The bats are legal. Not sure why only the Yankees are using them? That won’t last long….

MLB probably welcomes the increased offense.

Again, it's not just the Yankees that are using them. Moreover, the majority of Yankees AREN'T using them (including Judge). And guys have been shaving the ends of their bats for years; pretty common approach by lower power hitters to get some weight off (especially after those guys who were shaving their handles started having the bats explode on them with regularity).

Bad pitching got the Brewers dicks kicked in and they're bitching about it. Those bats weren't world-beaters on opening day. Volpe's two homers were POS wall-scrapers that shouldn't have gone out. Wells wasn't a homer in any park BUT Yankee stadium.

Meanwhile the league is trending back towards things like cutters and sinkers, sweepers as well. Stuff on the outer 1/3 is always going to be en vogue and those bats aren't going to hit those as well.

This is much ado about nothing. Bad pitching and a ballpark that sends balls flying out to RF have juiced their numbers, not some stupid gimmick bat. This is no different than the 'axe handle' bats that Kris Bryant hit a few bombs with a handful of years ago before he went back to sucking.

Pitch better.

Total youth participation in baseball has declined 20-25% over the last decade, but it still has a very healthy foundation. I don't think it's dying. One study below, but I've seen other similar studies that backup and validate these findings.

https://projectplay.org/youth-sports...cipation-rates

It may have declined, but it’s definitely not dying. A lot more competition for other youth sports and activities than we we had 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Yanks should have waited until the postseason to use them

It's still as 'accessible' a sport as there is.

You're just not going to be able to work your way into a really good basketball or football player, for the most part. The premier guys even at really competitive high school levels are just athletic unicorns. They're just taller, bigger, stronger and faster.

Baseball is still a game where a 5'10" decent but unspectacular athlete can grind himself into a high level player. Hockey is similar but incredibly expensive to play so the barrier to entry is financial rather than physical.

But baseball can be played fairly cheap and 'normies' can play it at a fairly high level.

So I think you'll always see a pretty decent foundation there. The one thing that I think could really dig into that would be soccer. Soccer is even cheaper than baseball and if you're a kid willing to just go out there and run - a lot - you can make yourself a really valuable and high level player as a mid-fielder. Or if you'll be smart and physical you can be a really good defender.

But so long as soccer doesn't explode, baseball will continue to have a strong footing in the states.

Agree with everything you said here.

My son played soccer growing up. Decent athlete, but not amazing. But he kept himself in great shape, liked running and was fast. In baseball you can be out of shape a tad. Soccer no. Once you get past like 13, you better be in good cardio shape.

Soccer should catch on more because it takes all those little boys with gnat attention spans and lets them run their asses off until they get tired.

Baseball has so much downtime that it always amazes me that you can get them to power through a game at 6-7-8 years old. But soccer's easy - just chase the ball until about 7 or 8 when they start putting in offensive/defensive systems.

It might just be that the Brewer’s pitchers suck.

BATS have woken up!

Bat Shit Crazy.

It's basically golf fitting coming to baseball and it's been around for years. Players using science to tailor their bats to where they make contact with the ball the most.

Pitching has benefitted more than hitting when it comes to technology/analytics in recent years, so this is not a bad thing whatsoever.

I love baseball. Played as a youth, Coached competitive little league teams up to high school. Been a fan for 60+ years.

They need to leave the torpedo bats in the game. It needs as much offense as it can generate.

They need to put a cap like football has in place. Sure, we will probably lose a whole season or more to get the players to accept it but who wants to go back to the LA and NY teams winning every year like the 50's?

Now do the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

That's got nothing to do with it. It doesn't translate into lifelong fanship. If my kid said he wanted to play baseball I think I might shoot myself.

The average age of your baseball fan just keeps going up. The game is too long and it's boring. They play too many games and any individual game means absolutely nothing. The Yankees beat the Brewers. who cares? It doesn't matter.