Baseball's Great Delusion
Just over ⅓ of a new, (mostly) normal baseball season is in the books, and, hyperbole be damned, it’s been glorious. And, even though I'm saddled with a doormat of an O’s team, I still treasure each opportunity to watch (or, in my case, listen to) them get smoked. Now, as a fan of a last place and hopeless team, I naturally assumed this feeling was universal. But much like a new toy, the bliss of the 2021 season seems to have faded quickly for some. Because, after a time of celebrating the return of Spring baseball, MLB writers, and not just the curmudgeons, either, seem to have managed to find something to grumble about.
Whether the majority of the public shares this sentiment I can't say, because I don't follow the league as closely as I did when I was younger. As with everything else in society, discussions about sports almost always devolve into hyper-partisan nonsense, so I try to avoid generic sports blather at all costs, only ever tracking the happenings of my basement-dwelling O’s. With my head blissfully in the sand, I just guessed that the far-off, muffled complaining I’d been perceiving recently was a carbon copy of the same complaining always trailing the sport. But, when searching for Cedric Mullins highlights on YouTube, an errant click opened up a video, which clued me in to what was actually drawing the pundits' ire. And, while it began in familiar fashion, it’s conclusion was something I'd never heard in all my decades of watching baseball: "Baseball's lost its way...it's so boring and borderline unwatchable—and dominant pitching is the problem."
When pressed to offer evidence for this drastic claim, the commentator's proof rested almost solely on the insane influx of no-hitters. Now, of course, seven no-hitters in two months is confounding, but rather than label it a quirky outlier or a statistical anomaly, they steered the discussion towards something much more dire. Declaring the future of the game itself was at risk. Because the stats—and their own eyes—tell them that without the correct intervention to assist hitters, the game might not make it through the summer. They cried something to the effect of: "For the good of the sport, help these hitters," "Competent pitching is too boring," and these type's favorite trump card, "Young people won't watch this shit!"
Now, there are many aspects of today's world, like self-driving cars and hovercycles, that I doubted I’d ever see in my lifetime. But if you told me in 2011 that in ten years respectable baseball pundits would be complaining that pitching is too dominant, it might’ve shattered my meager mind’s conception of reality. Because since the McGuire/Sosa summer, it’d been shoved down our throats that pitchers were getting the raw end of the deal. Tiny strike zones, hitters on roids (yes, I know pitchers were juicing, too), ballparks explicitly designed to turn pop flies into home runs, and, most recently, a ball so infused with flubber that it could bring Professor Frink to climax.
Respectable writers and tv personalities told us year after year that these were the problems poisoning the sport. What made games an hour too long. What made it impossible for small- and mid-market teams to compete. What tainted record books with inflated homer totals. To all this, I agreed. And still agree. Wholeheartedly. So we should all be salivating over the 2021 season, as it is exactly what we’ve been pleading for all these years, right?
Wrong. While I might love the product on the field, apparently, according to MLB journalists, the sport will cease to be unless it reverts back to the days of unchallenged offensive superiority. That, they decree, is the only way to make the game exciting, to save baseball from itself. Their articles and videos lament the shift, excessive spin rate, soaring strike out totals, cratering batting averages—all culpable for the dreadful product on the field. For a while, they even floated cockamamie fixes, like lowering the mound (would it just be flat?) or moving it back. But, like all witch-hunts, they finally found the ultimate ill to blame above all else: sticky stuff. This magical substance, commonplace in the game for years, is now solely responsible for the precipitous decline of hitters in 2021. Now, their histrionics and flip flopping aside, I don't want to hammer sports reporters too hard on this specific argument. Even if their characterization of the infraction and how much it's responsible for hitters' struggles is a little stretched, they are doing their jobs and rightly identifying a violation of the rules.
MLB’s blitzkrieg-like response to this commentary, on the other hand, is much more enigmatic. On the surface, we’re supposed to believe they're simply addressing a rule violation. That they’re so outraged that a position group would do something so conniving that they appointed an Elliot-Ness-inspired task force to get to the bottom of it. There’s just one minor curiosity that sticks out. These same writers called for action on previous dilemmas facing the sport, yet it took two years to get the superball sidelined and almost ten to concoct even a halfway decent steroid enforcement policy. But when pitchers have even a slight advantage for a few months, the crackdown is swift, sweeping and unflinching.
So, why the disparity in responses? Because of guiding principles set in place long ago. If you’ll indulge me, let’s journey back to a make believe day in the great year of 1990. In Secaucus NJ, Bud Selig watches a group of potential fans through a one way mirror. The moderator pops in a VHS and a disjointed string of highlights, each separated by a split second of static, flashes across a 27-inch Panasonic on a rolley cart. Stolen bases, sacrifice bunts, pick off attempts, diving catches and, of course, homers dazzle those around the long table.
"What did you like the most?" the interviewer plies.
Without a grasp of the appropriate vocabulary, which, of course, is understandable since this invented group self-identifies as non-fans, they pluck the one term that every person on the planet already associates with baseball: "I liked the home runs."
"Mikey liked the home runs the best...raise your hand if you agree with Mikey."
The whole room raises their hands, as Selig nods approvingly. The course of modern baseball is set. Homers rule all. Consecrated as the holiest of all major league events.
Now even though this exact focus group never happened, the sport's trajectory over the last thirty years leads me to believe that something very close to it did. And that it shaped every discussion held at league offices. And that if someone had stood up to this simplistic way of thinking, maybe we'd have seen a more balanced product during my lifetime. Maybe writers wouldn't spend all their time bitching about which side of the playing field needs to be leveled, because it never would've been unlevel to begin with. Instead, we were subject to MLBs decades-long quest to increase scoring in one very specific way. To their constant tweaking in an attempt to get the ball over the fence more frequently. Assuming it would captivate audiences, they bombarded us with 11-6, homer happy games lasting four+ hours. The exact sort of product the commissioner thought Mikey was asking for and thus thumbed the scale to provide to us.
And that’s the reason for the different responses. MLB brass, like most organizations with a history of wild successes, can’t get out of their own way. Can’t shake the conventional wisdom, even if it was never all that wise to begin with. Can’t bring themselves to admit that home runs might not be the panacea for all that ails the sport. Because when balls are flying out of the park in record numbers, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to even admit that hitters might have an unfair advantage, before waiting years to halfheartedly address it. When pitchers have an edge for two months, they trip over themselves trying to snuff it out before it goes on a day longer. Irrationally fearing fans will turn away if they don’t get their hit of dopamine every five minutes.
But if you've ever watched a shallow pop fly carry over the right field fence in Yankee stadium, you know homers aren't intrinsically enthralling. There's no hushed anticipation streaking through the crowd, as the can of corn drifts closer and closer to the bleachers. Only a tiny bit of "hey, whatta ya know" chuckling on realizing it ambled over the fence. In fact, a possible homer that dies on the warning track is way more exciting than the bloop that winds up in the stands. The warning track out holds the crowd's attention longer, makes them sit up in their seat for a few seconds. Where as the lazy fly prompts them to check their phones before someone nudges them in the ribs to say, “No, it actually went out.” And if there’s a trend baseball owners should fear, it’s not sticky substances, it’s people in attendance spending more time on their phones.
And that’s why MLB’s overarching strategy is fundamentally fucked. Because, like with most things when you attempt to force a particular outcome, the actual result tends to be a direct contradiction to what you were going for. In other words, trying to jack up home run totals to generate excitement has resulted in a significantly less exciting product. A remarkably more sedentary game less likely to draw in new consumers. One that naturally leads to moneyball and the three true outcomes, where having five tools is overkill because three of those tools are barely ever needed. One that submits to the canard that defense and base running can never be fun to watch, so they’re all but eliminated in favor of walks, which I’d be hard pressed to find a more boring event in any major sport. Walks which extend the length of the game—creating a whole new set of problems that the league then needs to address.
But if MLB could do the unfathomable and embrace quality pitching and solid defense for once, they could solve this problem overnight. Each time a hitter watches a hittable pitch go by without even thinking about taking the bat off of his shoulder, the game is unnecessarily lengthened. Same thing for whenever a team has too many DHs and sticks one at a corner outfield position. Every misplayed ball and every squandered outfield assist needlessly extends the game. Making the product not only long, but, outside of the couple of homers, excruciating to watch. But if the league incentivized teams to promote not just nine power hitters, but well-rounded athletes with diverse skill sets, fans wouldn't have to subject themselves to these cringe worthy moments for nine innings.
And it wouldn't require drastic changes (I know how we baseball fans loathe drastic changes). But how about just stretching the strike zone? To MLBs credit, the bottom-of-the-belt-to-the-top-of-the-knee-cap zone from the oughts has been stretched a moderate amount. The new, middle-of-the-knee-cap-to-the-belly-button is an improvement—don’t get me wrong—but, if I had my druthers, I’d trade foreign substances to extend it up to the middle of the letters. Effectively offering pitchers more surface area to work with in exchange for less intense spin rates.
I know this might seem a little counterintuitive, because one of the loudest complaints is that there are already too many strike outs. But that argument misses two key points. First, a larger strike zone, while a benefit to pitchers, wouldn't necessarily produce more strikeouts, especially if they aren't getting the same amount of spin on each pitch. Yet it would force hitters to swing more often, which would hopefully generate more balls in play. And second, and more importantly, it would address the larger issue at play here. The main driver of the anemic batting averages and the countless strikeouts is something completely out of the pitchers' (or commissioner's) hands. It's an ideological issue, not a shortcoming of the rulebook—even if the skewed rulebook helped bring it about. There are too many strike outs because hitters have been force fed idiotic concepts about what their approach at the plate should be. They've been convinced that the only way to succeed is to wait for a perfect pitch and then swing out of your shoes if and when it comes. But the three true outcomes and launch angles—it's all learned behavior. They can unlearn it just as easily. And if they can't, I'm sure someone at AAA can.
But with this one small tweak, more pitches would be hittable strikes, forcing batters to take fewer pitches. Which in turn means they'd put more balls in play. Which means more outs made by the defense instead of only strikeouts and walks. Meaning that teams would need to have more versatile athletes on their major league roster, instead of just muscle-bound one-trick ponies. And with fewer power threats in each lineup, it will be harder for runners to advance, which means more aggressive base running and more stolen base attempts. In all, more movement, more action, more excitement and, crucially, because of fewer takes, walks and errors, less time to finish a game. Meaning people could watch a more engaging product while needing to invest less of their day to do so.
But this approach would require them to abandon their worldview, which we all know they're too stubborn to do. Instead they cook up idiotic solutions to this "existential crisis," like fiddling with the mound or banning the shift. But, again, latter misses the point entirely. It assumes that hitting with half the infield vacant is somehow a disadvantage. And that asking a professional baseball player to choke up and hit the ball the other way is too much to ask.
And let's pretend the writers clamoring for this intervention got their way and the shift was banned. Would the game even change that drastically? Of course not, because while seeing-eye singles are better than walks, unquestionably, they aren't a magic elixir, miraculously creating a more exciting game. This play, however, hints at the factors that could:
This is one of my favorite play so far this season. And it speaks to everything I've been soapboxing about. A superb athlete with great speed swung the bat. Rather than try to force the ball into the teeth of the defense, he took it the other way, exploiting the weaknesses of the shift. And even though the ball barely leaves the infield, he uses his God-given talent to somehow wind up on third base. No focus group in the world could possibly tell you that's what they want to see, but I'd bet anything it was more exciting than 90% of homers you could show them. So rather than focus so much energy on policing pitchers, messing with baseballs or banning shifts, just incentivize teams to find more players like Cedric Mullins.
Of course, none of this is to say that pitchers should be allowed to use foreign substances (It wouldn't be in my top ten of things for the league to focus on, but that’s beside the point). It’s clearly an unfair advantage for pitchers and should be addressed. Luckily, we can be assured that MLB will do everything in their power to eliminate the foreign substances, as there are already rumors of ten game suspensions for violators. But let’s not be fooled. There is not one iota of concern on their part about an even playing field. It’s just that they can't divorce themselves from their long abiding delusion. They’re convinced that the baseball on display these first two and a half months is entirely devoid of excitement, so they will fall back on their tried-and-false reasoning to rev up offenses and favor sluggers. And after eliminating foreign substances, they'll likely lower the mound, or move it back, or juice the ball, shrink the strike zone or make the pitchers throw underhand. Whatever is needed to get the ball to fly over that fence.
But baseball has ebbed and flowed for well over a century—it will survive another offensive explosion. It's a shame though, because I honestly think a pitching renaissance, foreign substance aided or not, would be more than survivable. Same goes for a defensive renaissance, or a base running renaissance or simply a hitting-against-the-shift renaissance. I think the sport would thrive in any or all of these scenarios, as it's exactly the shot in the arm that baseball needs. Shorter games with more action, more balance, more movement, more excitement. Drawing in a new breed of fan that may not have even known baseball could be more than roided up freaks smashing balls over the fence.
Need proof? Imagine asking someone during the 7th, 8th or 9th inning of John Means' no hitter, with their fingernails dug into their armrests, if they were excited. If they need to see a few more hrs to enjoy themselves. And if six other pitchers doing the same thing would negatively impact their enjoyment? Theyd have told you "yes," "no" and "go fuck yourself." And while O's fans will undoubtedly find the ending of a 40 year no-hitter drought as the most compelling aspect of that game, the writer's portending the sport's demise and the league desperate to reinvent itself may find it to be something else—the length of that incredible game was a brisk 2:25.
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