Full Count Vintage Baseball Card Forum

If you are just tuning in now, this is what has happened so far -
1875 Start the National League
- Determine balls, strikes, mound distance, "eliminate" gambling, allow overhand pitching, reserve clause
1882 Start up American Association
- experiment with alcohol at parks, cheap tickets, world series, pitching rotations
1884 Try a third League (Union Association) - no reserve clause
- failure
1885-9 Fine tune operation
- Optimize pitching distance, try basic fielding mittens, finalize ball/strike ratio
1890 Retry Third League (Players) - no reserve clause
- failure, Leagues merge
1891-1899 Style Experiment
- rowdy baseball, tricks, cheats
---------------------------- 23 years -------------------------------
1900 Start with National League
1901 Add American League
1903 Start World Series (1905 restart)
1914-1915 Try Third League (Federal)
- failure
--------------------------- 15 Unnecessary Years -------------------
ca. 1920 End Spitballs, Try HomeRuns
- success
1930s Bring on more HomeRun Hitters
- success
1940-1999 Repeat with every concievable variation
- success, reserve clause eliminated, integration complete, pitchers powerless to curb HomeRuns
---------------------------- 80 Years of Home Runs ---------------------------
2000-2008 Some objection to artificial enhancement of athletes. After peaking near the end of the century, Home Runs are beginning to trend downward.
Pitching has become highly specialized. Hurlers are not expected to pitch more than several innings at a time.
It is time for a change.
Increase the power of the pitcher.
Bring back the spitter. It gives every pitcher knuckleball power as one of his weapons!
It is time to change baseball once again!

This idea is interesting to contemplate, and ML pitching is poised to take advantage of their multiple areas of specialization. However, MLB is enjoying a profitable stature, and those in charge are not likely to allow an experiment which could narrow fan interest, with no obvious upside.

But your assessment of the deadball era may even be more interesting:

1900 Start with National League
1901 Add American League
1903 Start World Series (1905 restart)
1914-1915 Try Third League (Federal)
- failure
--------------------------- 15 Unnecessary Years -------------------

It appears true that verification of the formula developed during baseball's early period was the basis for play throughout the first two decades of the 1900s.

But introduction of the livlier ball and elimination of the spitter resulted in much more than an increase in home runs. Every 20th century incidence of a player achieving 250 hits occurred during the 1920-30 period. And that decade saw twice the number of .400+ seasons than the 20 years which preceeded it.

If these changes occurred in 1900, how many home runs would Cravath have hit? 40+?
What would Cobb's lifetime batting average be? His slugging percentage?

This lends itself to vast speculation.

This is really interesting stuff Gil (and TheRiddler )

About the highly specialized modern pitching. I'm assuming you're not a fan. But - could it realistically be any other way now? If pitchers were expected to finish what they started today, we'd see many many blowouts. To get a leg up, teams use situational hitting and pitching strategies that are based on vast scouting and matchup data. As you know, this has been going on for a long time. Part of those strategies is using middle/long relief pitchers through the game. These pitchers could throw 100 pitches/game, but are much more effective in short bursts, so managers want to exploit that. Isn't that, in a way, "increasing the power of the pitcher" ?