One Knee Down

BY KEVIN KERNAN

The Nerds have a new toy, measuring bat speed and bat-tracking data that was released this week through the Hawk-Eye tracking system.

They think it is something new. Bat speed was always noted by scouts. But because the Nerds have a new toy, we are going to hear about it endlessly on broadcasts and read about it in stories, more confusion of the masses.

You know who had “legendary bat speed,’’ and that was Brian Cashman’s quote, not mine – Clint Frazier had legendary bad speed. His last three years in the majors he managed to hit .192.

Didn’t work out too great for Clint, who is attempting a comeback in the Atlantic League and good luck to him with the Charleston Dirty Birds in West Virginia.

The more you look at the game, the more you realize, the Nerds are doing their best to ruin baseball one position at a time. Look what they’ve done to starting pitchers, who are becoming dinosaurs, injured dinosaurs at that.

Remember, they were going to fix pitching; that’s what they proclaimed and a lot of people fell for it. I didn’t. They fixed it all right. Now you are lucky if you have a starting pitcher make it through the fifth inning.

Young phenom Paul Skenes could only make it through four innings with the Pirates in his major league debut because the Pirates did a terrible job getting him ready for the majors. They didn’t stretch him out. His debut got off to an electrifying start but he ran out of gas, just like all the starters are running out of gas.

And don’t get me started on what they are doing do relievers. I talked to a scout this week who was mystified with what he saw he in the minors: the new thing is taking pitchers out in mid-inning. Happening all over the place in the minors. Starters in the minors are lucky if they go four innings, all in the name of pitch count protection.

Another position under fire is the catching position.

One Knee Down has become a cruel joke. They should rename One Knee Down to Two Feet Running … after the ball. That is what happens when you go one knee down.

This is pure lunacy.

Catchers don’t catch anymore. They don’t block pitches in the dirt or close to the dirt. Such a lack of a block by Tomas Nido cost the Mets a game on Monday night – but no one bats an eye. And I don’t blame Nido. He is only a catching pawn in all this. A low pitch went right between the legs of Nido who was down on one knee, begging to miss the pitch.

They call it Stealing Strikes.

It’s really Missing Pitches. And they can’t throw anybody out.

Could you imagine what Thurman Munson would say about one knee down? Catchers need to fight back, it’s been a terrible start for catchers in 2024 with the Cardinals Wilson Contreras suffering a broken left arm because the analysts wanted him to steal strikes and move closer to the batter. Instead, Wilson got whacked with a bat.

Johnny Bench explaining his throwing philosophy once said of the art of the catching: “I’m letting the ball get to me because a lot of kids want to reach out and grab it and that’s slower, your arm can’t go as fast as the pitch. Every throw I made was across the seams. And I had to have a stable base.’’

Catchers don’t have that stable base anymore. But what does Johnny Bench know.

Instead of stealing strikes, how about throwing strikes?

Ruining baseball one position at a time should be the new MLB Nerd slogan.

Notice the number of walks too. I insist it’s partly because the catchers don’t catch anymore. They don’t hold a target like in the past, like Bench, a Hall of Famer, used to do or like Thurman or Yogi Berra or any catcher from the past.

Those guys actually thought catching the baseball was the main part of their job description of being a catcher.

Silly Legends.

The Nerds know better, “steal strikes and give away bases,’’ that’s your job in 2024; of course umpires, from what I can see, make their ball or strike call before the ball hits the glove.

But everyone falls for it.

Meanwhile, the wild pitches – which used to be passed balls – and the walks keep on coming. Rockies pitchers walked 11 Padres on Monday night yet still won the game because the Padres, like most teams, can’t take advantage of so many baserunners. The Padres were 0-6 with runners in scoring position on this particular night, leaving nine men on base in a game they lost by one run.

The Mets walked eight Phillies in their 4-0 loss Tuesday.

Instead of stealing strikes, how about throwing strikes? More on that later in Baseball or Bust.

Hitting has been ruined too, situational baseball as well. Ruining baseball one position at a time. Well done, Nerds.

In the past, if 11 walks were issued, a number of those walks would fall into the get ‘em over, get ‘em in category, but no more. Every batter in the Padre lineup walked except for Xander Bogaerts. That’s okay, No. 9 hitter Ha-Seong Kim picked up the slack, he walked three times, yet the Padres lost 5-4.

Teams don’t take advantage of breaks like they used to because that competitive team edge has been lost by most teams as baseball has been turned into a total individual sport. Batting practice is taken in the inside cages for the most part, no longer on the field where players like Derek Jeter and others from his era would work on getting runners over and in and would play games with teammates, competition that highlighted getting runs home.

Just take a look into dugouts these days. You often see players sitting by themselves looking at an iPad or one of what I call the iPad Coaches looking at the iPad with the player.

I don’t see Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long doing a lot of that. He’s watching the game in real time and figuring things out. I also see the Phillies talking amongst themselves in the dugout, hitting strategy, helping each other out or just busting chops being good teammates, you know being human.

The Phillies, for the most part, play the game right and manager Rob Thomson allowed Aaron Nola to throw 109 pitches in the Tuesday shutout. That was old-time baseball and fun to watch. The Phillies won this game without stars Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto and Trea Turner.

Baseball is still being played by humans the last time I checked and with that team approach, despite injuries, the Phillies have the best record (30-13) in the game. Dave Dombrowski knows how to put together a team. The Phillies have demanding coaches like Bobby Dickerson who works with the players and has them make improvements. He makes them better and that is what baseball should be about.

I think the Yankees have done a good job this year of giving the game back to the coaches and players and keeping the Nerds in their part of the baseball world. Use the information but make human decisions.

When I talk to scouts and others I fear for baseball because the Nerds have done a masterful job of kicking scouts and former players out of decision-making positions. This is about ultimate power and those in charge today, for the most part, do not tolerate being questioned.

A lot of really good baseball people, former players, are hired as broadcasters but are not allowed to engage in decision making.

This week I talked to two scouts who scout the minor leagues as well as the majors and as one told BallNine. “It’s not baseball anymore. They are not just very good games. They are not well pitched. They are not played well defensively, they don’t run the bases well, a kid that can really play, he jumps out at you so it is easy to scout.’’

Mistakes are tolerated, no one says anything to rock the boat.

I call this anti-Wally Baseball.

Wally Backman learned the game the right way, just as Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez learned the game the right way. If you made a mistake Wally would jump your ass.

Not now. Not today. For the most part, minor league managers are not allowed to get on their players. Everything is handled by player development.

Ironically, there is not much player development.

And here is one of the saddest quotes you will ever read at BallNine – and it says everything about today’s game.

“There is just no accountability to do things the right way,’’ the scout told me.

That’s it in a nutshell.

At the game he was at the previous night, a launch angle pop up to short right field was enough to score the winning run “because the right-fielder threw a ground ball to home plate,’’ the scout explained.

What has happened to throwing the baseball, I asked.

“Pitchers work on throwing hard,’’ he began, “position players just work on exit velocity and launch angle and trying to hit. They don’t work on their defensive craft. And people don’t take a lot of infield and outfield where you throw every day. When you throw your outfield throws you build arm strength. It’s a muscle.’’

Yes it is.

Every day I was at a Yankee game in their era, Jeter and Robinson Cano or someone paired up with Jeter would throw long toss from in front of the Yankee dugout to the deep outfield, and as a writer you had better be aware they were out there right in front of you working on their craft, in case one got away.

“People are afraid to do their jobs because they are controlled by a front office that scripts every day what to do,’’ the scout said. “I’m not saying the newer technologies don’t have benefits but there are things that have been done for 100 years that aways worked that are not being done anymore.’’

Like catchers catching the baseball.

The scout asked: “How many balls are blocked now? How many wild pitches that used to be blocked now get past catchers that are not blocked. Nobody is blocking balls and they are all being declared wild pitches. We are all watching professional baseball and the lack of command.’’

Then the scout, a former pitcher, noted brilliantly: “You wouldn’t have to frame pitches if guys threw strikes. You wouldn’t have to steal strikes if you were capable of throwing quality strikes.’’

So simple yet so true. Of his 109 pitches Aaron Nola threw 73 strikes, a lot of quality strikes.

“If you have a couple of guys who can throw the ball in the strike zone you wouldn’t have to steal strikes, we’d be making quality pitches,’’ the scout said. “The other thing they don’t do, because they don’t trust the catcher to block the ball, pitchers don’t throw the breaking ball in the dirt with two strikes, they end up hanging them and giving up two-strike hits. How many two-strike hits on hanging breaking balls that catch too much of the plate have we seen?’’

Plenty. I call those pitches middle-middle 400-footers.

“The strike to ball breaking ball once you’ve established the bottom of the zone is not thrown as much anymore,’’ the scout said because of the fear of the “wild pitch.’’

Another scout from another part of the country said this of what has happened to the game. “So many managers and coaches, in order to survive, they figured out they have to be puppets,’’ he said. “But now we are getting people in charge who really don’t know the game.’’

Climbers have moved up the ladder. Teams are being ruined. Development is being ruined.

“I just watched Houston’s AAA team and they switched out pitchers left and right, they don’t even let guys go an inning,’’ he said. “Mid-inning pitching changes are brutal. They got a bunch of guys who can’t go two innings.’’

Interesting that the Astros have been slammed by pitching injuries this year.

Teams are limiting the innings of the best pitching prospects in the game. That’s a regular thing now.

“Yet we are seeing more and more injuries,’’ the scout said. “Babying guys isn’t working. And something else the analysts are doing is that they know they get more swings and misses with the breaking ball, which is true, but they have reduced fastball usage. The one thing that conditions the arm is throwing the fastball. You keep going down and you keep doing off-speed, you don’t take a young guy and do that just to get swings and misses. I’ve been noticing this now for a couple of years and that’s because they are being told, we are going to throw more off speed and what does that mean, it means you are throwing fewer fastballs. There are guys 22 years old out there now throwing their fastball 30 percent of the time. If you don’t throw fastballs your velocity is going to go down.’’

Another baseball truth. Mix in the max-velocity fastball approach and the world of constantly spinning pitches and it is a recipe for disaster.

All this is another Pandora’s Box that the analysts have opened and in the long run it will hurt the development of pitchers and hurt the game.

Seems like everyone is looking for the hack, a shortcut to success, instead of doing it the right way and that is a problem that has engulfed baseball.

“The guys in the offices just don’t understand the human being side,’’ the scout said.

So true. And so sad.