Bonds Says 06 to be His Last

you need to take into account that those guys all pitched after the mound had been lowered, a distinct disadvantage to them

 

An advantage to the modern pitcher? Have you ever heard of 1968, aka "the year of the pitcher"? The Cardinals and Giants no-hit each other on back to back days. There were at least 150 1-0 shutouts. Denny McClain was the last 30 game winner ( and first in 30 years). Six pitchers had ERAs under 2. Only three AL pitchers have had ERAs under 2 since: Guidry 78, Clemens 90, Pedro 2000.

What did MLB do to respond to Carl Yastremski leading the AL with a .301 average? They LOWERED the mound from 15" to 10". An offensive orgy has since occurred in baseball.

 

thanks for those nifty stats. now go back and read my post. I said it was a disadvantage to modern pitchers, not an advantage. Holy fucking shit.

the whole point is -- and for your benefit, I've made it as plainly as I could -- is that the current era of baseball clearly favors offense and that numbers put up by Bonds and his ilk are as much a product of circumstance (short fences, decreased quality of pitching, i.e.) as they are to their talent as hitters.

 

There are MLB parks now that have smaller dimensions than my high school field.

That's fucking sorry.

 

That's all according to where your high school field was. It could have been a pasture, or Yosemite.

 

360-420?-350. 10 foot fence. You are right. It might as well be Yosemite compared to some of today's parks.

 

Nice yard! But you know with the parks it's all according to logistics.
You can have a small to average yard in tha old Astrodome and not many HR will jump and you can have a humongous yard at mile high and lead the league in HRs allowed.

 

That's Yosemite compared to almost any era's parks. You have to go back to the Polo Grounds and that era to find parks that were bigger, and even then most were still smaller. And for what it's worth, climate and altitude have more of an effect than park dimensions. Chavez Ravine is a relatively small park even by today's standards and yet it's always depressed offensive statistics, while Coors is the largest park in the league.


And for what it's worth, when adjusting for era by comparing statistics against all other league pitchers in that season, Pedro had the best year of any pitcher ever in 2000. I'm all for remembering past greats like Walter Johnson, but anyone who thinks he could have put up the same numbers against modern hitters is delusional. Sure, they strike out a lot more, but they're also a lot stronger and a lot better.

 

I'm pretty sure I remember reading in one of Gammons' columns that Coors hasn't been the MLB leader in HR for a long time.

The fact is that it really doesn't matter to me though.

If Bonds (or anyone else) used performance enhancing drugs, his records are tainted.

 

Our high school was built on a mountain. An old strip mining site. It's one of the of the reasons they made it so big. Not quite a pasture but close....

Even with being on top of the mountain, I could not have gotten a ball out of there with a Howitzer. So I guess that's why I get irked at these smaller parks. MLB parks should not be small enough that I can (or could once upon a time) hit a home run in them.

Plus, I like 2-1 games better than 11-9 games. So there's some bias from that too.