old bats & new players

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/offbase/050726&num=0

Steroids or not, modern players are bigger and stronger than 1920's players, and there's just no way that any of today's sluggers could get around on a low-90's fastball with a 38 or 40 oz. bat. The game has evolved toward lighter bats for a reason -- conversely, if there was an advantage to using heavier bats, more people would be using them.

oh, that's not right -- I meant more control over the bat head

well since 2001 (73*!) there has been a huge shift to using maple (higher density) away from the white ash of yesteryear.

i mean, al gore threw an 80 mph fastball while he was vice president.

feller was clocked (i believe) in the mid-90s waybackwhen, and could probably throw a harder than that. anyway, it's clear that in the 1950s you had guys throwing not a helluva lot slower than they do now, and bats were still a lot bigger and strikeouts and home runs were still in much fewer number (not unrelated imo). movement in the deadball era was in all likelihood more vicious than ever, what w/ the spitball and imprecise & softer baseballs, but velocity was probably pretty slow for the most part.

feller was clocked at 98.6 fwiw.

Lower K rates (for hitters) were more prevalent in the past in part because pitchers generally didn't throw as hard as they do now. Also, that was a different era where K's were frowned upon and batters who could bunt their way on or slap the ball around to all fields were more valued than they are now. Today, we're more tolerant of the "high risk, high reward" style of hitting where guys swing for the fences and strike out a lot. The K isn't frowned upon like it used to be. Contact hitters now are as good as they ever were, it's just that there are less of them.

Also, there was a great spread in the abilities of 1920's players than we have now. For instance, it's acknowledged that pitchers didn't have to throw as hard when facing weaker hitter, and only used their best stuff when facing the best hitters (contributing to the greater prevelance of 300-IP hurlers and extra-inning CG's). Pitchers obviously can't get away with that now.

So, I can believe that the best pitchers could throw in the mid-90's but they were the very rare exceptions, whereas now, throwing in the 90's is fairly commonplace. That means, back in the day, hitters could get away with using heavier bats against most pitchers (who probably threw in the 70's or 80's MPH) but were more overmatched using those bats against guys like Feller.

Also, Johnson's legendary speed is certainly linked to his unconventional delivery, which probably made his pitches seem faster than they were. Maybe saying he only threw in the 80's is incorrect, but can you name one fireballing sidearmer, even one that's playing right now?

i still think yr idea that pitchers topped out in the 70s or even low 80s is preposterous, but i agree w/ pretty much everything else you said, but maybe not to the degree you say it, as least w/ regard to disparity in velocity. i DO believe that overall, velocity is greater due to pitchers being bigger and stronger and better maintained than ever, but the art of pitching fast is an enigmatic one, and there's no real reason to believe that guys like feller couldn't throw just as hard as anyone in the game today. and feller wasn't unhittable even in his prime, 40 oz bats or not.

-from an unarchived msn article

are guys like wagner and beckett and ryan examples of cutting edge mechanical efficiency, medicine and intensive training, or are they corn-fed farmboys who just somehow have the exceptional ability to throw a baseball 100 mph? i lean towards the latter. again, there's no question that atheletes today are bigger and stronger and faster, but i see no reason that a guy like feller couldn't match up w/ anyone today. was he exception then, and would he be less exceptional today? yeah. but yr vastly overestimating how weak pitchers were back then. i went to a high school of 120 kids in the middle of nowhere, and we had a lhp who could throw 90+ at 17. anyway, i stand by high-80s low-90s claim.

you know, i dunno how long the radar gun has been in common usage, but it doesn't seem to me that it'd be terribly difficult to do some kind of average velocity over the past 20 years, to see how much it's increased. my guess is that it has, but not a whole lot, and mostly because of increased specialization (and the threat of the long ball throughout the lineup, i suppose).

What kind of argument is this? One number improved by 10% and a different number in a completely different sport improved by 20%, and therefore, you've concluded that such improvements are inconsistent with each other and therefore one of them must be wrong? The long jump record has increased from about 25 to 29 feet during that time -- there's your 20% improvement.

are guys like wagner and beckett and ryan examples of cutting edge mechanical efficiency, medicine and intensive training, or are they corn-fed farmboys who just somehow have the exceptional ability to throw a baseball 100 mph?

Both, obviously. Nobody jumps from the farm to the majors anymore. Similarly, nobody jumps from doing doggie paddle at the cottage to swimming in the Olympics -- and swimmers today are faster than they used to be. Why? It's a combination of being corn-fed farmboys and farmgirls who love the water (who likely haven't changed much in the last 70 years) and better training, mechanics, getting coached from a younger age, etc.

i'm actually not sure exactly what we're arguing - you seemed to agree that pitchers could throw exceptionally hard then as now, but that the baseline was lower. if that's the case, i just need you to admit that the avg range was substantially higher than 75-85 and i'll shut up. thx.

Beats me! You made the argument first! I was making the same apples vs. oranges point you just did.

I argued that many sports have become "faster" for a myriad of reasons (measured against the clock), so it's not much of a stretch to suggest that pitchers now throw a lot harder than they used to.

You suggested that since runners are 10% faster than they were 80 years ago, it was unrealistic to think that the average pitcher throws 20% harder than they once did.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/fastest-pitcher-in-baseball.shtml

And here's the Slate article that jqh mentioned:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2116402/

No I suggest that a 20 mph spike in fastball speed over the course of 8 decades is a much bigger leap than under 1 second in a sprint.

The point isn't to make a rigourous pitching vs sprinting comparison -- take swimming or long jumping or shot put or whatever else. Lots of sports and athletics have seen gradual improvements over time. I don't see why baseball should be any different.

We all agree that pitchers throw consistently faster these days. Also, like I mentioned above, there's a huge difference between throwing 100 pitches with 100% effort (in 2005) and throwing 40 pitches with 100% effort and 60 pitches with 50% effort (old days, larger disparity between good and bad hitters). Sure, we or our friends (schlubs) might be able to throw mid-80's, but we can't do it 100 times every five days for seven months without getting hurt. Training a pitcher to do this is (through proper coaching) is part of the evolution of the game.

I don't understand why. That's the reason percentages were brought up - a 20mph increase sounds huge, but it really represents an improvement equal to or only slightly greater than the improvement found in other physical sports.

barry, those guys arms were trained (unlike al gore and alex's friends),just like today, from a very young age to be able to throw massive amounts of very hard pitches at very fast speeds. of course they let up at times, but i don't think every pitcher in baseball was constantly at a 10-20 mph dropoff from what they were capable of (and i hope you no longer have any doubt that these guys were easily capable of throwing 85+). maybe that'd be something interesting for someone to look into, i dunno. didn't happen w/ a ryan, did it? it wasn't that long ago pitchers will still pitching 300 ip in a season.

and it's been argued that all these high-tech evolutionary mechanics are much more helpful to coaches (simplified to an extreme to make it easier for a pitching coach to tell when there's a kink in the delivery) than players. i really don't see why a guy could throw harder out of a modern delivery than a full old-school windup, and i actually doubt anyone would argue as much - if anything, just the opposite.

It follows that a lot of old-timers blew out their arms even though they could only throw mid-high 80's, or even slower. A lot of injuries that used to be common are avoided these days because of improved conditioning, training, and medicine*. Now, we have "newer" injuries, which are the result of throwing a fastball at 97 with a slider at 89, 100-110 times per game -- in short, the level of strain on an arm is likely a lot worse than it ever was before.

*for instance, old-timers used to apply heat to their pitching arms. They were effectively boiling their arms after they pitched and destroying their muscle fibres. There's a reason that today's injuries take the form of tendon or ligament strains and not "dead arms".

Forest Service, Washington Office

USDA Office of Communications

Rate of Shattered Baseball Bats 50 Percent Less, Thanks to Major League Baseball and the U.S. Forest Service

WASHINGTON July 12, 2013 - As the 2013 Major League Baseball (MLB) season slides into the All-Star break, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the results of innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service, and funded by MLB, that will result in significantly fewer shattered baseball bats.

“This innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service will make baseball games safer for players and fans across the nation,” said Secretary Vilsack. “The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory has once again demonstrated that we can improve uses for wood products across our nation in practical ways – making advancements that can improve quality of life and grow our economy.”

Testing and analyzing thousands of shattered Major League bats, U.S. Forest Service researchers at the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) developed changes in manufacturing that decreased the rate of shattered maple bats by more than 50 percent since 2008. While the popularity of maple bats is greater today than ever before, the number of shattered bats continues to decline.

“Since 2008, the U.S. Forest Service has worked with Major League Baseball to help make America’s pastime safer,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “I’m proud that our collective ‘wood grain trust’ has made recommendations resulting in a significant drop in shattered bats, making the game safer for players as well as for fans.”

"These results would not have been possible without the outstanding work of the Forest Products Laboratory and the tireless efforts of its project coordinator, David Kretschmann,” says Daniel Halem, MLB’s Senior Vice President of Labor Relations. “Major League Baseball greatly appreciates the invaluable contributions of the Forest Products Laboratory and Mr. Kretschmann on this important issue."

The joint Safety and Health Advisory Committee of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association began working to address the frequency of bats breaking into multiple pieces five years ago. FPL wood experts looked at every broken Major League bat from July to September during the 2008 MLB season.

The research team found that inconsistency of wood quality, primarily the manufacturing detail “slope of grain,” for all species of wood used in Major League bat manufacture was the main cause of broken bats. Also, low-density maple bats were found to not only crack but shatter into multiple pieces more often than ash bats or higher-density maple bats. Called multiple-piece failure, shattered bats can pose a danger on the field and in the stands.

Slope of grain refers to the straightness of the wood grain along the length of a bat. Straighter grain lengthwise means less likelihood for breakage.

With the help of TECO, a third-party wood inspection service, the FPL team established manufacturing changes that have proven remarkably successful over time. Limits to bat geometry dimensions, wood density restrictions, and wood drying recommendations have all contributed to the dramatic decrease in multiple-piece failures, even as maple’s popularity is on the upswing.

The Forest Service research team has been watching video and recording details of every bat breakage since 2009. The team will continue monitoring daily video and studying broken bats collected during two two-week periods of the 2013 season, working to further reduce the use of low-density maple bats and the overall number of multiple-piece failures.

neyer on it