[ad_1]
Leading the first leg of the all-star game on Tuesday night, Max Scherzer eliminated Boston's outstanding candidate Mookie Betts on a slider. Then Scherzer dominated the reigning American League MVP, Jose Altuve, with a 98 mph gas. The crowded house of Nationals Park, Scherzer's home, roared on all the grounds, hoping that he would come out of the flank.
Scherzer faced Mike Trout, as close to an immortal as you can be at the age of 26. He was fouled by two shots – the second, a fastball that went up to 99 mph, which Trout barely had a piece of. Finally, Trout walked and the crowd moaned.
In the second inning, Scherzer continued to attack on each field, following the dominant baseball theory of that era. There are three "real results" entirely under the control of the thrower or batter: Strikeout, home run or walk. Scherzer tries to eliminate everyone while dodging the steps, but knowing that his aggression can sometimes lead to a home race.
In this second run, Scherzer fanned two more, but Aaron Judge, who has 52 results trotting him around the bases and 25 more so far this year, has smoked a fast ball Scherzer 95-mph deep in the left field enclosure for a circuit. All rise, indeed. All that Scherzer did, all his wild method, seeking the total defeat of the batter while flirting with his power to avoid sidewalks, sent baseball electricity across the entire baseball field.
[Baseball commissioner, union chief clash over free agency, rules changes]
If Max Scherzer is the main problem of baseball hurry to find a solution?
All that is supposed to be bad with baseball today – too many battleshoots, too few shots, not enough action games that require sports defense, pursuit or l '# Avoidance of walks and nothing of a hitter – it can be seen in its extreme form every time Scherzer launches, not just on the bigger stages.
No NL thrower scores as many hitters (12.2 by nine innings) or removes batting averages (.179). like Mad Max. No-hitters (two) and a 20-game rematch were his highlights with the Nationals – low-touch matches that, it should be noted, have not bothered Washington fans. Those who decry too many puffs and too many home runs have a valid aesthetic criticism. But they tend to forget that all homer and outlaws make fans of a team do something crazy.
The only flaw of Scherzer is that he sometimes has a mechanical problem – what he calls "not staying on top of the ball" as he releases it. His throws flatten, rather than dive, and he drops enough circuits that his ERA since joining the Nationals in 2015 is 2.70. When Scherzer is on the ground, he is almost always excellent, but the tension in his early days is between his mastery of barred withdrawal and his vulnerability to inner circuits.
[2018 MLB All-Star Game live updates: Max Scherzer starts for the NL at Nationals Park]
Exciting and exciting baseball depends on many factors. But the one more important than all the others: How many points are scored?
Throughout the history of baseball, the average has remained very close to nine per game. Nobody can prove that it is the "good" or the best number. But when a sport has flourished at the highest level for nearly 150 years, then its long-term standards must do something good for customers to come back.
This year, despite all the anxiety of the badytics on an excess of three real results – and the commissioner Rob Manfred tackled inconclusively on the subject Tuesday – the AL mark 8 , 88 points per game while the NL, without the designated hitter, averages 8.78 points. As someone whose first dive into badysis was in 1978 in the Washington Post with Total Average, a pbadion for numbers and trends fascinates me. But we should not be too carried away
. This level of scoring in 2018 does not mean that baseball is close to an ideal balance. This is not it. But, at least for the moment, the fact that the average game score is 5-4 probably means that the intensity of our panic attacks should be modulated.
To see the present more clearly, it helps to have a time machine to take you back nearly half a century to discover what the past can teach.
[Commissioner Rob Manfred: MLB intends to ‘be bold’ in managing sport’s changes]
The All-Star Game at Nationals Park, the first in Washington in 49 years, was given to us at a perfect time to take control. on the current state of MLB – its problems and, just as importantly, its size and scope.
The radical perspective of 1969 – when baseball was in crisis – until 2018, when the game has boring defects but few insoluble problems, gives us a chance to unload our bucket of decimal points, to breathe and to do what the All-Star Games were meant for: enjoy a little more sports, crack a little less.
In hindsight, it's a shock to realize the sick sports baseball was the last time the Midsummer Clbadic was at DC The average season, the average MLB game only produced 6.84 points – far below the centennial average of nine innings per game. The MLB came to DC pulling his hair and looking for solutions, such as lowering the mound or creating the DH.
Beneath the surface, MLB, another seven years away from the free agency revolution, was greedily preparing for a 25-year labor war. In 1969, young Johnny Bench had already earned a nod and won a Gold Glove; he got an increase from $ 11,000 to $ 23,500. The same year, Hank Aaron, who started the season with 510 homers, earned $ 92,500
It's a sick sport with a dull product for sale and angry employees
In 2018, the Baseball is far from traumatized. Considered across large swathes of time, there are probably only a few mistakes that the sport will not cure by its own evolution and its own adjustments.
Baseball has always been criticized more than any other American sport. That's because baseball – its fans, players and media – likes to criticize itself. Everyone stacks up. Only baseball can turn too many races into "crisis" while football turns too many head injuries into "worry".
When we forget – just ten years ago a joke, with home race records being torn apart by cheaters. This is a problem. What we have now is rather a period of adjustment.
More modern pitchers, with an emphasis on building the core strength and studying biomechanics, are more difficult to imagine than Willie Mays. In Sunday's Futures Game, right-handed Hunter Greene, 18, the Cincinnati Reds' second choice in 2017, launched 19 fastballs between 100 and 103 mph.
However, 21-year-old Luis Basabe fired 102 mph on the halfway point of the right-hand bleachers. Nobody in the major leagues has reached a field as fast for a home race this year. The next hitter tattooed another 102 mph fastball in the left field for a simple sharp.
"It was 102 – inside." And he lit it.Tap my cap to this guy, "says Greene, literally raising his hat. "It was very impressive."
Each generation of hitters learns to manage their own generation of pitchers. Watch Juan Soto, 19, of the Nats, stifle and smear his position with two strikes to avoid strikes on strike and beat the shifts. Carter Kieboom, 20, watched Soto's success and developed his own two-step approach. "You get two" A "swings, so you fight," said Kieboom.
Baseball in its ideal state – and I always look in vain to find the season, just a year, when that perfect balance existed – would have fewer puffs, more singles, more chances and defensive hitters that might face to shifts not to mention that extra-low shots win games, but all balls are scraps.
Come back in another 49 years. Bet baseball is always there. A young fan, who was in the stands on Tuesday night, can tell everyone how all these numbers of 2018 worked. She probably will not conclude that Max Scherzer ruined baseball.
For more information by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.
[ad_2]
Source link
