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February 13, 2021
MLB CONTINUES TO POISON REAL BASEBALL
As Yogi would say, it’s deja view all over again. Another season is arriving and we will be presented with a game that is called baseball, but one that is increasingly foreign to longtime fans. MLB and the Players’ Association are at war over a number of issues while the lords of the game, seemingly beholden to analytics and a need to make the game more exciting for fans, are implementing rule changes that none of us would have dreamed about years ago. And whenever you try to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place, it simply ain’t good.
Let’s face it. The game has been going in the wrong direction for years. Pitching is a mess with the epidemic of Tommy John surgeries and no one seems to know – or tries to find out by talking with former pitchers – why it is happening to some 25 percent of big-league hurlers. Thanks to analytics, six innings and three runs is considered a quality start, and the complete game is fast becoming an
anachronism. On the other side of the ball, hitting has become more of a strikeout or home run game, with almost all hitters swinging for the fences no matter the situation or the count. And with an obviously juiced baseball and smaller ballparks, the home runs are flying out at a record pace.
And that brings us to the coming season. Following last year’s truncated 60-game campaign, no one knew what to expect in 2021 with the Covid-19 virus still wreaking havoc, but MLB announced a while back that baseball would have a full, 162-game season with spring training beginning as usual in February and the season starting on April 1. And what about the supposed “temporary” rules that were imposed last season – expanded playoffs, a universal designated hitter, seven-inning doubleheaders, and beginning the 10th inning with a runner on second base? Temporary, my foot. MBL continues to play the fans, looking for ways to increase revenue while allegedly trying to shorten the game for the sake of those same fans. Again, my foot.
A couple of weeks ago MLB took a step backward and said they wanted to put spring training off for a month and play a 154-game season, but would pay the players for 162. This drew the ire of the Players’ Association. Their point was that the pitchers were already ramping up for a February spring training and to shut it down for any length of time, or even to keep working through an extra month might lead to injuries. Without the players, MLB couldn’t impost the month’s wait and the shorter season. Here’s what that impasse has also led to.
MLB’s last offer to the players was to couple the universal designated hitter with expanded playoffs. The players want the DH in both leagues and MLB figured they’d dangle that carrot to get the expanded playoffs (and expanded TV revenue) that they wanted. The players wouldn’t relent on the playoff change, so both the expanded playoffs and universal DH are out for 2021, at least for now.
Think about it. American League pitchers virtually never hit. But with interleague play, they must take their turns at-bat in National League ballparks. Again, that opens them up to injury and chances are, with little practice, they aren’t going to add to the offense. Does it really make sense not to have the DH in both leagues? The AL has had it since 1973, nearly half a century ago. Those of us who like pure baseball and would like to see the increased strategies involved when pitchers had to hit, have very little chance of that happening again in both leagues. The DH will eventually become universal.
Then there are the other rule changes. For some reason, seven-inning doubleheaders just don’t seem like baseball. A baseball game should be nine innings. Period. It was one thing in the shortened 2020 season with Covid-19 leading to an increase in doubleheaders. Years ago there were many more doubleheaders than today and no one complained. MLB and the owners today don’t want to lose a gate, so the double bill was either eliminated or made into day/night twin bills so there could be paid admissions to both. There’s really no reason this coming season to make doubleheaders seven-inning affairs. It sounds like high school baseball.
Then there is the runner on second to begin the tenth inning rule. This could really mark the beginning of making baseball into something else and something less. How many elongated games are there anyway? MLB acts as if an occasional 14 or 15-inning game is a nightmare. But to put the runner on second, in scoring position, to start the tenth inning just doesn’t seem in keeping with the spirit of the game. What’s odd here is that analytics say the sacrifice bunt is worthless, a useless out when trying to push a runner into scoring position. But look at all the free outs the epidemic of strikeouts is producing and the lack of action that results. Yet that’s okay because those players striking out might just hit a home run, the best way, they tell us, to win a ballgame. So if MLB insists on putting a runner on base to start the tenth inning, why not put him on first and let good, old-fashioned baseball sacrifice him to second?
What’s next? If a game goes past 14 innings will there be a home run hitting contest to decide the winner? Hey, tie games in hockey and soccer are already decided by a shootout. It wouldn’t surprise me if some genius comes up with the homer-hitting contest idea. After all, the fans love those home runs.
And speaking of home runs, MLB also announced that it’s changing the baseball for 2021, deadening it “slightly.” One study already said the new ball will only shorten the distance by one or two feet compared with the old ball. Will that really stop all the free swingers from hitting home runs when they’re not striking out? I doubt it. MLB and the analytics guys have fallen in love with the home run. They feel a 500-foot blast is more exciting than a key stolen base, a well-executed hit-and-run, a perfectly placed drag bunt or a timely squeeze play. Forget about those things, just hit the home run.
So this is baseball today. MLB complains the game is too long and picks on things like hitters stepping out of the box or pitchers taking too long to deliver. But how much time is wasted when there are eight to ten pitching changes a game? Or when the umpires don the headphones on a replay challenge that make take three or four minutes? There are always other ways to skin a cat, yet MLB seems to be constantly taking the wrong way. Much of its reasoning is to increase revenue, and much of it is because the game has become so beholden to analytics. I’ve heard many people over the years say that baseball was the most perfect game ever invented. Guess what friends. It ain’t that way anymore.
Bill Gutman
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Well written and all the points are very true. Mostly it boils down to if it ain’t broke, don’t fixit. I became a baseball junkie about 1951, listening to the Brooklyn Dodgers on my crystal set. In those days the players seemed like gods to me and when I was a little older checked out every book the local library had on baseball. All the kids in my neighborhood gathered at the local park to play baseball and placed our bikes in a row as an outfield fence. I am thankful for those days and for being cell phone, computer and video game free. I still refuse to have a cell phone. We are becoming dinosaurs Bill. The only concession to the computer world I will make is to have balls and strikes called by electronics. The umpires will still be in place but the calls at the plate will always be correct. It always irked me when the announcer would say that pitcher gets that call, as if what a strike constitutes depends on the who the pitcher is. If a strike is thrown to a place rather than the catchers glove is, it is a ball. The adage, ” money is the root of all evil” may apply to baseball.
Hey Dennis. I also started going to games with my father in the early 1950s and, as kids, we played all kinds of baseball or softball, on the street, in the parks, in our yards — anywhere to just throw a ball around and imitate our early heroes. We were always outside, not sitting inside playing video games or working a smartphone. Like you, I still don’t have one today, just an old style flip phone that we only take when we’re in the car for emergencies. Most of the attempts to fix the game today have only made it more broken. I know a couple of other longtime fans who wouldn’t mine seeing the so-called robot umpires for balls and strikes. So many bad calls every game. And, yes, so much of today’s game is about the money. It seems to be the motivating factor in every decision MLB makes.
Bill
I love baseball history but do not watch the modern game because it defies the classic purity of the sport. I watch films and listen to radio broadcasts from the ’50’s, ’60’s and ’70’s and relish each second of “when it was a game.”
I didn’t leave the current version of baseball …… it left me.
Well said James
Hi James. You’re right. Baseball today is leaving fans like us behind. The beauty of the game and its strategies is being lost to the strikeout-or-home run games, just as basketball is being ruined by the tons of three point shots taken every game. Baseball is becoming difficult to watch and also difficult to listen to. Broadcasts are dominated by constant gab and over-analysis, as well as the endless commercials. And now something else has been added — the promos for gambling. It sure isn’t the game with grew up with and came to love.
Bill
The simple truth is that the people running baseball don’t much like baseball. They like revenue. They are putting on an entertainment and most of them could easily slide over to Hollywood and with the same mindset, continue doing what they do, which is to put out a product aimed at bringing in the dollars.
If home runs and strikeouts bring people who don’t know much about baseball into the seats, the proof is self-evident that the owners and marketers are doing a fine job. Long term? You and I and everyone else who reads Baseball History Comes Alive are (A) irrelevant to the game today and (B) will be dead when the game metastasizes into tomorrow.
Sure agree with you about money being the motivating factor in everything that is happening with baseball today, Thomas. It has become entertainment and the new stadiums are akin to amusement parks with so many non-baseball activities for the paying customers. And how many so-called fans sit there looking at their phones as much as watching the game. Young fans called the old stadiums dumps, but we loved those places because we went there to watch baseball and nothing else. We didn’t need the amenities to keep our interest. Today’s game sure isn’t moving in the right direction anymore.
And I thought baseball went off the rails in the 60s and 70s. Now I long for those days. You are right Bill that the designated hitter is a lost cause and probably should be one way or the other. Starting with a runner on 2nd makes me cringe. Maybe we could expand on your idea on an extra inning home run contest and just lapse into home run derby and have done with it. As to 7 inning games, I guess a modern day Ernie Banks would say “Let’s play one and a half”.
You’ve nailed it, Ed!
Love your remark about Ernie Banks saying let’s play one and a half. That’s a great one, Ed. And accurate. What they’re doing to the game isn’t baseball and if MLB begins thinking that a home run derby to decide an extra inning game will bring in more fans and more money, then they’ll eventually do it. Surely not the game we grew up with and loved.
I see far too many 370-foot and 380-foot homers now. My solution to HRs & Ks is to push fences out to an equidistant 400 feet from Home Plate, with fences uniformly 6 feet high. Part of the extra distance could be gained by moving Home Plate back toward the stands. That would reduce foul territory, increasing offense. Moreover, once hitters realized their mighty clouts became long flyouts, they would compensate by hitting in the gaps and down the fair lines, and we would see many more doubles and triples and even inside-the-park HRs, and perhaps even fewer strikeouts. I would find that much more exciting than cheap homers.
Thanks David, you raise some really good points.
It certainly isn’t a bad idea, David, but I think today’s ballparks are being built with shorter dimensions for the very reason that MLB wants more home runs and doesn’t care about doubles and triples as much. Thanks to analytics, hitters are being taught to use the “launch angle” swing, the old uppercut, in a blatant attempt to see more home runs. That and the big swings no matter what the count leads to all the strikeouts we’re seeing today. I see no indication that it will change soon and that’s unfortunate.
I am at a loss in trying to rationalize these rule changes in baseball. Revenue is of course, the root of all these unnecessary changes. I started following baseball in 1960. The runner on 2nd to start extra innings is easily the most detestable rule change. The only change that makes sense to me is a reliever having to face at least 3 batters if the situation warrants.
Increasing revenue plays a role in almost every change that is being made today, Bruce. Agree that the runner on second to start an extra inning is an abomination and not real baseball. Funny, they originally discussed using it somewhere around the 12th inning to lessen marathon games, as if there were ever that many. Now it’s being used in the tenth inning. They charge so much for tickets, food, parking, merchandise today and yet seem to want rush fans out of the ballpark. What I think they really fear is losing the TV audience to long games and TV money is the golden goose they don’t want to lose. Guess we should all say a prayer for real baseball to return some day.
Spot on Bill. Instead of following the fans it’s the old follow the money racket.
Here’s an idea get rid of the plate at the batters box and make third base home plate then more runs can score!
Now that one is funny. Do that and you may have to rename the sport. Maybe call it Third Baseball.
Once in a rare while there comes along a guy who writes elegantly but in outspoken, plain-spoken terms. Dr. Gutman, you are that guy.
You have said it — for so many of us aging but faithful fans of this beloved sport when it was still young, exhilarating, often heart-breaking, but always real. Today, sadly, it has become a grotesque caricature of its former self.
There is nothing I can add but my heartfelt congratulations to you, and a bittersweet goodbye to the game we knew and loved. It’s a crying shame.
Kindest regards,
Michael
Thank you so much for the kind words, Professor Keedy. Yes, it was a beloved sport and now it’s entirely something else. So many of us older or longtime fans are saying a slow, bittersweet goodbye to a game we loved. As you said, it is a crying shame.
Bill
A pitcher retires 27 batters in a row. The score is 0 – 0. As he takes the mound in the 10th there is a runner on second. Is he still perfect?
Don’t be ridiculous you say. The pitcher was yanked after 6 1/3 or eighty pitches (whichever came first). What does he care?
Hi Ed. That’s a great question you put out there. What the heck would they do if a pitcher was perfect through nine and the game was still scoreless, a la Harvey Haddix. If you put a runner on second, how can it still be perfect in the perfect sense of the word. Maybe it will happen someday and MLB will find it painted itself into a corner. Would love to see it and love to see the uproar that followed. Thanks for posing this one.