Ty Cobb is a spinning in his grave.

Stolen bases:

1987    3585

1997    3308

2007    2918

2017    2527

That’s from a post by Buster Olney at ESPN.

http://www.espn.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post/_/id/18244/olney-whats-behind-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-stolen-base

He lists 7 reasons and the stat heads have a hand in most of them.

1.  It’s beer league home run derby time without the beer. Oh what fun. Watch 10 guys strike out or walk and then watch a moon shot. Then watch another 10 guys strike out or… The stat heads might be right that you win with the long ball, but which would you rather watch a middle infielder making a spinning mid air throw to nab a blazing down the line runner with the help of a stretch by the first baseman or a 300 pounder hitting about 220 finally catch up to one and ooh ooh see ball go far. This is baseball not the NBA
2. The players know that if they miss a chunk of games or don’t hit quite as wells as they normally do for a while if they jam a finger sliding into second base the stat heads will point this out and it might indirectly cost them a few million bucks.
3. You can’t get away with coming off the base anymore because of the multiple camera angels 1081 dpi instant reply. That changes the odds. Okay, stat heads we won’t blame you for that one.
4. This one is all stat head. Since the metric of runs produced seems to be the most likely determinant of whether a team tastes champagne in November or not, it is decreed that a base stealing success rate of less than 80% is a net negative because the make ball go far opportunities lost out weighs the benefit of the bases stolen.
5. & 6 The pitchers pick off moves, slide steps and all that are getting better and better. No direct stat head involvement but it probably involves the close study of video and we all know who inspired stat cast land
6. See above. Goddamn this auto formatting.
7. The catchers today can really wing the thing down there. Gabby Harnett might not measure up in today’s game.

I accept that I have to put up with my smarter than me phone, but baseball too?

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The Angels plan on using a six man rotation, the Rangers are talking about it and Cole Hamels is pissed

The Angels plan on doing it apparently mostly because that’s what they do in Japan and they got Ohtani now. Sounds like the Rangers are talking about it because the stat heads say, the sports medicine experts say… And they’re probably telling other teams the same thing. Starting pitchers are now expensive drag cars which must be carefully protected.

Cole Hamels says I pride myself in giving my team 200 plus innings a year and I ain’t dead yet.

Poor Cole, doesn’t he know that he is multi million dollar investment and asset belonging to his team and that his WAR value must be closely guarded.

Multiple snow bombs forecast to hit here starting tonight and tomorrow. Will you sing this to me?