Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Madison Bumgarner throws against the Miami Marlins on Tue May 11, 2021, Bumgarner was effected the new rules and no credited with a no hitter after throwing one for seven innings and had to throw for nine innings for an official no hitter (AP News photo)
A Revolution in Baseball– -Beam Me Up Scotty-
That’s Amaury News and Commentary
Amaury Pi-González
Six no-hitters in less than two months into the season!! One by Madison Bumgarner in seven innings, but that doesn’t count according to the new rules. Baseball is on a pace for more strikeouts than ever before in history, and a category-5 hurricane of home runs to go along.
Hitting .300 has become a novelty; various experiments in minor leagues are currently taking place. One going-on is moving the pitching mound one foot further from the plate to 61′ 6″. Doubleheaders of seven inning games, a “free” runner at second-base when you go into extra innings, the clock is taking over, baseball wants a faster pace (so they say) and not necessarily shorter games. Everyplace you look, you can see this is not the baseball of your father or grandfather.
For decades, the US government ignored reports of UFO’s, which the Pentagon refers now as unidentified aerial phenomena, are real. Maybe aliens have something to do with all this crazy stuff going in the game of baseball today. Technology collecting and analyzing massive amounts of baseball data. “Beam me up, Scotty”.
Launch Angle, nothing but a vertical angle on a swing that leaves the bat with one and only one purpose, to hit the ball over the fence. Round-trippers getting…boring? Today’s batting averages are 25 points under all-time averages in the history of the game.
The shift is old already. I have seen how many players starting to adjust (a favorite coach word) to the shift, the defense realignment that moves as many players to one side/or the other of the infield. Slowly but surely some hitters are beginning to find how to hit and beat the shift hitting to the weakest part of the infield. That is good news; it makes it more interesting and less robotic. At least that has a human factor, players can still think for themselves and that is good news.
During the first two months of this 2021 season we have already seen enough, to easily predict this year would be the most revolutionary year in the history of baseball, with records that will make your eyeballs pop out the sockets out of your head. Enough to make Abner Doubleday come out of his grave to die again instantly of a massive heart attack.
Disclaimer: I am not against change, when it makes sense and when you try to keep the game as much possible the way it was intended, but too much “tweaking” destroys the integrity of the game. Baseball is a great game, to me there is no other game like it on earth, it makes you think, there is (or used to be) a lot of strategy, one of the most difficult things was for a player to hit a home-run, a strike-out was something that a player would hate, most pitchers wanted to go all the way and not throw the towel when they reach 100 thrown pitches, the bunt was a way to manufacture a run which in many cases is enough for the win, since this is not fútbol/soccer, there are no tied games.
The clock was the only thing you did not have to look at a baseball game, just like in the gambling floors in Las Vegas casino’s there is no clock so you just gamble away, in baseball you enjoy a day at the park with family and friends and time becomes irrelevant.
Stay well and stay tuned.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Oakland A’s Spanish play by play lead announcer on flagship station 1010 KIQI San Francisco and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com
