LogFAQs > #979768608

Zithers posted...

its actually a widely held belief on boomer baseball twitter that many pitchers back in the day threw just as fast as guys today except the speed guns just werent as accurate back then. lol.

but yeah mlb kinda let pitching development get away from them. when pitching became too good the solution was to juice the balls and that just... made teams try even harder to get guys to have even more elite spin/velo. and now every team has multiple guys throwing 100 (except for the rockies prob lolololol).

then they added the shift ban, pitch clock, reduced mound visits, made facing 3 batters automatic, and ended pickoffs which leads to more hits, more steals, and reduced in-game rest... all things that hurt pitching (physically or mechanically for the sport) and benefit offense! only making it more important to get the spin and velo!

very confusing. not sure how they make throwing 91 viable. hitters are too well adjusted to velo now.

For me as I have always understood it, it wasn't that speed guns weren't accurate it is that they measure differently now compared to then. Now they measure as it leaves their hand where as then they measured at the plate where there was a drop in velocity.

With that being said I believe modern athletes are definitely better. But I think there have always been guys that could compete across eras. A Nolan Ryan type guy I'm sure would have no issues filling a roster spot effectively if he were alive today.

All I know is across all sports people are getting hurt far more often. In the NFL the amount of QB's who go down even with all the protection rules is crazy. Running Backs are washed up so fast now and the amount of ACL/MCL or Achilles injuries in football and basketball is nuts. And a number of them are non contact injuries where people just blow an Achilles. I don't recall that happening to this degree before.

The only major sport where I don't see a huge uptick in injuries that take out all the popular stars is hockey. I'm not saying they don't get injured or miss time. They definitely do. I just don't see this large increase where like half the starting centers are out.