Atlantic League

Here's my recipe for improving the pace of play without fundamentally altering the game itself.

1) Adopt the 20-second pitch clock used in the minor leagues
2) Restrict the number of times a batter can leave the box during an AB
3) Limit the number of times a game a team's batters can ask for time (like they did with mound visits)
4) Drastically scale back the use of replay review, or eliminate it altogether
5) Limit the number of throws to first per a given base runner

Re getting more balls put in play, outlaw the shift. If batters know they can't pull a ball through the infield for a hit anymore, they are going to swing for the fences a lot more often.

Enthusiastic +1

Oh--as far as the mound distance...if you don't also change the height nor the strike zone, it is simple Newtonian physics. As a physicist, I can say that confidently.



Extending the distance, with the same mound height and strike zone is doubtfully going to suppress offense. I don't think the league has that expectation either.

Could you clarify that a bit?

I saw this:

"In announcing the experiment, MLB says moving the mound back by a foot will convert a 93.3 mph fastball (the major league average in 2020) to a 91.6 mph fastball."

I also saw that strikeouts have risen from 16.4% of at-bats in 2005 to 24.4% in 2020.

Move mound back. Positional and orbital speed over plate lower. Kind of like what you shared. That isn't rocket science. And I do rocket science. That is not meant to be snarky
And sure I think it was addressed why strikeouts are up.

The argument that austin made if I understood his point, was that it could enhance curves etc resulting in a pitcher's advantage. I don't agree with that, and I don't think MLB expects that. Can't have it both ways. There may be unexpected effects, but they can't both enhance and suppress offense.

With the same strike zone and mound height, the effect on velocity and angle of incidence on the strike zone is a reduction, in the angle of incidence; and where in the case of reduced velocity, the longer distance affects both the positional velocity and orbital velocity of the ball--which does not enhance movement--it reduces it.

and not to bury Bill's points--changes to style without changing rules--exactly

"1) Adopt the 20-second pitch clock used in the minor leagues
2) Restrict the number of times a batter can leave the box during an AB
3) Limit the number of times a game a team's batters can ask for time (like they did with mound visits)
4) Drastically scale back the use of replay review, or eliminate it altogether
5) Limit the number of throws to first per a given base runner

Re getting more balls put in play, outlaw the shift. If batters know they can't pull a ball through the infield for a hit anymore, they are going to swing for the fences a lot more often."

Physicist? Interesting. I was a physics major for a cup of coffee (about 4 quarters). God knows why; I am not really a science guy and just kind of muddled through (Probably some sense of practicality drilled into me by my Depression-era parents.) And then...I ran into Der German professor....who basically decided that "Sie will nichst das klasse bestehen!" I knew I was in trouble at the final exam when all the engineers who were a lot smarter than me in science stuff started cursing. I'm like "I know Im in the right class...and yet. What the !$#! is this." What I should do for the next couple of hours was the burning question? Clearly, answering the exam questions was only going to take a fraction of the time. I scribbled in some chicken scratch with some formulas attached that might imply I knew something. "Wow...he's a genius if only I could read his writing..schade." The bastard didnt show up for the exam. Good call on his part judging from all the pissed off test-takers. I didnt even fail, somehow. He definitely separated the wheat from the chaff...

I literally walked out of that exam room and said to myself "ok, what's the next major!" Maybe we should take classes in psychology/sociology, you know, the classes all the hot women take...

Actually, I went to math first for couple blindingly dull years until I got back from a quarter abroad studying German (and no I cant speak German at all im sure the German above is schrecklish...), went to my first math class and the professor started writing all these formulas and I started getting nauseated...and I said "history here I come!"

But at least I can use my probability classes (which I aced by the way as they were useful for my future career as a blackjack player) for my fantasy baseball teams...

Ha...that's OK I lived in Germany for 2 years and can no longer speak Deutsche now, but that's why mathematik is great--everyone speaks greek symbols and equal signs. And bier.

Funny I started as a mech engineer, then physics, then switched to meteorology to exploit a full undergrad scholarship opportunity. Then for graduate work a couple years later, there was a scholarship opportunity offered to study physics if I did research in space plasmas, so there i was flip flopping again.

And I never spoke a lick of german then...not until I walked into my first hofbrau haus in munich years later...

anyway, alles gut. shall see how it works out

Guys, I'll let you in on a little secret. I am the biomechanist who conducted research looking at mound height and pitching distance for MLB. You can search interviews of me (Glenn Fleisig) on the internet. Here are the links to the abstracts for the two articles:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30733141/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32063509/

and, as a bonus, here's our study on mound height and pitching distance for kids:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30207787/

If anyone wants to read the full articles, send me an email (glennf@asmi.org).

- Glenn Fleisig, PhD
American Sports Medicine Institute
glennf@asmi.org

Count me very impressed!
And yeah I love bier...

That's awesome Glenn!
Thanks for sharing that--Yes, impressed x2--meaningful work.
I'll be interested to look up the full article at work--would enjoy seeing the full dataset and results.

Outside the scope of the paper, but this part seems counter-intuitive with respect to what MLB is trying to accomplish:
"In conclusion, it is unlikely that moving the mound backwards would significantly affect pitching biomechanics and injury risk; however, the effects on pitching and hitting performance are unknown."

So, I'm missing what problem MLB is trying to fix with this particular solution if the expected effect on play is unknown?
I am not sure why a course of action with unknown effects would be implemented unless it's just one part of a set of random attempts to see if any have positive effects on gameplay and then just keep what they like.

Once again, cool stuff. I guess it will remain to be seen how actual batters react to the "insignificant" statistical difference!

Prosit
Frank

Here's a 10-minute segment I did yesterday on moving the mound back in baseball: https://www.mlb.com/video/dr-glenn-flei ... ns-mlb-now

Unfortunately, Brian Kenny and I did not discuss how this would effect Strat-O-Matic cards.

Thanks for that Glenn, great stuff. You have a very cool job!