Joe Morgan IQ=70

If I hear him on ESPN radio say pitching is deluted again, I am gonna snap. He says hitting has advanced and pitching has regressed, and old hitters would fair better today because of deluted pitching. Note to Joe: you were a great second baseman and hitter, but you don't know anything about pitching. Every pitch you call on tv is wrong. you say slider when its a change. You say curve when its a split.

Two expansion teams and 26 extra MLB pitchers don't delute a league that now gets players worldwide. When Ted Williams played, he only saw pitchers from within the USA...... a MUCH smaller talent pool. The US population and world population has doubled since then. All you have to do is watch ESPN classic from the 60's baseball games to see how sorry the pitching was then. Pitchers now rest their arms and don't overthrow the way they used to.

Shut up Joe!

I feel better.

 

Do you wake up in the morning and actually TRY to think of outlandish or silly statements you could make or is this just a gift you have?

 

What about Tim McCarver? Could he be any more sickening.



HEY TIM!.................SHUT......UP!

 

new strike zone is fucking up finest pitchers though... they aren't getting the close calls any longer

 

vp, what are you talking about? Every pitcher that has ever played laughs at Joe Morgan's idiot comments. trust me on this one . Joe has no idea what pitches are being thrown on tv. I swear he calls the pitch wrong 50% of the time. He was a great hitter, but he needs to keep quiet on pitching. You don't hear Rob Dibble giving hitting lessons, and Joe shoud keep quiet on pitching. He is on some mission to say that pitching is deluted. ITS NOT!
A strikezone half the size of what it was 30 years ago, parks 30% smaller (most centerfileds used to be 420-430ft), a mound that was lowered in half, steroided hitters, and live balls are why its harder to pitch nowadays. Again, all you have to do is watch a ESPN classic game from the 60s to see how good pitching is today. Plus, when you are selecting pitchers from a worldwide talent pool, and not just America (the way it used to be) then you have much better pitching today than the past. Also in this day, no prospect is looked over. Scouting, the internet, etc makes every possible player recognized. Im sorry, but adding the Marlins, Drays, and Dbacks haven't deluted pitching . It would of been deluted if the talent pool remained the same, but the pool/population has grown far more and faster than 3 MLB teams .

brain, nice call. that new automated umpire system is just silly.

 

A couple of things.

First, I am not arguing whether or not pitching has been diluted – more on that later. I am however making fun of your ability to undercut your own arguments by making ridiculous statements such as the title. Joe Morgan has forgotten more about baseball than you will ever know. He has seen baseball evolve over the last 35 years or so, and still speaks to players, managers, and coaches from all generations today. When a Hall Of Famer gives you a call – you tend to return it. Oh yeah – who would better be able to assess good pitching than a Hall Of Fame hitter?

Second on the idea of pitching being diluted – this is not Morgan’s idea and he certainly is not the only person saying it. I do not have the numbers, but in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s pretty much every kid grew up playing baseball as their first sport. There were BY FAR more minor league teams than there are now. Pretty much every city had a mill team. Most importantly the game was played with wooden bats at every level. The aluminum bat is killing pitchers because they can make a perfect pitch and it’s a hit. They never learn to pitch against wooden bats until they get to the Cape Cod league – when they are at least 19 years old.

Your assertion that we now have a much bigger pool of talent to draw from got me to thinking. How long have they been playing baseball in Japan, Mexico, Korea, Dominican Republic, etc? A long time. So either, all of the sudden these countries made great leaps in their talent pool – basically all at the same time – or the talent leave being produced in the States diminished. And where did the influx of Japanese, Korean, and Mexican players start? Pitchers. And at what time did these imports start to become more common? Right after expansion. Maybe that is a coincidence – but I doubt it.

Of course park size, mound height, and that DAMN body armor that the hitters are wearing all work in favor of the hitters – not trying to argue that.

And yes – I hear Dibble comment on hitters all the time.

The bottom line is, when discussing ANY matter in baseball, if you want me to choose one person’s word to believe between you and Joe Morgan – let’s just say that I don’t think that is a very hard choice.

 

this just in vp. the people you hear on tv and radio are wrong on occasion, hall of fame or not (they were excellent athletically and that is all). joe morgan is very articulate and obviously knowledgable, I am not questioning that. However, it is a well know fact in the baseball world that Joe tries to analyze pitchers and is often wrong on the air (every minor league team I played on, we ripped Joe Morgan almost daily). He understands some basics of pitching, but he get in over his head too often on that subject. Just because he could hit a ball doenst make him a pitching expert. You have to understand that there is a rift at the highre levels of baseball between hitters and pithcers. They really dislike each other (Clemmens wont even talk to a hitter) and when Morgan makes these comments, many professional pitchers just take it as an insult from a former hitter (jab from the enemy). I would say the baseball world is split on whether the pitching is deluted, Joe just falls to one side.

 

How come everybody always brings up their are more pitching jobs in the majors than before, but nobody ever brings up how there are also more position players than before? I can't remember what manager said in in SI's 1990 baseball preview comparing the fifties and late eighties, but he said the best players today are better than the best players of yesteryear, while the the worst players are far worse than the old ones.

 

Where did I say that Morgan was infalliable? Or that you had to agree with everything he says? And I would say that there are definite proponents for pitching not being diluted. At least to me, your post came off as more of an attack on Morgan than it did a defense of pitching today.

 

Remember also, the great players of yesterday didn't face many black/latino players until the late 40's/early 50's. Also, aren't pitchers less challenging then pitchers 'back in the day' were (i.e. Gibson). MLB should raise the pitching mound to give pitchers some type of an advantage . . .