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Once-shameful Mendoza Line now perfectly fine for MLB hitters

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4 months ago

July 12, 2024

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Once-shameful Mendoza Line now perfectly fine for MLB hitters

How’s your exit velo, this fine day? How about your WAR? OBS? Or is it OPS? B.S. totals?

Me? I’m stuck in the past. I’m so backward I still regard batting averages as telltale, even valued like library cards.

This past Sunday, for example, more than 40 MLB players were in the lineup despite batting below .200. More than 40! Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong just missed the cut, as he was batting .200.

Tigers-Reds totaled seven. There were six in Angels-Cubs, five in Royals-Rockies and another five in Brewers-Dodgers, a game between first-place teams.

Not too long ago, those who hit under .200 were gone (or retired) by early May, at the latest. Now? Well, we must consider their home runs-to-strikeout ratios.

Joey Gallo is still striking out 50 percent of his at-bats, and he’s batting .164, but he does have seven home runs as a Nationals spare part, his sixth club in the past five years. This season he had to accept a pay cut to $5 million.

Yet consider the advantages that current MLB batters had over their predecessors:

The DH in both leagues (not that there’s anything left to distinguish as evidenced by the self-inflicted decay of the All-Star Game from must-see TV to who-cares?-TV).

Then there’s the disappearance-by-design of effective starters after five innings for reasons, a dozen years later, that are still hazy and seem to begin with the demand to throw as hard as you can as often as you can.

Then there’s the steady and significant total of pitchers disabled to arm ailments, a modern epidemic that seems to have coincided with the rise of players-as-robots analytics. “Out for the rest of the season with Tommy John surgery” has become the preamble to pitchers’ constitutions as per the demands dictated by mph meters.

And batters no longer need to worry much about unexpected “lights-out” relievers. They’re analytics-bound to pitch to the fewest number of batters possible — even if they were drafted as starters, something we never hear on MLB telecasts, as if it’s irrelevant, which is how it has become.

I know: Get off my lawn. Old man yells at cloud. I should get with the plan or get out. I’m just an old fool who thinks it would be a good idea to run to first base, given that it’s the fastest way to get there — not to mention second, third and home.

So if I don’t see you in the future, I’ll see you in the pasture.

Past time for MLB to get the ‘F’ outta here

If there were a genuine, best-interests-of-the-game MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred long ago would have demanded that Pete Alonso lose his vulgar signature battle cry.

Thursday afternoon, moments after Gary Cohen noted that Citi Field is packed with camp kids, SNY presented a shot of a man wearing one of Alonso’s “LFGM” T-shirts.

Cohen then smugly said that Keith Hernandez, who was off, wouldn’t be pleased by that, as he recently scolded Alonso’s particular continuing choice of lowest-form self- and team-promotion, as if Hernandez was being foolish.

But what about you, Gary? Are you good with it? Would you translate it on the air? No? Then why so smug?

And the Red Sox’s Jarren Duran would be suspended without pay by Manfred, for his refusal, despite a fine, to cease wearing his on-sale-now T-shirt that he proudly and defiantly displays after removing his team jersey to reveal his vulgar battle cry for TV cameras and photographers.

The Mets and Red Sox should have long ago pulled the plug on these, but “F–k!” is the new best way to publicly express one’s enthusiasm and sincerity. Class dismissed.

Yet it was Manfred who declared that kids are MLB’s top priority. Oh, well, they’re just kids, so beep-em.

Seems every time we turn on TV, some network commentator is demanding more “transparency” — once known as “the truth” — from our politicians, as if they expected and we deserve better from Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the sequel to the national nightmare, “That’s the Best We’ve Got.”

Yet for years the most intentionally dishonest shot-callers are these networks’ executives.

Consider that NBC News, national and local, has renewed its every-other-year surgery to remove legitimate news, replacing it with Olympics-on-NBC sells dressed as genuine news.

Fox, throughout a month loaded with international soccer championships, has lied about starting times not by the now-standard 15-20 minutes, but by an entire hour — thus what has been promoted as an 8 p.m. start is, in fact, 9 p.m. — a huge betrayal of transparency.

Odd, ain’t it, that for all the exclusive paywalled MLB telecasts on Manfred’s money-blinded watch, none are weekday afternoon games. Only games most likely to be seen by the most are scheduled to be seen by the least.

All good if no one died

Sing it, Alice: “Schools out forever!”

Oklahoma State is scheduled to play Arkansas on Sept. 7 on ABC/ESPN. Here’s one that’s unlikely to make the cut.

On June 30, OSU star running back Ollie Gordon, 20 years old and a preseason Heisman Trophy candidate, was arrested for speeding and DUI. He refused to take a breathalyzer, but apologized in one of those school-issued statements.

According to coach Mike Gundy, another who has lived large by recruiting players who have “brushes with the law,” Gordon will not be suspended, and here’s why:

“I’m not justifying what Ollie did,” adding that no one was injured. “I thought, I’ve probably done that a thousand times in my life, and, you know, which is fine, so I got lucky.”

Yeah, not killing someone, perhaps even a legit OSU student, while driving drunk is a matter of good fortune as opposed to rotten judgment. What a strong message from an adult leader of young men!

Gundy added that ignoring Gordon’s arrest was a “business” decision, as losing games to a suspension could hurt his chance at the Heisman, which no longer takes “good character” into account.

Wouldn’t be good for OSU’s business or, at $7.75 million plus bonuses to win at any and all costs, for Gundy’s personal business, either.

Lookalikes: Reader/pal Rich Ippolito submits 1930s heavyweight champ Primo Carnera and Aaron Judge.

Last time I saw the Yankees’ Alex Verdugo, he still hadn’t reached home after his bat-flipping home run. Must be slowed by those fat, conspicuous-consumption gold chains he modestly wears around his neck. Another guy who makes it difficult to watch — or endure — big league baseball.

Good question of the week: Mets radio man Keith Raad after reading aloud a dubious TV graphic that identified the previous pitch as a 102 mph sinker. “How did it have time to sink?”