28 thoughts on “March 24, 2025: { }s”

  2. With NIL, it looks like the "power conference" are separating themselves from the mid-majors. No seed lower than 10 made the Sweet 16 this year. I'm glad I did the auto-pick top seeds. Could lead to me winning the brackef with less than 2 minutes of consideration.

  3. The church I attend in retirement has two Sunday services, 8:30 and 11:00. We go to the 11:00 service because we sing in the choir, and that's the service in which the choir sings. So, I was sitting at home yesterday, and I got a call at 8:28. "Um, we had a baptism scheduled for the 8:30 service and the pastor is out of town, and the associate pastor isn't licensed to do baptisms. Could you help us out?"

    Luckily, I was showered and dressed, so all I had to do was put my shoes on, print off the baptism liturgy (which I still had on my computer) and go down to the church. I obviously wasn't there by 8:30, but I got there in time to do the baptism. It was kind of cool, actually. Baptisms were one of my favorite pastoral things.

    It's one of a pastor's worst nightmares to forget something like that. I'm glad I was able to help out. But it was an unexpected way to spend a Sunday, especially on Mrs. A's birthday.

      1. It's one of those situations that feels wrong, where that is probably about right for expected winning percentages, but in any given year if you do MC simulations or whatever, you're going to have more than 2 90-win teams. 162 games is a lot of games, but also not a lot of games.

  6. Ok, say you think that pitchers are getting hurt too often these days and we want to encourage starters to pitch deeper into the game, or even to make it feasible to pitch on shorter rest. My thesis is that the only way to do this is to punish pitchers greatly for throwing balls and to make it much less punishing to throw strikes. If accurately throwing strikes was the key to pitching above all else, then pitchers would only rarely want to throw with max effort -- maybe if they were way ahead in the count.

    Here are some radical ways that you might accomplish this goal:

    - Deaden the ball, move the fences back. If hitters can't hit the ball as far when they do make contact, then a mistake in the strike zone is less costly. We can't make the hitters weaker, but we can deaden the ball and move the fences back. Deadening the ball would tend to decrease run scoring, but moving the fences back would mitigate that somewhat, with more ground for outfielders to cover, you could get more singles falling between the outfield and infield.

    - Three balls for a walk instead of four balls for a walk.

    - Two bases for a walk instead of one base for a walk. Good luck throwing your 92mph slider on a 3-ball count when missing the strike zone is effectively allowing a double.

    - Make the strike zone wider. Hitters would have a harder time covering both sides of the plate and they'd make weaker contact when they did make contact on pitches at the new edges of the zone. Should encourage hitting for contact as there would be more pitches you just can't hit for power. The downside is that pitchers would have more room to miss with their 90+-mph breaking pitches.

    Which combination of these changes gets us back to a four-man rotation, if any?

    1. I think the first suggestion makes the most sense, and shouldn't rile the players' union like some of the others might. Batters are getting stronger, so this would normalize that somewhat. Give the batters the robo-strikezone as a cookie.

          1. I'm not necessarily against new parks if the owners are willing to pay for it. Just don't come around to the local governments with your hand out like you are barely scraping by.

    2. I’d be okay with addressing equipment on both sides of the ball. Deadening the ball requires no approvals since MLB owns the supplier. Adopting the NPB’s ball texture is another option for enhancing pitchers’ grip without increasing strain on their forearms. I’d also be in favor of regulating bats’ composition and size to force batters to swing heavier, less dense lumber. Perhaps maple bats should be banned.

      Moving fences back is fine but less practical. Increasing fence height could be another option. The loss of foul territory is also a factor, but seems even more impractical to reverse without new facilities.

      I don’t favor changes to rules regarding counts, bases awarded, or any other regulations that have been stable for well over a century.

      If MLBPA wants to reverse this injury problem, they should agree to regulate the number of pitchers on an active roster to force pitchers to train to go deeper in games.

  8. Got my schedule for April, I'm working Thursday and Sunday of home opener weekend . Hoping for good weather, preparing for bad. And I need some new shoes.

    1. I dont have a Athletic sub anymmore, and maybe the article doesnt say how, but HOW do you get that much in debt owning a Big 3 sports team?

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