Truth. Little cocksuckers have found every loophole and destroyed a once beautiful game. It's unfixable because what they have done, works. The cost is that it's unwatchable. They've resorted to bat flipping, pirouettes, and yelling Fuck on the mound to try and save this bucket of shit. Now they'll outlaw the shift to strengthen their biggest weakness. Hitters will work day and night to add 2 degrees to their launch angle yet somehow it's too hard to go the other way or to bunt. Why? Because it doesn't pay. The double whammy of boring loopholes and corruption.

it is hard to go the other way against major league pitching. especially when its a hard slider breaking in on your hands.

JUSS HIT DA BAWWW is such a meat head mentality

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

I thought sliders break away from the hitter.....

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Hawaii (fuck) You

not all pitchers use the same arm to throw

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

Righties don't throw sliders to righties you meathead.

Nope. It's called honing your craft. A professional hitter can not only hone his swing for a 2 degree up/down movement for launch angle, he can hone the bunt and and hone an inside out swing.

What they used to do with hard breaking balls on the hands is punch it down the line foul. Now it's a swing and a miss because they swing out of their shoes with a 20% bat angle.

Don't give me this meathead crap. Come at me with thoughts, not insults.

Exactly. I'm torn about that game because it was such a great moment in White Sox history. But at my core I know it was as phony as when Mark and Sammy "saved baseball."

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Nerds aren't ruining the game, they are just optimizing outcomes under the rules. You want different outcomes, change the rules.

Limit teams to 4 pitchers per game and you'll see teams running phalanxes of Mark Buerhle clones out there. Leave the rules as they are and you'll continue to see 5 relief pitchers per team each night each stomping around the mound for 35 seconds or so to gear themselves up for the next 99 MPH fastball.

I'm all for limiting the number of pitchers a team can use per game, but it's only going to possibly solve some of the game's problems. For instance, I don't think it will have much of an impact on these three outcome at bats.

A called strike 2 is a K. It solves the 3 outcome travesty. The count isn't getting worked by the Lookers. The contact hitters get a loophole. And the HR hitters still get to hit HRs

Ive been following baseball preview/predictions from all the major sports news outlets the last 2 weeks.

Last week WSox were being picked to make the WS and about 50% to win it all. Jeff Passan predicts the WSox to win it all.

But this week it seems like the Blue Jays are the team everyone is picking to come out of the AL and win the WS.

I think my waning interest is more due to the lockout. There wasn't much buildup and the free agency which provides off season interest was truncated

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Two of the three outcomes are walks and K's. Both of them almost by definition are going to run up the pitch count of whoever is on the mound. If your team is counting on you to go 7+ innings, you can't run up a 110 pitch count in the 5th inning trying to whiff every batter. Pitchers will have to throw more strikes, and likely more hittable strikes to get deeper into games. So most certainly it will have an impact on two of the three outcomes.

you should inform all these professional players to try honing more so they dont get out so many times. its crazy how the greatest hitters on the planet still manage to ignore Nardi and make outs in baseball games, when all it requires is the honing. Its almost like the pitchers are really fucking good too. I've always been impressed with the honing ability of major league pitchers.

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

and there was no insult. i said it was a meat head mentality. but if you're one of those people at games scream at them to just hit the ball, because its so easy since they mustve honed their skills, then yeah. you might be a meat head.

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

I guess it's a miracle there aren't more Ks with all the hard sliders in on the hands.

yeah, i really need to hone my examples so they dont upset you. shame on me.

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

Definitely. It was pretty bad.

^ See more nerd talk!

I like this...add in enforcement of the true strike zone and you've solved the pace of play issue.

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The problem is, the three outcomes are coming more from the hitting side than the pitching side. Batters are going to the plate with the goal of hitting a homerun or walking, and not particularly caring if they strike out. You can have a league full of Buerhle's and that doesn't really change. However, as Big W said, I think limiting a team to four pitchers might help move the game along.

Pitchers force the action, hitters react.

The thought would be that right now, hitters sell out for HRs because the likelihood of stringing together 3-6 hits multiple times a game isn't a likely occurrence when you have a starter that you see 2x at best and then a wave of relievers throwing no more than 16 pitches each, all in excess of 97 MPH or that have remarkable movement. The thought then is that hitting an HR is by far your most viable scoring option.

You change the action that pitchers are forcing: more hittable pitches, fewer pitchers in a game, and this opens up greater possibilities for 3-6 hit rallies multiple times in the game, and lessens the dependence on the HR. There is also a secondary effect in that if you have more balls in play and more rallies that result in runs, you are going to be more motivated to develop excellent defensive players. Excellent defensive players can most definitely hit HRs, that is a thing, but you'll see fewer HR hitting defensive butchers in the game, because before maybe they had 1-2 defensive chances a game, now you are not only increasing their defensive opportunities, but the risk of error on those opportunities is higher because you have a more ball in play centric game.

None of this matters because the rule change isn't going to happen, but I really think it would be the most dramatic and effective way to reduce reliance on three true outcomes, speed up the pace of play, and encourage development of more well rounded and more diversified pitchers and hitters.