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Originally Posted by AndrewJerome
The point has been made several times that humans are getting bigger, taller, and stronger as time goes on. This is undeniably true, but for me this has a much more pronounced impact on other sports like basketball, football, track and field, swimming etc. It’s undeniable in basketball. NBA players are simply taller, more athletic and more skilled now than 30 years ago. Guys who play like the Greek freak, near 7 feet tall, did not exist 30 years ago. There is no modern Spud Webb or modern Mugsy Bogues. Same in football. O linemen and D linemen are significantly bigger, stronger, and more athletic now than 30 years ago. And obviously track and field times get lower and lower. Swimming times get lower and lower. All of those athletes are bigger, taller, stronger, and more athletic than the athletes that came before them in those sports. I’m not sure this exactly tracks in baseball. And that’s why I love baseball, and don’t enjoy track and field and swimming as much. It is true that some baseball players now are bigger, taller, stronger than ball players of previous times. Pitchers especially. However, this is not true across the board for elite baseball players. The best athletes simply don’t always make the best baseball players. Again, this is what makes baseball great. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever, and he was a pretty terrible baseball player relative to MLB stars. Bigger, taller, stronger, more athletic doesn’t always equate to better in baseball. As a hitter, you need elite hand eye coordination, eyesight, and wrist strength to create bat speed for any of the bigger, taller, stronger to matter. Little Jose Altuve at 5’ 4” has this ability as a hitter, which makes baseball great. As a pitcher, you need some semblance of control for a 100 MPH fastball to matter. You need to be skilled. You need to have control of the strike zone. The fact that modern pitchers overall throw harder does not make every single one of them all better pitchers than the pitchers who came before them. And I have no idea what more height and more weight has to do with being a good pitcher besides getting you more velocity (and giving you much more risk of blowing your arm). Anyway, you need to be able to locate the ball and get guys out for any of that to matter. Straight 98 MPH fastballs down the middle get crushed by good hitters. I have a ton of respect for Nolan Ryan. And Nolan Ryan threw really, really hard for his time. He also wasn’t nearly the best pitcher of his time. He never won a Cy Young in his 20+ years of pitching. There’s a lot more to pitching than just how hard you can throw.
Randy Johnson has freakish size for any era. He first pitched in 1988 at 6’ 10”. It’s 2021. If he’s the model of baseball evolution or whatever other phrase you want to call it, then there should be 7 foot guys now dominating the sport. It isn’t going to happen. Randy is an outlier. Once you get to about 6’ 3 or 6’ 4” that’s about it for being an elite baseball player. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to field ground balls won’t work out so well. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to swing at pitches at their knees won’t work out so well. It would be comedy gold though. There’s limit to how much height helps you as a baseball player.
Vlad Jr isn’t great because he’s bigger, taller, stronger and more athletic than previous ball players. He lost 40 pounds last year and he’s still squishy. He’s not some freak physical specimen. But he can smash a baseball.
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It is common misconception to believe size does not matter a lot in baseball. There is a reason why the average height of a pitcher is Six foot three and not 5 foot 9. Same for hitters. The average male human is around five foot nine, and if size did not matter then the league would also be five foot nine in average and there would be several five foot three guys being MVP's
If size did not matter then how come there are no Five foot three MVPs??
There are few outliers who are small at the plate and on the mound, but small guys like Altuve still weigh 165 pounds, not 140 like some in the pre war era.
There aren't any six foot eleven pitchers dominating baseball now, but there are plenty of six foot five + ones....and go back go pre war times and show me how many six foot five pitchers were better than average(and not some stiff).
But you are right, there is a lot of natural ability to be able to hit like Vlad that is in your genetic code. There is a certain body make-up to allow someone to throw 98 MPH. When you have 8 billion people in the world you will produce more players that possess that ability as opposed to when you have only 2.5 billions people in the world.
Then when you consider that the population to draw from players in 1930 ONLY included white americans, and no minorities and no world wide players, that severly limits the player pool and why you don't have those guys league wide throwing 95 MPH, and when one came along, he was a marvel.
I will await the list of five foot five Cy Young winners and five foot three MVP players if size does not matter in baseball. If you find any, they come from when the talent wasn't nearly as good in the early 1900's, because everyone else was smaller too.
BTW Vlad is six foot two and anywhere from 230-250. That is a lot of muscle mass underneath any 'blubbler'
I understand that baseball fans want to cling to the notion that the players of yesteryear did it better, etc....but that is not reality...and I'm from yesteryear.
Go ahead and do a search of current pitchers being over six foot five and see how many of them reach the upper 90's on their fastballs. Guys like Tyler Glasnow would be an absolute monster in 1933, standing six foot eight and throwing 99 MPH, and has command and knows how to pitch.
Scherzer is only average height at six foot three right now. He averages 94 MPH and can hit the upper 90's, with movement. His command is better than ANY 'control' pitcher that pitched before 1980, without a doubt, except he threw harder than all of them and most likely taller than all of them.
Your assertion that these guys just throw harder and thats it is utterly and completely false.