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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine who works data science for one of the MLB teams was talking to me about this.

Apparently enforcement is quietly coming down the pipeline. They're not doing enforcement out of nowhere because everyone knows that everyone is doing it, and it'd lead to the league enforcing against all teams simultaneously, which ultimately would be bad for the league itself to have at the very least none of it's star pitchers for some time period.

Enforcement is coming though apparently and you'll be able to see it in the stats pretty clearly in hindsight.

I don't agree with all MLB's descions, but at least in this case they're quietly optimizing for better games as best as they can given their massive bureaucracy which is what you want out of them.

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> it'd lead to the league enforcing against all teams simultaneously, which ultimately would be bad for the league itself to have at the very least none of it's star pitchers for some time period

I don't get this idea. Is it better to watch the best players cheating than watch great-but-not-best players in general?

Better for the organization, not for us.

Well, in a lot of sports a decent portion of spectators are there for the celebrity, best-in-the-world players.

Usain Bolt has more name recognition than Yohan Blake, even though they're both world-class sprinters.

Usain Bolt has the best name for a sprinter, if there was like a world class security engineer named Diku Hackermans, I am pretty sure it would be like hard to forget that. Also I have had a couple beers.

This is sometimes known as Nominative Determinism[0], or an "aptonym".

It's probably some combination of a) people getting small advantages in their careers by having memorable names and b) the weird poetic sense of humour common among deities.

[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6627

I disagree that it would be bad for the league to have them all suspended at the same time. Worse pitching = more hitting.

The MLB seriously needs more hitting.

Not if the games become boring strikeout fests.

I wouldn't be surprised if the MLB secretly notified the teams that they have x days to stop it because enforcement will commence thereafter. That way the MLB still looks clean but they get rid of the problem. MLB is very concerned about their image.

Yeah, that's sort of what he was hinting. They probably won't announce anything, but it'll be clear in retrospect from the stats. They're already having to account for it in their data models during training.

MLB has been very clear about their intentions, if not yet the specifics: From four days ago:

>It’s been less than a week since Major League Baseball made known that it will begin to crack down on the use of foreign substances by pitchers...

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/mlb-gerrit-cole-trevo...

Some of the expected specifics to be enacted:

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/latest-on-mlbs-crackd...

> They're not doing enforcement out of nowhere because everyone knows that everyone is doing it, and it'd lead to the league enforcing against all teams simultaneously, which ultimately would be bad for the league itself to have at the very least none of it's star pitchers for some time period.

Why? All you have to do is apply the rules at the end of a season, so that it applies to everyone equally. You can mention they are going to be enforced beforehand. If it applies at the start of a new season, it is fair for everyone. Nobody got an unfair advantage. And if you inform those involved beforehand, everyone can prepare in whatever way is necessary. Soccer rules get updated like this all the time. For example, it would not surprise me if rules are going to be updated after Eriksen's accident (with regards to continuing playing the match), but such would not apply during the European Championship. You wouldn't do same with say VAR either.

Two things. One, the rules are already on the books, they just haven’t been enforced. Two, offense is down significantly across the league. MLB needs to do something to level the playing field or fans will lose interest. Pitching duels can be fun, but not every damn game, and that’s what we’ve gotten a lot of this season.

MLB currently has a big problem with balls in play. We’ve trended every year towards “three true outcomes” baseball (that’s when an at bat ends with a HR, strikeout, or walk). It’s an optimal winning strategy in a lot of cases. It’s also dull.

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