Old School and Proud

I love the game of baseball. Have since I first picked up a bat at the age of 7. That was 70 years ago, and oh how the game has changed. I like to think that I saw the game when it was still in its purest form. No DH, starters went 9. Strikeouts were a bad thing, and players BA, and pitchers win totals mattered. They were the standard by which players got paid.

They wore those wool uniforms and played on fields that were not as manicured as the ones today. When the Giants were in New York, they played at the Polo Grounds, a massive place where balls hit to center field went to die.

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, they played in the LA Coliseum, built for the 1932 Olympics, it was the home of the USC Trojans football team. The Dodgers played there for four years until the moved into their new home., Dodger Stadium. Too bad Roy Campanella never got the chance to hit in a park where it was only 251 feet down the left field line.

There have always been subtle rules changes in the majors like outlawing the spit ball. They lowered the pitcher’s mound in 1968. The reason behind that was trying to make the game more hitter friendly since pitching had dominated the league for several seasons. Not sure that worked well in the AL since Yaz won the batting title with a .301 average.

The next big change came in 1973 when the AL adopted the Designated Hitter. Baseball purists hated it. The NL’s mantra was we play the game the way it was invented. One could not argue with the results though. In 1972, the AL as a league hit .239 with 1175 home runs, an average of 98 per team. Half of the teams hit less than 98. The Rangers hit just 56. In 1973 the league average was .259. There were 1552 homers hit, an average of 129 per team. Only one team hit less than 100, the Angels with 93. The Indians led the league with 158.

In 1972, the NL team average was .248. There were 1339 homers. Of the 12 teams, only four had fewer than 100. The Dodgers were one of the four. In 1973, even without the DH, the NL almost matched the AL’s 1552 homers, they hit 1550. The leagues’ batting average was .254. Atlanta led all of baseball with 206 homers. The Cardinals and the Mets were the only teams under 100.

There were changes as far as ballparks go. Artificial turf arrived in 1966 when the Astrodome opened. Some of the older stadiums began to be demolished to be replaced by what I called, cookie cutter stadiums. They all looked alike.

Also in the 70’s, Bill James introduced the concept of sabermetrics. That emphasized objective analysis beyond traditional stats. It did not happen overnight, but stats like BA, wins, suddenly were not as important as quality starts and OBP. I can’t remember the first time I heard the term WAR or wins above replacement. I do remember I had no clue what they were talking about.

Here we are in the 26th year of the 2000’s and I still think BA and wins mean something. Some old bears never change, I guess. I despise strikeouts, but today they do not have the stigma they carried when I first started following the game. The chances of us seeing a hitter have as few Ks as Joe DiMaggio had, 369 over a 13-year career are infinitesimal. Joe D walked twice as many times as he struck out. Yogi Berra struck out just 404 times in his 19-year career. That equals 21.26 times a year! Shohei passed that number in a month last year.

The game has changed a lot. We have pitch clocks now, this season a challenge system will be in place for ball and strike calls. Relievers have to face at least 3 hitters. Four mound visits are all that can be made in a game. Plays can be checked by video; a lot of close calls have been overturned.

During the pandemic year, all teams used the DH. The NL finally adopted the DH full time in 2022. This of course is one of the reasons LA signed Ohtani when he became a free agent. He wanted to pitch and hit when he first came from Japan. He could not do that with the Dodgers.

You look at a stat sheet today, and I cannot tell you what half of those stats are. rOBA? Expanded stats are even harder to translate, at least for me. I am pretty sure there are some young stat geeks out there who really love digging deep. I watch MLB.TV a lot. But I can’t watch Brian Kenny since I usually do not understand what the hell he is talking about.

I judge players by what I see. Always have trusted my eyes more than some stat sheet. You can tell when a player is being consistent. Just look at his BA. .200 hitters are consistently bad. Oh, they might have some moments, best example of that is Kike.

Kike hit .203 overall last season. He had 10 homers and hit just .195 in the first half, but 8 of his homers were hit then. He hit .222 in the second half and then had a decent postseason until the World Series where he struck out 15 times. His most valuable contribution in that series came in game six when he came running in catching a fly ball and firing to second for a double play.

Kike is a career .236 hitter. But in a couple of the important stats according to the stat people, he falls short of even being MLB average during the regular season. His OBP is just .305. His OPS is .707 and his OPS+ is just 91. He strikes out more than twice as much as he walks. His value lies in his clubhouse presence and his versatility on the field.

I know many will not agree with the way I look at the game, and that is absolutely fine. We all look through different lenses. My eyes tell me one thing, and the stats say another.