The Big League Approach

Should MLB juice the ball or lower the mound next season to inject more offense into baseball?

TWO MEN DOWN IN CENTER

Can guys making 30 mil have down years. Can guys that have 6 more years at 180 mil have bad years?

If you’re a 13u travel team coach, your team is 22-0, and you’re playing 12u teams, you should probably put your team up against better competition. Chasing banners and rings while not challenging your players doesn’t help anyone. It actually hurts them in the long run.

The Phillies are paying Nick Castellanos about $19.2 million to play for the Padres. He's batting .190 with 4 home runs, 19 RBIs, .578 OPS and -0.8 WAR. They are paying Adolis García $10 million to be his replacement. He's batting .203 with 4 homers, 15 RBIs, a .607 OPS and -0.3 WAR. Defensively, García is +3 OAA (436 innings in the field) while Castellanos is -4 OAA (167 innings).

We need more of this!

Controlled aggression and purpose behind every swing. Don’t just push the ball around the field. But don’t swing max effort trying to hit pull-side home runs every round of BP either. MLB hitters are the strongest and most physical players in the game. They could launch balls out all day if they wanted to. Yet the great ones understand that batting practice is about building a swing that performs in games. Watch hitters like Miguel Cabrera. Sure, they hit some out, but they aren’t constantly hooking and top-spinning balls to the pull side. They’re hunting backspin and driving the baseball with authority. Controlled aggression and driving the ball to the opposite-field gap helps hitters stay on fastballs to all fields, avoid pulling off, and buy time to adjust to off-speed pitches and breaking balls. Many amateur hitters struggle with both because they train their swing to look good in BP, not perform in games. They become one-dimensional. Be a mature hitter. Train for game performance, not batting practice applause.