to enhance performance, and let's really see what we can do. It's a fun idea, but like one of the parent posters alluded - we might not like where that all ends up.

Generally I agree with you, but I think MLB has actually been pretty responsive to the modern-era dynamic nature of the game. Love them or hate them, they're trying rule changes in the minor leagues and bringing up the ones that work. To me in particular I found the shift frustrating as a fan, and was glad to see a game rule to address it. I also like that they are willing to admit they're wrong, like with the juiced balls. MLB has lots of issues but I think they're doing a pretty good job keeping the sport alive given all the circumstances.

Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself.

If you don't like a particular thing in golf, then don't use that particular thing. And if it destroys the entertainment value, then don't watch that.

This is very similar to how speedruns for video games have multiple categories with different rulesets, and you pick whichever one you like best.

Isn't baseball already a shallower form of cricket anyway?

When baseball starts taking multiple days to finish a game, I'll obviously change my tune. I just think the scope of cricket is a unique and bizarre one.

>Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself.

With modern golf, yes. This is only because of the advent of television. Match-play used to dominate the game, and is still advocated my many (myself included), which allows direct competition, and introduces risk-reward strategy depending on how the other player plays.

By "finesse" I just mean that the sweet spot is to small to consistently hit with a full powered swing, so by doing that, you're taking a huge risk. That's the way it was in the 70's, but it's just not that way any longer. The idea is that there needs to be a tradeoff between power and accuracy.

Here is Sam Snead in his prime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjEJgC5nYXw

Here is Bryson warming up today: https://www.reddit.com/r/golf/comments/1joeiap/vijay_just_lo...

It's like absolute night and day. It used to be a combination of balance and power. Now it's just brute force. The way Bryson is playing just isn't possible with a persimmon.

Well, even match-play is about as interactive as running a race.

Very different from the direct interaction you have in a game like Baseball.

Don’t you already want to hit the baseball as hard as you can at every opportunity? Just with the caveat that you need to develop skill with using a one-size-fits-all bat? Is bunting and going for balls that big of a deal currently, that a player who could rock one into left field would decide not to?

Surely any strategy around loading up bases to stack the deck for your strongest hitter remains, it seems like this levels between hitters more than from hitter to pitcher?

Quick tip in case you don't have a good sense of what an ounce feels like: It's exactly 5 quarters (the coin).

So the difference between Babe's bat and today's is about the weight of 55 quarters (a roll and a half). Years of doing laundry at laundromats have given me a keen sense of how much handfuls of quarters weigh, so I find this actually pretty handy.

Just in case:

* A nickel is exactly 5 grams.

* A penny (1982+) is 2.5 grams.

* A dime is 0.08 ounces.

* A quarter is 0.2 ounces.

* 5 rolls of nickels = 1 kilogram

* 2 rolls of quarters = 1 pound.

Why did the U.S. Mint switch between even metric and even imperial units? Probably has to do with the changing metals in those coins. That said, the new small dollar coin is 8.1g / 0.286oz which makes no sense at all. It is, however, exactly 2mm thick.

It's really not. You can absolutely change your strategy based on what the other player is doing.

> Don’t you already want to hit the baseball as hard as you can at every opportunity?

Not at all! Always swinging for home runs is a recipe for a lot of strike outs. Singles and doubles win games.

Though, maybe not for long.

> Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself.

That is not at all how tournament/competitive golf works. And that's what sets the tone for the whole sport.

I am not a golfist at all and unfortunately I feel that I must instinctively hate the game - that is really my problem and not golf's. Golf is a decent sport and not deserving of my opprobrium.

So why do I feel the need to dislike golf? I'm a white skinned, middle aged male and my job title is Managing Director. Obviously I should be a passionate small white ball smacker. No I'm not.

I love the idea of golf but hate the ... environment. That is still on me. Our wedding ding dong was held in a hotel that majored in golf (Woodbury/Devon/UK - Nigel Mansell's place), 19 years ago.

I think that golf needs to go back say 300 years. A bloke sporting a kilt would slyly whip out a hidden club on a Sunday (shock, horror) and whack a ball/stone away. Just for the absolute hell of it.

Golf needs to find its joy again. If it does, then I'll join in.

If we’re drawing parallels to other sports, I greatly prefer formula 1 to NASCAR…

I prefer local dirt track racing to either one of those. It's like watching an olympics with local atheletes. A ton more variance instead of micro optimizations.

> so half the league has no reason to even play

Guys are always playing for their jobs if nothing else.

There are only a few games where you can put out tape and careers are short in the NFL. So even if you're on a completely losing team there's plenty to play for.

opprobrium - Now that's a 10$ word!

I think everything you noted as a downside is why, in part, things like Pickleball and Disc Golf took off in the last 5 years.

They’re similar to things we know, but different enough that they haven’t been optimized out of reach by normals, or at least perceived as such, and both have a relatively cheap barrier of entry to get started.

I think we may find 20 years from now the dominate sports have changed up a bit. I have heard that the NFL and MLB for instance are worried about the incoming decline of their sports because they aren’t nearly as popular with people under 35 compared to basketball and other up snd coming sports

> If the pitching is getting too good, make it harder to pitch.

For ball games it sounds mostly fair.

There is a weird situation in cycling where any attempt at improvement (even in riding postures) getting banned by the UCI has become a meme and each year's announcement generates a fest of joke videos.

That would be the other end of the spectrum we're trying to avoid.

In minor leagues you root for the players. At least when I was a kid I did. I knew them, had my favorites and they were accessible. I got lots of autographs of future stars and it was incredibly exciting to see them make it to the majors. As a kid anyway, which is who I feel baseball is for, it's weird to me for adults to care about baseball.

You don't have to let it set the tone for your golf.

Runners tell you the same thing. Or bicyclists.

Are there similar optimizations available for basketball? Shoes can only do so much.

Not really, due to how the game is designed. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the sport but the way is played leaves little room comparatively for artificial optimization

For professional basketball, the statistical advantage of 3-point has completely warped the game. There are a lot of articles online about it

Indy car vs F1.

Indy car is every team essentially driving the same car. (The standardization you’re talking about)

F1 however, establishes guardrails for what teams can & cannot do. And then lets the teams innovate within those definitions.

If you go to a public course with some friends, drink like a fish, and just have fun. Golf doesn't have any of that environment. Now I take it you are in the UK from what you say, so maybe its different. But I can go to a public course for $10, spend $20 on a cart rental, and spend the same on booze. Definitely not high class.

Baby Ruth was known for using a heavy bat. Most players used lighter bats.

People have had similar sentiments in tennis about how racket and ball technology has changed the game over the years. Moving away from wooden rackets led to a massive increase in power and a larger sweet spot, which transformed the game from finesse to powerful serve-and-volley play. John McEnroe began with wooden racquets, while Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi adjusted to carbon fiber frames. Then poly strings took things even further, players generated extreme topspin to deliver aggressive swings with much more consistency, pushing the game back towards the high-powered baseline style.

For me, Roger Federer's style represents tennis at its most beautiful. His all-court game feels effortless and graceful, almost like a dance. But from a court-level view, it's more of a high-speed chess match built on calculated aggression, constantly pressuring opponents and waiting for the slightest opening to strike a point-winning shot. That level of sophistication and precision wouldn’t be possible without modern racket technology.

I still feel emotionally tied to classic matches from my childhood, especially Federer versus Nadal. But there's no objective reason, because tennis keeps getting better. People worried finesse was disappearing, but players like Alcaraz have brought back drop shots and clever cat-and-mouse tactics against deep-baseline defenders like Zverev and Medvedev. It’s a technique that was once considered too risky to rely on consistently.

In golf, tennis, baseball, basketball, running, & any other sport will keep evolving as technology & athleticism improves. Clinging to older styles feels more like holding onto the past than genuinely appreciating progress. If you can’t enjoy Curry hitting daggers in the Olympic finals or Kiplimo breaking 57 minutes in a half marathon, maybe the problem isn't with the sport itself. Maybe it’s the comfort of past memories holding you back from appreciating what’s happening now.

Yeah there’s a pretty clear distinction between the NBA (and even college somewhat) from before Steph Curry and after. It’s been as revolutionary as the addition of the line in the first place and the shot clock.

This argument about progress falls apart as soon as you consider previous eras in sport that were found wanting. Was the bruising play of the 2004 NBA superior to previous kinds of basketball? Most people would disagree. Were the stickhandling of Martin Brodeur and the Left Wing Lock the culmination of decades of hockey "progress?" Not even a Devils or Red Wings fan would say that. Should everyone have celebrated when it was discovered in the 1990 World Cup that the most efficient strategy was to deliver the ball into the hands of the goalkeeper over and over? No, because it was incredibly boring.

I assure you we are kindred spirits. I started writing about golf as someone who was just a bit embarrassed to like golf because nobody was writing about golf from a skeptical position.

My blogs name is “Wigs on the Green” because that’s and archaic term for a fistfight, and I wasn’t to write like I was willing to burn every bridge if I thought it was good for golf, environmentalism, and the culture.

I learned on muni’s and went to graduate school in Scotland where I learned the snooty aspects of golf are almost exclusively a North American phenomena.

It sometimes does...rarely, though.

Home runs are not "balls in play," though. So are we to go to a binary game, which amounts to whiffs or homers?

Also I don't think your assertion that batters have "fallen behind" pitchers holds up. Shohei Ohtani just became the first player to have 50 homers and 50 stolen bases.

Making it harder to pitch leads to more batters getting hit and more injuries, depending on how it's done.

amen. i hit golf balls with old hand me downs from my great uncle. the woods - the heads are wooden! they feel great to connect and they can crush distance. but the feel is so full and warm. i guess like warm vinyl records.

even better- i get to suck on so many shots. but sometimes - glory and feels.

another thing i like to celebrate when doing new sports ks starting with the crappiest gear available. it works and i learn. eventually when i upgrade, i can appreciate the new features and tech. or it’s bogus and doesn’t matter.

probably inappropriate but i find this phrase encouraging - it’s not the arrow, it’s the indian.

There was another article on these baseball bats where the opposing manager—the one whose team gave up the home runs—said, "It ain't the wand; it's the magician."

The stolen base thing is such a canard. The rules changes made stealing massively easier. He probably wouldn’t have stolen 30 under the old rules.

I know nothing of baseball.

If pitching evolves faster than hitting, does that mean the response time of the hitter becomes shkrter? Can't you move the pitcher further away to give the hitter more time to respond?

I would expand this to any professional sport.

I know its unpopular opinion basically anywhere, but I detest most professional sports that have enough money in them for enough time. It literally and visibly corrupts game. Football (and hockey, basketball etc.) became monopoly game long time ago. Cycling became much worse re doping than bodybuilding ffs, literally everybody is dosing and the game is only about better evasion of newer compounds from ever-evolving tests. And so on.

There is very little former spirit of why games like olympics started. Just read about first few olympics how they were done. Very respectable achievements even if not the best times. But times should be largely irrelevant, it should be way more about team efforts, camaraderie, and internal motivation. Now its just chasing sponsors, promotions, routing to instagram accounts in bikinis for female athletes. I get it, it generates tons of cash, but I do sports and like them for sports, nothing else.

In contrary I still love sports cca on fringe, where sportsmen do it more for the love of it than anything more pragmatical. Thats real passion, not manufactured ones with big redbull or adidas logos all over the place and contracts running in millions or more.

When I extend it to personal level - I like running just by myself, no watch to track me. I know how much effort I do, every sporty person does very well. I don't care about my times, laps, energy spent, progression, getting better every week and so on. That's not a good reason to do it and sustain long term (apart from unhealthily competitive persons but thats another story).

Sort of similar in Formula 1. Team finds a loophole in rules, exploits it for performance gain, FIA bans it. Rinse and repeat.

Basically none of this is true. The wild card system has resulted in an NFL where well over half the league has playoff hopes very deep into the season. It's completely false that "by about the 4th week of the season", the league has bifurcated. Simply not even close to being true.

The NFL has also been extremely successful in leveling the playing field via salary cap and draft, such that franchises beset by woe can become title contenders within a single year. The most recent of many, many examples is the Washington Commanders. Detroit came before that.

And no, the playoffs are not "already set" before the last 3 weeks. This is completely inaccurate, as anyone who watches the NFL and reads about the near-infinite playoff scenarios at the close of every season already knows.

And lastly, only a Brit with no understanding of the economics of American football would even propose that relegation could work in this sport. It can't. The sport costs far too much for that and any such "relegated" teams would instantly collapse financially. NFL rosters contain 53 players with a practice squad of 17 and gigantic support staffs which absolutely could not survive without the full levels of NFL TV contract funding, stadium revenues, and other financial flows that full NFL membership provides.

And lastly, anyone who is paying any attention to the NFL draft over time knows that there is no issue with colleges producing pro-ready players.

Slow game warns other slow game, hey you might get fast.

Opposite advice. Take the best equipment and enjoy the game the most, focus on strategy with the increased options and capabilities.

So much time and frustration wasted with inferior equipment that sucks the life out, or requires a path of practice and mastery most people don't want for hobbies or things they enjoy doing.

If YOU want to use the least helpful tools and make up the difference with knowledge, skill and practice that's OK. To each their own and if you enjoy that then 100%. Just remember some people enjoy things in a lot of different ways.

I totally agree.

This simply impacts the viewers of the sport, right?

When you play, you can play with whatever equipment you want, with a like minded group of players. Keep the game as “pure” as you want or use “The Sure Thing” clubs from top golf. The changes only matter on TV and then specifically if you compare that product to years or decades back. MLB is an incredibly poor example of maintaining purity. the most sacred records in the game were totally shattered, repeatedly, with modern technology and pharmaceuticals all in order to increase TV viewership and no penalties at all. To pretend there is some preservation of purity they are keeping these guys out of the Hall of Fame for a while, but the teams didn’t have fines or lose wins or draft picks or even have any of these guys suspended when everyone knew they were cheating.

It’s this intersection between taking part and entertainment where this odd gatekeeping happens. I hated hydraulic disc brakes and EPS on race bikes, until I tried it, the stuff is great but for myself I still ride bikes without electronics and rim brakes sometimes. I pinch the barbs on my hooks when I fly fish, I know others don’t and probably catch fish that I don’t, but for me I pinch the barbs. Oddly, I find it acceptable to use completely modern lines and rods and can throw a fly way better than any angler could in years ago. I’ve been able to find more satisfaction competing against myself with my own criteria than worrying about the purity on tv.

You're confusing the micro for the macro.

Weren’t the Eagles a .500 team through week 4 and then won it all last season? You are correct that some teams mail it in once they’ve got the playoff seed locked but its a small handful of games. The broncos were a .500 team through game 6 and were in a wild card game last season.

In those few games where they sit starters, the backups absolutely want to do their best to get starting jobs, the games aren’t uncontested.

Not from the US and therefore I know nothing about it either. I thought a torpedo bat would be something like this:

https://static.odealo.com/uploads/auction_images//6441500406...

But in comparison these new bats look exactly like the old ones...

There's a lot of variance in golf courses and golf cultures and players. At worst it's really bad, at best it's really good.

Maybe there could be a coordination method to only play with blades and persimmons. Then you could mark it in when reporting your score for handicap calculation. That's the make-it-or-break-it decision. If there's a way to get recognition or compensation for playing with worse equipment, then people might do it.

Shorter courses could also be more interesting this way. Then you would have more places to play closer by, eliminating travel etc.

There's some precedent already. Drivers have limitations and most manufacturers are under them (ie just at the limit for things like moment of inertia) but drivers that are outside regulations are available to buy online. Also horizontal distance metering is allowed in competition, but not vertical distance. Most rangefinders have a visible external switch to disable vertical distance. One could expand from those two places where we by regulation already use sub-optimal equipment.

MLB could move the mound back or lower it again like was done in 1969 after the 'Year of the Pitcher', but it's not that simple.

The other crisis baseball faces is pitcher arm health. The mere act of throwing a ball 90-105 mph is damaging to the arm, and it only gets worse the harder you throw. Every pitcher is chasing velocity and spin rate since the resulting success and money is undeniable. Pitchers frequently need major surgery and extended year+ time recovering as a result.

If the mound is moved back or lowered pitchers will respond by doubling down on chasing velocity just to stay level, leading to more injuries and UCL replacement surgeries.

The same incentives apply to other options to give batters an edge, like juicing the ball or shrinking the strike zone. Pitchers will respond with velocity and blow up their arms.

I have stopped following professional sports for at least a couple of decades, despite being a sportsman of the real variety--of practice and not attendance as a spectator. A friend sometimes invites me to see G League basketball games—he has season tickets—and sometimes I go, more for the company than anything else.

I watch a spectacle, dreadful, terrible. Every time out is a good reason to blast loud, annoying music and show a group of dancing children on the jumbotron, for a cheerleading exhibition of people who are over 60 or under 13, for a competition in which the girl, or the middle-aged man in attendance, tries to score a bucket with bio-mechanically unsound movements that herald an expensive visit to the orthopedist, for a toss from the in-house entertainers either of T-shirts or socks that gets retirees, who are struggling to get out of their chairs, all excited.

Cops on the court checking that the retirees themselves are not throwing a fit, tickets to be scanned, metal detectors ringing for a key in the pocket, a $15 draft beer. When I leave, I'm exhausted, mortified, wondering who made me do it.

Give me back the sport of 50 years ago, or never invite me again.

No, for golf at least, it completely changes the way the game is played for even amateurs.

If you really believe this, just go full bore and get a swingless golf club: https://youtu.be/MGpg8rclilc?si=S-vEbbtk3RWMAkg6

Yeah, but you still can play with the harder to use clubs or older balls or whatever. Some amateur coming to the course and driving 300yds too easily doesn't have to change the way you play.

I guess if you want to compete with them then there is that.

Yeah, no. All this does is make golf more accessible and engaging to the average weekend hacker with like a 19+ handicap. Not everyone has the natural talent to play scratch golf, and of those that don't, not everyone is committed enough to spend day after day at the driving range.

So all the tech improvements are doing is letting the average duffer keep it closer to the fairway and maybe have some fun, instead of getting so frustrated they quit.

I'm not sure I can agree with that. I think the top level of curling has reached a point that's boring to watch as too many shots are perfect. It leads to boring games of waiting for a missed shot. It's far more entertaining to watch the chaos of a mixed doubles match. That said I wish I could see more than just the Olympics.

> Pitchers will respond with velocity and blow up their arms

They seem, from the outside, like they'll do this no matter what. Move the mound back, allow torpedo bats or don't, do you think pitchers will intentionally pass up the money and success?

Are those runners and bicyclists not confused? Taking a risk in golf could save a stroke or cost several; are runners making mistakes like "run harder for a bit but fall into a pond" or "run harder for a bit but exceed limits and take an injury"?

I'm starting to be tempted. Golf should be a natural fit for me and I am well aware I'm the curmudgeon.

"Wigs on the Green" - love the name ... OK it looks like Georgian/Regency so roughly 16-17C when wigs were popular and they would fly off during a proper scrap.

Fair enough, but 50 homers is still pretty good.

My understanding is that the whole history of basketball is explained by the fact that they won't make the court bigger and the nets higher to account for the fact that the players are seven feet tall now.