Oso planning to go pro
So YOU are willing to risk HIS health for your enjoyment.Isn't that special?
I am shocked the Cardinals fan is stuck in the 1960’s way of thinking.
No issues with pulling Kershaw. June, let him ride. April, 2nd start. Pitch count is smart.
Horsecrap.It's all in how you pitch. Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Ferguson Jenkins, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal, Steve Carlton and Bert Blyleven pitched complete games on opening day regularly. These guys pitched 300 innings regularly. Hell, Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in 1968 and was so overpowering that Baseball changed the rules by lowering the mound. If Red Schoendiest came out to get Gibson for any reason, Gibson would be one of the orneriest human beings around.So don't give me this nonsense. Stop whining and start pitching!
Should have pitched Rick Ankiel 300 innings, too. That would have fixed him.
More "we were tough guys back in my day" nonsense.Drysdale was done at 32. Marichal was just another Guy by 34. Fidrych threw 24 complete games at 21 years old. At 22, he was done. Mark Prior was useless by 24. Kerry Wood by 25. Koufax done at 30. The list of these sissies go on and on and on.
Prediction: Brewers will win 100 games this year.Best pitching staff in the majors, looks like a better offensive team than last year's 95 win season, and the division looks to be weaker (Reds, Cubs and Pirates don't look to be very competitive).
Brother dgies,Pitchers in general throw much harder than they did when we were young, so much more stress on elbows and shoulders. Hitters swing harder, too. Oblique injuries? Never heard of one until maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Today they’re common.
I don't think they had speed guns back in the 30s, 40s, or 50s to compare how hard a pitcher is pitching. So there is no way to know. Carl Yastrzemski batted just 301 in 1968 to win the AL batting title. The pitchers back then must have pitched pretty hard to keep an entire league batting under 300 for a season, or every batter just had trouble with the curve?...and Yaz played at Fenway a hitters park.
AL MVP race between Vlad, Robert, Buxton is going to be fun.
The mound was taller and the strike zone was bigger.
I'll concede the mound but home plate has never changed in size so how could the strike zone be bigger. Don't tell me the umps had a bigger strike zone either. In 1968 there were about 9600 strikeouts and in 2019 there were about 21000 strikeouts in the AL. Even taking that the league is 50% bigger the number of strikeouts in 1968 would be about 14-15k.
Brother Jockey:Injuries are as much a part of pitching today as they were in the 1960s. The good news is sports medicine has advanced rapidly and pitchers who in the 1960s would have been washed up, today get treatment and surgeries that prolong their careers.That said, Gibson and Seaver were remarkably free of injuries. For Gibson, as I recall, his only trip to the DL was in 1967. He went to the DL because Roberto Clemente bounced a line drive off his shinbone. Koufax injured his pitching elbow in a sliding mishap in 1962 (I believe) and had to ice it down after every game to reduce swelling. He walked away from the game in 1967 at the top of his game. I believe he won 27 games that year.Drysdale had a rotator cuff injury. Like, that doesn't happen today!Fidrych, I believe, was injured in his second season and rushed back by Management of the Detroit Tigers because he was worth a near sell-out at Tiger Stadium. At a time when 18,000 fans in the park was a good draw. Because he came back too soon Fidrych's mechanics changed and he hurt his arm. He was the never the sameWe can go back and forth in a pitching bull session all night. What I will say is pitching longevity is a combination of luck, control and mechanics. When the mechanics of a person's delivery change, the potential for injury increases as a pitcher puts unnecessary strain on muscles, tendons and bones.
Up until recently, umpires balls/strikes calls were not reviewed by the league which led to much more liberal, personalized, strike zones. Now that umps are graded, it's a much more uniformed, tighter, accurate zone.