Two Easy Ways To Make Baseball a Better Game
Baseball is great, but it can be better. While earlier versions of this piece had an overwrought and overly long intro on the delicate balance between the intimacy of the pitcher-batter matchup and the frenzied multi-actor action across beautiful acres of wondrous expanse resulting from a ball put in play, let’s just get to my suggestions to improve the play on the field.
Shrink the Strike Zone
One of the unfortunate side effects of the balls-in-play discussion is that strikeouts and walks tend to get lumped together. In reality, walks are a pretty static feature through baseball history, while strikeouts have fluctuated. Here’s a graph showing walk and strikeout rates over the last 50 years.
Over the last 50 years, the average walk rate has been 8.6%, which is the same as it has been the last five years, and over the last 10 seasons, it is 8.2. Whatever hitters and pitchers are doing in recent history, it hasn’t caused more walks. Strikeouts, though, have soared, and on average, there are about 26 fewer free passes per year over the last decade as opposed to the previous 40 years, compared to an additional 352 whiffs per team per year over the same time frame. While you can argue that the increase is due to changes in hitting philosophy, the average fastball has gone from 89 mph in 2002 to 93 mph last season, while pitchers throw more and more offspeed pitches and fewer pitches in the strike zone. It’s not batter philosophy causing the rise in strikeouts; it’s the pitching just getting better and also being better aided by an increase in the size of the strike zone of about 10%.
The natural opposition to increasing the strike zone is to wonder whether there would be more walks and a subsequent negative impact on the game. But the strike zone has changed multiple times over the years, and rarely has it made any real difference. In 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, the walk rate was 7.6% — not too far off from historical averages despite it being a historically great season for pitching. Even after MLB lowered and changed the mound and shrank the strike zone for the 1969 season, the walk rate only went up to 9.1%, and by 1972, the year before the designated hitter was introduced, it was back to its normal 8.5. The strike zone was shrunk again in 1988 and expanded at the bottom in 1996, but all the while, we’ve seen little change in walk rate. If we remove pitchers trying to hit, every season over the last 50 years has produced a walk rate between 7.9 and 9.2%. Pitching isn’t easy, but major league players have such incredible skill and incentive to avoid issuing walks that they will adjust to the strike zone, either by aiming more in it or by taking something off of their pitches to be more accurate.
To provide some example of how a smaller strike zone might work, I took all the pitches tracked by Statcast (2015–20) and put them in the zone buckets provided by Baseball Savant. The results look like this:
Here’s what happens when pitches are thrown in these sections.
| Heart | Shadow | Chase | Waste | TOTAL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitch% | 25.7% | 42.5% | 22.7% | 8.8% | |
| Swing% | 71.8% | 52.2% | 23.1% | 5.8% | 46.6% |
| Whiffs/Swing | 14.4% | 25.3% | 51.1% | 83.4% | 24.5% |
| Batted Balls/Pitch | 33.1% | 19.0% | 4.5% | 0.3% | 17.8% |
You can see how good pitchers are: Roughly two out of every five pitches hit the corner of the strike zone. Those pitches are strikes about 50% of the time when taken, and batters swing at them at about the same rate. When a pitcher throws a pitch in the middle of the plate, batters swing more than two-thirds of the time, and a ball is put in play on one out of every three pitches. When batters swing at pitches in the zone, they make contact a vast majority of the time. When a pitch moves from the edge of the plate toward the middle, the chances of a ball in play go up by 74%. The closer we get pitches to the middle of the plate, the more swings, more contact, and more action in the field we see.
The potential counter is that hitters will simply take more pitches on the new edge of the zone, and we won’t see a change in behavior on swings. That isn’t all that likely, though, because those pitches are good to hit, and more than just looking for pitches inside the strike zone, hitters are looking for good pitches to hit. Here’s how hitters have performed on pitches in the different zone buckets.
| Heart | Shadow | Chase | Waste | TOTAL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BA | .317 | .231 | .117 | .023 | .252 |
| SLG | .567 | .356 | .148 | .027 | .418 |
| BABIP | .312 | .289 | .260 | .267 | .298 |
| wOBA | .367 | .273 | .295 | .455 | .317 |
| wOBACON | .415 | .336 | .261 | .251 | .370 |
Not swinging at pitches in the heart of the plate would be a bad baseball decision, as hitters do incredibly well on those. On the edges of the plate, hitters put up below average numbers, even when the batter makes contact. The wOBA on chase pitches is low due to a combination of strikeouts as well as weak contact. On wasted pitches, the wOBA is high because of walks, but the results on contact are pretty pitiful. Hitters are smart not to swing on pitches on the edge of the zone and outside in most cases because even if they make contact, they don’t get great results. They swing at pitches in the heart of the plate not because it will be a strike if they don’t, but because they do damage if they do. There’s little reason to think that would change significantly with a smaller strike zone. Hitters “take” walks because they are given by the pitchers, not because hitters seek them out.
Shrinking the strike zone creates more swings and contact, nets fewer strikeouts, and shouldn’t have a significant effect on walks. The potential negative is too much offense: Shrinking the strike zone could shift the balance between hitting and pitching too much to the hitting side. That leads me to my second change.
Deaden the Ball
Every change brings about other changes that aren’t necessarily desirable. Shrinking the strike zone could lead to scoring at absurdly high levels. To plan for the effects of increased offense, MLB can make a small change to the ball to help the pitchers out.
We don’t need to eliminate home runs or anything, but the last few years have seen a huge increase in home runs thanks to decreased drag on the ball. Along with adjustments by hitters to hit the ball harder and get it in the air, the ball has kept offense from cratering as the pitching keeps getting better. From 2002 to ’14, the average HR/FB rate was 10.4%; in the last six seasons, it’s been 13.5% and 15% over the last two years. Increasing the drag slightly will still end up with a healthy amount of home runs but should serve to depress offense enough to make up for the increase due to the smaller strike zone. Deadening the ball isn’t the main thing, but it’s a small adjustment necessary to get more balls in play and more action during games.
Bonus Change: Expansion
If I had a third way to make baseball better, I’d expand by a few teams to thin the pitching talent pool a bit, potentially make workhorse starters more valuable, and encourage quality starting pitchers to throw more innings in games, which would increase the dropoff in talent to relievers. But expansion is considerably more complicated and requires much more effort to get done.
…
The past is often viewed as a still image, frozen in time, but it was once as malleable as the present, fluidly moving toward an unknown future shaped by opportunities for change or stasis. Relatively minor rule changes have helped balance, grow and improve the game. Fifty years ago, it was lowering the mound and adding the designated hitter, and in recent years, there’s been a newfound appetite for more moves, acknowledging improvement is possible. Limiting mound visits and adding the three-batter minimum both had minor effects on the game. Evaluating umpires with electronic monitoring of the strike zone has changed how balls and strikes were called. Even if unknown at the time, reducing the drag on the baseball has had major effects on the hitting environment.
There are current discussions about pitch clocks and shift-banning, but these are more high-visibility, low-impact changes. Decreasing the strike zone might come with a lot of complaints initially, but it shouldn’t be that noticeable over time and it should provide a high-impact change overall to the action during game play. More swings. More contact. More baseball.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
How about increasing the amount of fair territory for balls in play? Put the foul lines five feet to either side of the 1st and 3rd base bags, and any ball passing 1st or 3rd base within these lines is a fair ball. Balls hit over the fence still have to pass between the existing foul poles to be a home run.
This should really increase the number of balls in play.
I was going to say something along these lines. Less foul ground means more out of play strikes. More 2 strike counts, more strikeouts.
This is extreme and not going to be popular, but what about a 2 foul maximum? Or regulate the amount of foul territory?
After 2 fouls it is going to be what, a ball? Otherwise you are benefitting pitchers again.
It would change the game, but fouls are boring. I’d make the limit high, so it does happen that often but give them four or five fouls with 2 strikes then they’re out. Maybe reduce it further if this doesn’t cause too much of a problem.
Completely disagree. Some of the best at-bats have a lot of foul balls. There’s nothing that exemplifies the pure hitter vs. pitcher battle better than a long at-bat with the hitter constantly fighting off good pitchers. And if that at-bat occurs at a crucial situation in the game? That is pure, high-tension baseball bliss.
YES. I remember going to dodger stadium for the first time in 1990; it really did use to be a pitcher’s park, and square footage behind the plate and down the lines foul was a big part of why
Hmmm. how about three fouls with a 2-strike count is an out, BUT foul bunts are treated like any other foul ball? I’d like to see something making bunting a worthwhile skill again, and this might be the only way right now.
No, then you’re bringing back why 2-strike foul bunts were a problem. You don’t have to be good at bunting, just good enough to foul off pitches with anything resembling a bunt.
Some stadiums don’t even have five feet near the outfield walls.
The obvious, most rational way to increase fair territory is to move the fences back. Just move them back. Create some triple allies, force outfielders to defend over their head, this all increases the value of a ball in play.
It’s really unpopular with the players. No one wants to play in Detroit and the Mets had to move their fences in twice I think. It would be the fastest way to undo the Flyball Revolution though.
I agree. I’d like the fences back with the juiced ball. It brings athleticism to the outfielders and more gives speed an advantage again.
Think about baseball without a fence (like as a kid). How far back do you play against a Stanton? Do you give up on the bloops? What happens when a guy with speed pops one over the outfielders head? All those things are fun imo.
Expansion is always good, but the other suggestions may not have the desired effect of inducing more action. Even if shrinking the zone doesn’t lead to more walks, it will undoubtedly lead to more pitches and more pitchers, which would slow the pace of pay. There might be more contact due to fewer less hittable pitches being called a strike, but the dead ball will result in less action on those balls. Finally, the real contact problem seems to be caused not by a big zone, but by increased velocity and break (i.e., pitchers have gotten damn good at missing bats). If one deems that to be a problem (I don’t), a better solution might be to lower the mound and/or move it back, maybe 12-18 inches. These moves would both reduce velo/spin out of the hand and increase the batters’ reaction time, resulting in more contact. Still, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I agree 100% with all of this, including expansion. Messing with the ball is especially worrisome to me. Changes to the ball wreak havoc at just about every level of the game, from the grip of the pitcher to the impact of the bat to the throw from the outfield. You mess with the ball a little too much and you’ve got yourself a recipe for an unwatchable game.
They already messed with it, though, with the juiced ball. Which directly led to everyone getting launch-angle happy.
Exactly. In other words, they already messed with it an made it an unwatchable game.
Okay, so maybe you can try to undo the changes to the ball. But good luck not overshooting your target. I would be pretty surprised if you could do it intentionally and hit the target.
We can literally build circuits atom by atom. I think they can manage to engineer a baseball to get a desired result.
“Desired result” for who? What exactly are you shooting for? A ball engineered to get to an average of X runs/game (lots of confounding factors – hitter quality/swing plane, pitcher quality/usage, park effects, weather)? An average fly ball distance of Y feet at a specific ball park? A ball that leaves the bat at exactly Z MPH when thrown at AA MPH and swung at BB MPH at an angle of CC degrees? DD home runs/game?
i.e., it’s hard enough to get any sort of real agreement on what is trying to be achieved here, much less the best way to get there.
This isn’t even close to being correct.
There isn’t a human on the planet that understands even half of the complex relationship between ball, environment, and action to precisely define the changes that would be needed to result in exactly what we “want”, if we ever could even come to an agreement on what that is.
It takes a wild amount of hubris to believe otherwise.
i get the fear, but they could just go back to the ball they were using before
Chaging the grip on the ball is indeed bad, as it forces everyone who throws it to adjust. But changing the resilience or drag on the ball is almost entirely invisible to players. A livelier or deader ball, one that produces more or less exit velocity than before, just looks to fielders like the batter hit the ball harder or softer. A ball in the air with more or less drag is a bit less straightforward, but outfielders already need to read the initial progress of the ball in flight to figure out the carry as a product of EV, spin, and the ball itself (which can vary ). They’ll still do the same thing if the ball’s a bit different, and make correct reads. There was no drop in OF defense when the drag on the ball was decreased.
Is it bad that I read the headline and immediately knew the headline was wrong? Is that bad for me or the article? Probably both, actually. But now that I’ve read the article, I’m pretty sure my half-baked assumption is correct.
This is why I think the headline is wrong:
1) There are no “easy” ways to make baseball better
2) A lot of these things are aesthetic preferences so “better” doesn’t even apply
3) There are huge unintended consequences whenever you make changes to the game like this.
Of course there are. However, it seems clear that the game’s watchability is suffering from a lack of action. People love the NFL, despite it often being morally reprehensible, because there is so much action when the snap happens. Running, leaping, throwing. By contrast, strikeouts & homers result in walking back to the dugout, or jogging around the bases. This is why people complain that it is boring.
You’d empirically have a more enjoyable game if it had more movement in it, more drama that is discreet to a single play, regardless of score. It’s what people want, including most of us, I think.
And if there were some really bad unintended consequences, they could just roll them back immediately. Keep the juiced balls around just in case.
The NFL gives us some good examples, though, in how combination effects can result. It is a good thing to have rules that protect quarterbacks. It is a good thing to enforce pass interference rules so that the NFL doesn’t turn into the mid-90’s NBA. And it is a good thing that larger and more mobile QB’s are better able than ever to evade a pass rush and throw a good ball. However, the combination of these things has radically changed the NFL in very short order.
If it were all about movement, hockey would be much more popular.
Agreed. To me, the most important thing by far is tension and suspense. MLB has it. The NFL has it. It’s why basketball and hockey are unwatchable for me (to be fair, it sometimes exists at the end of an NBA game, but most of the time it’s ruined by the constant fouls).
Hockey should have the same popularity as soccer, really.
A well-played hockey game has constant suspense. I’ve never understood why anyone thinks hockey is boring, other than an unpopular supposition that maybe the game moves too quickly for some people to parse…
The big problem with hockey is that it’s not very exciting on TV if you aren’t already a fan. This makes it really hard to get new fans.
Now that I think of it, that sums up baseball pretty well too. Except that baseball is popular among kids so they get fans that way.
Hockey is popular among kids, too. But it’s much more expensive than baseball. All the equipment. I suspect that’s a bar.
Depends where you live. In Minnesota, hockey is very popular with kids. In Texas, not so much. Baseball is popular with kids everywhere. Although you’re also right that the cost probably plays a big role too.
True, but that’s probably not about the product on-ice, because soccer would be a counterpoint, as a popular sport that has similar play to hockey.
Maybe people want to see running instead of skating? I dunno.
Not to state the obvious, but people of all ages/races/socio-economic statuses anywhere in the world can play soccer with just a ball and a small amount of space. To play ice hockey, you need a decent amount of ice, skates, sticks, a puck, and ideally pads/helmets (rollerblades on asphalt isn’t the same). Ice hockey is a much less accesible sport to play, and that can be expected to translate to less interest in watching the sport.
Oddvark – I was just gonna say that many places don’t have ice, but you explained it better.
I am a life long St. Louis Blues fan. Hockey’s main problem is that it is hard for great players to stand out. The best player is only on the ice for 16-18 minutes a game. And even then there is no guarantee they will be involved with a play. The lack of playing time and ability to be in the spotlight makes selling hockey difficult. Most dedicated hockey fans are dedicated to their team not a player. Its easy to be a fan of Betts, Soto, Mahomes, Henry, James or Curry. Their highlights are easier to spotlight than McDavid or Crosby.
Although baseball does their DAMNDEST to make sure no one stands out – don’t celebrate too much or else you risk getting beaned by some ornery cuss, don’t promote any players over the team, etc. Baseball has a D- marketing arm.
The same applies to baseball, no? The best player bats four, maybe five times in a game and then stands off-camera until the ball gets hit to him.
I suspect hockey isn’t that popular for reasons that have little to do with the on-ice product and much more to do with ESPN perpetually deep-sixing the NHL.
You’re confusing “things I like” with “things that will have specific effects.” Aesthetics are, literally, about making things more approachable and accessible. If you don’t want that, it’s ok to disagree, but denying someone’s credibility because you don’t want to/can’t understand is, I dunno, rude and short-sighted.
Your argument is “i can’t imagine it, therefore, it’s impossible.” do better!
Why are strikeouts, walks, home runs, stolen bases, or anything else “good” or “bad”? Are shorter games good? How about more scoring? Most people would say yes to both, but then how do you reconcile that? I suspect I share some of my preferences with Craig but not all of them. Some people like Stravinsky, and others like Nirvana. But which one is “better” depends a lot on who you are.
I’m not arguing with your preferences, but rather with your generalizations about what “most people” want and about what is “possible,” neither of which feel particularly well-supported. You’re arguing that it’s impossible, but your criterion for success seems to be “make everyone happy” instead of the stated goal, which is to improve action in play. IMO, increasing foul ground would be a great idea with fun secondary consequences, and I have to believe you have fun ideas, too.
And just because we don’t like an idea at first doesn’t meant it isn’t a good one (the DH comes to mind!)
Generalizing about what most people want? Like that people want fewer strikeouts and home runs, and want more action in play? Good luck trying to prove that. If anything, the sense is that the casual fans love home runs, and that they outnumber the rest of us by a lot.
You’re fighting a losing battle here, though. The title is literally “Two easy ways to make baseball a better game”, and the article certainly proceeds from that premise. You can talk about that Craig is really suggesting we appeal to the majority, or that even though they aren’t easy, they are still worthwhile. But by doing that, you’re conceding the point that it is “easy” and “better”. (I disagree that these specific will work the way Craig suggests, but to me that’s a different issue entirely and one that is much more debatable).
Some people like Stravinsky and Nirvana!
Well… Stravinsky and Stone Temple Pilots.
“Aesthetics are, literally, about making things more approachable and accessible. ” Lol
God, Abner Doubleday and Henry Chadwick decided that baseball is supposed to be a game of fielders attempting to retire baserunners. Anyone who aesthetically prefers Three True Outcome baseball is wrong and bad.
Move the mound back.
I would like to see what his does at the MiLB level to find what are the secondary effects. I don’t think it needs to be that much based on how effective Capps was when he was sliding to the plate. Move mound back by however far Capps was sliding would likely cut strikeouts back to rates of 10-20 years ago.
Agreed. And the argument that it wouldn’t benefit hitters because the pitch would move more is garbage. More reaction time is the key. I would say it does have to be tested in the minors first, obviously.
I believe it is/will be tested in Indy ball
I wonder about the effects of removing the biggest cheating we have–foreign substance use by pitchers?
Maybe, but 1) you’d have to test pitchers constantly throughout the game, making pace of play even worse and 2) pitchers will demand hitter sacrifices (body armor/pine tar/batting gloves, etc.). I’m not sure I totally agree with Craig, but they’re far more easily implemented than most others, which makes them viable.
Pitchers will demand that batters give up legal devices in exchange for pitchers giving up *illegal* devices? Forgive me if I don’t have much sympathy for the pitchers in that battle.
The batters have also given up trash cans. Not sure about buzzers under the jersey, but at the least there haven’t been any credible reports of that kind of thing lately…
Deaden the ball and increase the size of the bases.
How big of bases are we talking? Is 5′ x 5′ too small or do we need to think bigger?
Lol, 5′ x 5′ might be pushing it. But if each base is extended three inches, the runner has a six inch advantage on steals. That seems like it would be enough to increase the running game
Let’s make it 8×8 and allow two runners on a base at the same time. Why not?*
*don’t answer that, I know why not.
The last third or so of third base to home plate should be a slip and slide. Who says no?
The runner, but that’s okay, we’ll always find another sucker to replace him.
In middle school we used to play this game called “kickbaseball” (no clue how prevalent it is) where you could have as many runners on a base at the same time as you wanted.
The only ways to get out were:
1) kick a fly ball that is caught
2) be off base when the catcher touches home plate with the ball
The end of the inning was when there was nobody left to kick (so if nobody actually gets out, but everyone is stuck on base, then you’re done).
There were amazing scenes of crowds of 20 kids running from one base to the next. Some good strategy (if I’m on first, do I try to make it to second on a grounder to short? If I try, I might get out if they can get the ball to the catcher fast enough – but if I stay at first, I might get stuck there.). And some great times where everyone except one kicker got out, and that one guy had to keep getting home run after home run…
Sounds like Calvinball….
make home plate an actual plate, and lose runs by breaking it
#bringbacknotgraphs
I’m going to put in a plug for my two not-at-all easy ways to make the game “better”, where “better” means “more aligned with my own preferences.”
1) Expansion. Teams are doing a pretty good job of cycling through minimum cost guys at the bottom of the roster and non-tendering them when they get too expensive, which means there is absolutely enough talent to expand. There are a bunch of minor league stadiums that are open, so that’s not a problem. There are at least three viable places for expansion (Portland and/or Vancouver, Montreal, and Nashville) and another few decent options (San Antonio or Austin, Raleigh / Durham, Calgary). More fees to replenish the owners coffers. More jobs for the players. More baseball for everybody! There should absolutely be 32 teams, and I think I could make an argument for up to 36.
2) Expand the outfield and/or do weird things the outfield walls. What is the best play in baseball? It’s the inside-the-park home run. But it rarely happens. The triple is the most exciting play that currently happens, and even that happens too rarely. So let’s reward speed. Make everyone move the walls back so it’s Colorado / Kansas City-level big. Not only does this give your Trea Turner-types of the world a shot for an inside the park home run a couple times a year, it also means that teams will place a premium on speed in the outfield, meaning more guys like Brett Gardner in the corner outfield and fewer like Kyle Schwarber. (Weird things for the outfield walls can be reserved for teams that can’t move the fences for whatever reason…put your own bizarre version of the Green Monster in your own stadium).
If you want to see a bunch more inside the park homers, why not make all the walls covered in rubbery, honeycomb-like ridges? That’d really ensure some wacky bounces and still be nice and soft when OFs crash into them.
That sounds like a great wacky wall idea. I don’t think other teams putting up their own exact version of the Green Monster is good. But for teams that can’t move the outfield back for whatever reason, I think doing something like this would be a good alternative.
I think moving every outfield fence back about 10-15 feet would be one of the best changes baseball could make. Should decrease the less kinetic aspects of offense (home run) and add more value to incremental bases (stolen bases, taking the extra base, hit and run/sacrifice) which are all more kinetic and exciting plays. Also increases the value of more athletic players in the outfield to cover more ground.
Really wary of intentional changes to strike zone.
Moving back the mound is an interesting thought as well but I think the real problem in baseball is the emphasis on the home run and the reduction in the ability to drive the ball through the infield brought on by the advent of the shift.
I don’t think the shift really plays into it the hitters mindset. The shift is a result of the batters swinging for the fences, and thus pulling the ball hard on the ground. An all fields, contact first approach makes the shift counter productive.
This to me is the “easiest” solution I’ve seen offered. For one, there’s little risk. If there’s huge unintended consequences (i.e. as there likely would be with messing with the ball, or changing the strike zone) and it turns out to be a mistake, you can just relatively easily re-adjust the walls. Also, there’s a perfect precedent: no baseball stadium is the same, and even within specific stadiums, they frequently adjust the wall dimensions.
In addition, as James mentioned, it’s another tool to counter to the shift, which has become so dominant, and in some way contributed to the fly ball movement. Batters will be further incentivized to hit fly balls (more likelihood of getting hit in the larger outfields) without the guarantee of a HR, especially in stadiums with extremely short dimensions down the lines (like Fenway).
One downside I see is that retrofitting new outfield walls in older stadium, especially Fenway, will be next-to-impossible. You could raise the walls, but that will render a bunch of seats useless, unless they can develop some sort of transparent wall that doesn’t obstruct fans’ views. Which now that I consider it, could be a really neat development, and could function very similar to the netting around homeplate. Just make it a bit more rigid so that it doesn’t cushion the ball, but allows it to bounce off it and remain in play.
My general take is that outfields need to be bigger, but in case you’re say, running up against Lansdowne already on the outfield wall and moving it back is an absolute nonstarter because there’s a street there, I think it needs to be weird instead.
I don’t think there’s anything you need to do in Fenway. It’s so incredibly weird already, and the Green Monster and weird right field make it so that there’s a lot more doubles and triples relative to home runs already, which is what we’re going for. I honestly don’t think this is likely to be a problem in many stadiums. The big exception is Wrigley Field. Not sure what to do about that one.
Most of these stadiums have already moved the fences in, so how hard is it to move them back? Look at Citi Field… they took a beautiful stadium and ruined it because the ball didn’t fly out of the yard. Then you got teams like the Angels who see a competitive edge in drawing a line on a wall rather than hitting the ball over the fence. Just put everything back to where it was!
I disagree with it being “easiest” because owners won’t want to tear out seats in order to accommodate the new fences due to the reduction in revenue.
I feel like the backstop is far enough back that you might be able to get 10-15 feet by simply moving home plate back towards the backstop. I also like the idea of a passed ball not being a guaranteed extra base for runners.
That would also reduce the amount of foul territory then.
My suggestion was to raise the walls where it wasn’t possible to push the walls back.
I’m not a robot umps guy, but wouldn’t 1 be completely captured by moving to robot umps?
I think I’m with Bill James in that changing the strike zone is like doing open heart surgery on the game; you only want to go to that extreme if all other options have failed. I think they should try moving back the mound before they go changing the strike zone.
Move back the mound and you screw up every pitcher in the game. Lowering the mound makes much more sense.
Ehhh, that seems like a reach. Why would moving the mound down not screw up every pitcher as well?
My list of two:
1. Shorten the game. 9-inning games should average 2:45 or less. (Honestly, I would ideally say 2:30 so that 7:30 first pitches end by 10pm but that’s too far a change from today’s 3:05 duration to make work.) Pitch clocks at minor league games are amazing for the action on field, the fan experience, and actually getting the game done before 10pm! Truly, the pace at AAA just hums along now, even in high-scoring games. Replace the advertising dollars elsewhere; taking out two minutes per inning on average can get you there. And I would think advertising time has more value if more people are watching, and I think more people will watch shorter and tighter games. This is completely within the control of MLB (except the pitch clock) and is critical.
1a. I am cheating with a sub-bullet. Part of speeding up the game is shortening replay. The way to do that is to eliminate frame by frame replay. All replays must be at full speed. If you can’t tell at full speed whether there is evidence to overturn the call, it stands. Stop with the frame-by-frame looks at stolen bases, for goodness-sakes.
2. Incentivize competition and winning. Yes, there is moral hazard here. But there is currently little incentive for owners to field a winner. You can be mediocre and very, very profitable. I don’t think salary floor-and-cap rules alone are enough. Relegation will never happen (even though it would be AMAZING) – my dream is for MLB to expand to 36 teams with the bottom four each year relegated to AAA on top of eight 4-team divisions. It gives the union an additional 104 jobs beyond expanding to 32 teams. I could also see this being great for talent development because AAA prospects will face major league talent on four teams. There would have to be some revenue-sharing mechanism beyond the national TV contract, and obviously players wouldn’t like being relegated. But man, would it make the season more interesting for EVER TEAM. Would fans come out to see a rebuilding, young, underperforming team to give them some kind of home field advantage to avoid relegation? How would it impact the trade deadline? Would players start getting opt-outs in their contracts for relegation years? Fascinating possibilities… and obviously incredibly unlikely… but this is my dream.
I think 1(a) is spot on. If you can’t see a definite error in real time, leave it as-is. 60-second review max. Will correct the obvious errors. That’s enough.
Agree with #1 also – set and enforce a pitch clock, and don’t allow batters to step out – once you’re in the box, for God’s sake, stay there. Your batting gloves are fine, they didn’t come loose while you had the bat on your shoulders taking a pitch.
I really love that soft relegation idea. Having automatic promotion back into the league the following year removes the long term risk of destroying the value of a franchise, but it’s still a big enough deal that there would be very stark incentives for teams to try and avoid it.
Replay just sucks–and not just in baseball.
Just because you can do something with technology, doesn’t mean you should.
I’m not 100% privy to how MLB distributes money to each club in terms of revenue sharing, but incentivizing how MLB distributes those dollars based on winning could make a lot of difference.
I know Formula 1 isn’t so popular here in the US, but the amount of prize money given to teams is determined by how the place in the standings. This year, there was a huge race for 3rd that wasn’t settled until the final race of the season. There was drama about it all season and even during the final few laps of the final race and the team that ultimately got third place was celebrating as if they just won the overall championship, due to the extra prize money.
I’m not suggesting MLB to completely follow this model, but if there was a winning incentive to receive more money in revenue sharing, it could change how teams operate.
My version of 1a – don’t let teams look at replays before deciding whether or not to challenge. I always thought this was bizarre. This would lead to fewer challenges, which would speed up the game. The downside is that fewer calls would ultimately be correct.
Is the difference between a 2:45 game and a 3:05 game really that big a deal? If I’m scheduling my evening, those 20 minutes make a huge difference. Most regular season games, I’m not exactly glued to the TV every second anyway.
Speaking of the regular season, I think we can go a step further and restrict replay review to the playoffs. The odds of a game turning on a replay review are already small, and the odds of a pennant race turning on a game that turns on a replay are minuscule. Maybe we could allow it in rare cases, at the umpires’ discretion, for once-in-a-lifetime scenarios like the Galaragga/Joyce almost-perfect game.
iIs the difference between a 2:45 game and a 3:05 game really that big a deal?
I think it is, for two reasons.
First, shortening the game means shortening the duration between balls in pay, even if balls in play remain constant. It literally speeds up the game on the field, which I think is important in making the sport compelling and also important on keeping the average viewer’s attention. And let’s face it, things like this are aimed at the average eyeballs, and not the 20,000 people who would visit an internet website devoted to the advanced analytical side of the game.
But shorter games will also draw more viewers. I know so many “average baseball fans” who’ve fallen out of love with the game, but they don’t blame home runs or strikeouts or three true outcomes. Person after person says to me, “I can’t believe it’s still your favorite sport… I’m not spending 3+ hours on a weeknight to watch a game, and 4 hours in the postseason…” Or I hear, “I watched for two hours and only got to the 5th inning; forget about it.” In addition, I think game-time matters in reaching a younger audience, and in them being able to watch the games. I love letting my kids watch a couple of innings with me before bedtime… but they’re only getting to see a couple of innings because it’s so damn slow.
You have to love baseball to commit the time to watch it regularly. I do, and so I always will (much to my wife’s dismay). But more viewers want shorter game times, at least among the people I talk to. If people know they could watch a 7:05 first pitch and reasonably expect the game would be over before 10pm, I suspect viewership would increase.
I’ll second that…as games get longer, they can seem interminable – just lots of dead space with no action, commercial after commercial, pitching change after pitching change, challenge, replay, etc. And this from someone who LIKES baseball.
Make the instant replay challange time limit ten seconds. The point should not be to get the call perfect, but correct bad calls. This way challanges will have to rely on their belief that they were robbed, not that the ball beat the throw by one frame or that the swimmer beat the life guard to the raft.
The greatest change that can be made is pitch clocks, and even twenty seconds is too much.
I’m in agreement with sadtrombone that this piece was doomed from the title.
1) You never defined what “better” is. You jumped straight to arguments. If you were concerned about length, why not turn this into a series? This reads like a lot of college essays that immediately lose points because you didn’t define your thesis upfront.
2) You never defined “easy”. For some reason pitch clocks is harder than adjusting the strike zones, which I think is incorrect. To adjust strike zones you need to retrain ALL umpires and/or adjust plate sizes across all levels of play.
3) How does expansion relate? You through out a few possible second order effects but we can study this! We have expanded before! What happened?!
4) First-order vs Second-order effects. It would have been useful to have each idea include your list of perceived first and second order changes resulting from your improvements. Then readers can specifically target where they agree/disagree. Now it just devolves into talk radio where everyone just shouts their ideas at each other with nonproductive convos.
Sorry Craig if I’m overly harsh, but I felt tough feedback is better than no feedback
Also, re: changing strike zone as easy – not sure how costless this is for hitters who have spent their careers honing batting eye around the existing framework.
What if they made the bases 85 feet apart? This would encourage more speedy “slap hitters”, instead of the increasing HR or K batters, since hitters could potentially generate more infield singles (and triples).
Of course, this would make stealing too easy. So, what if the baserunner could not have a lead-off and only could advance once the pitcher approaches home plate? This would be subjective, but an Umpires could make the call if a player runs/steals too early. Additionally, this would remove the need for pick-offs, which tend to eat up a lot of time as well.
On the subject of Umpires, I think it would be ideal to remove all video replay reviews as well. Yes, calls will be incorrect, but there’s also an art to making a play look favorable to you. Reviews slow the pace of the game tremendously. Umpires make mistakes and we should just have to deal with it.
You say ” Roughly two out of every five pitches hit the corner of the strike zone. Those pitches are strikes about 50% of the time when taken, and batters swing at them at about the same rate.” Does that mean that roughly 10% (40% x0.50 x0.50) of pitches hit the corner of the strike zone but are called balls? Am I understanding and doing my doing my mental arithmetic correctly? Does that mean that at least 10% of pitches are called incorrectly, not including balls that are called strikes?
I like the change ideas, besides the last one. I don’t think more teams is going to improve Baseball. The strike zone is the main culprit. That would change the action
Yup.
Better baseball is actually contraction.
The best guy will always be there.
The worst guy in the league would be better in a 24-team league than in a 30+-team league.
I’m for expansion now more than ever–expanding by two teams would bring minor league baseball back to eight communities that just lost a team.
Ten actually. The MLB city, plus their four affiliates. Most of the likely options (sort of Portland, San Antonio, Vancouver and Nashville) currently host MiLB teams. So if Nashville, for example, were granted a MLB team, the Brewers would need to find a new AAA affiliate.
I realized that later–with that poor math I don’t deserve to be a member of fangraphs!
But of course ten vs. eight only emphasizes the positive effect of expansion at a time when MLB has reduced the number of affiliates per team.
I’m not sure that thinning the talent pool through expansion would help the cause of the disappearing starting pitcher. Instead, I think that teams will just accelerate the trend of using more pitchers over shorter stints to maximize their velocity/effectiveness until their tendons need replacement, then simply calling up a similar replacement level reliever. The only difference is that the bar for replacement level pitching would drop from what used to be the “AAAA” level down to the “2020 Boston Red Sox” level.
Prose like this is why I’m a member: “The past is often viewed as a still image, frozen in time, but it was once as malleable as the present, fluidly moving toward an unknown future shaped by opportunities for change or stasis.”
I don’t think any “casual” baseball fans dislike home runs. I feel like casual baseball fans want to see a lot of balls smashed to oblivion, record chases, etc. I do think more balls in play would be good though, but not at the expense of home runs, at least for casual fans. Pitchers are improving faster than hitters are now, that is the real problem.
I’ve been saying this for years! Deaden the ball and shrink the strike zone! It’s just that I only say it to myself.
I’m also intrigued by a rule change to make infields faster and thus increase BABIP on grounders. I also like the idea of adding bumps and ridges to outfield walls to make triples and inside-the-parkers more common.
That second idea is hilariously awful.
If there is a runner on first and the P throws to first, and the runner gets back to first with his foot, the throw to first is considered a ball to the batter. If the runner gets back to first hand first, then no impact on the batter, because the P had a real chance at a pick off.
This incentivizes Ps to make real throws to first instead of BORRRING rainbows to first that have no chance of catching the runner. In turn, the runners should take bigger leads because of less risk of being picked off.
Expansion would be great and could lead to more quality talent coming back from the NPB and KBO.
That’s backward.
You’re not looking for more talent–you’re looking for more mediocrity.
Like a lot of the others, I am also troubled by the lack of definition of ‘better’ and ‘easy’. Better depends on what you want to see and why you want to see it. My own opinion is that the general public wants more flashy offensive stuff, primarily home runs, regardless of what diehard fans like us want. What I really love is a cool, ripped double into the game, a sliced single through the infield, that type of thing. Making the strike zone smaller I think would just increase the number of walks, which are honestly boring. Deadening the ball I can accept if we talk only about re-deadening it back to the way it was a decade ago (I may like small-ball, but I don’t want to bring back the Deadball Era or even the ’65-’85 style of play). For my enjoyment, I’d like to see those balls that were once borderline home runs become doubles or long flies…with the former it’s more action, with the latter may we’ll get lucky enough to see swinging for the fences be relegated to sideshows, like maybe one Gallo-lite per team instead of the current ~5/team. If home runs are being converted into outs, maybe we’ll see more emphasis on 20 degree launch angles rather than 25.
As far as accomplishing that without tampering with the ball…moving the mound back would mess with every pitcher in the game, and I don’t think in a good way. They’ve developed their pitches to break at a certain time/place, and having that be three feet further in front of the batter would lead to the average ERA going up to like 6.00 (could be an exaggeration, but I don’t like it anyway). You could try to move the fences back, but good luck doing that in Fenway or Wrigley. No, I think the only way is to try to bring back the old ball.
As far as other suggestions, expansion I think is fine, but only if it’s in a place that can support a team. Tampa is an anomaly–it’s really hard to do what they’ve done with such small attendances. I think Miami is more the norm (although maybe they’re an outlier in ineptitude). I’m not sure I like lowering the mound either, but I’m more open to giving that a try than moving the mound back or tampering with the strike zone.
What I see as the biggest thing they can do for the game time-wise is to just stop this nonsense with extra innings at all and end the game after nine innings. More innings is more time for players to get hurt and I think many people don’t watch past the 8th anyway, regardless of the score. Maybe in the playoffs you get extra innings, but not in the regular season.
Also, the shift takes away a lot of those through-the-infield singles that I like and incentivizes crazy launch angles. I don’t say “ban the shift” because that’s literally just player positioning, but I would say something like “make it illegal to have more than two infielders to the left/right of second”. Then if you want another infielder, you’ll have to realign the outfield, which has the potential of absolutely blowing up in the manager’s face and making for some cool bloop triples or something.
The shift actually disincentivizes trying to pull the ball in the air. The problem is it isn’t effective enough to out weigh the value of trying to pull the ball in the air.
I would agree 100% on your first two points.
I disagree on your bonus change. While I feel that expansion is an inevitability, I don’t think it’s the answer to making baseball a “better game”.
Instead of expansion, I think — (hold on, I am bracing to get down-voted) — relocation for certain teams would make baseball a better game. And if relocation isn’t an option (like, say, one team’s move causes another to complaining about encroaching its territorial rights), contraction should be on the table.
I ….like strikeouts and home runs.
I love the idea expansion though. Teams have done a magnificent of expanding the talent pool, the league should expand to match. Let’s see another team the NY and another in the South for starters. Maybe put a team in Pittsburg too.
“Maybe put a team in Pittsburg too.”
And call them the Pirates!
Are you suggesting that Pittsburgh should be the next two-team city? Using combined statistical areas (CSAs), Pittsburgh is 24th and the Pirates have pretty consistently been among the worst teams as far as attendance, so I imagine they wouldn’t be first in line for another team.
CSAs
2 NYC 22.6M
2 Los Angeles 18.7M
2 Chicago 9.8M
2 Wash/Balt 9.8M
2 SF/Oak 9.7M
1 Boston 8.3M
1 Dallas 8.1M
1 Houston 7.3M
1 Philly 7.2M
1 Miami 6.9M
1 Atlanta 6.9M
1 Detroit 5.3M
1 Phoenix 5.0M
1 Seattle 4.9M
0 Orlando 4.2M
1 Minneapolis 4.0M
1 Denver 3.6M
1 Cleveland 3.6M
0 Portland 3.3M
1 San Diego 3.3M
1 Tampa 3.2M
1 St Louis 2.9M
0 Salt Lake City 2.6M
0 Sacramento 2.6M
1 Pittsburgh 2.6M
0 San Antonio 2.6M
0 Columbus 2.5M
1 Kansas City 2.5M
0 Indianapolis 2.5M
0 Las Vegas 2.3M
1 Cincinnati 2.3M
0 Raleigh 2.1M
0 Nashville 2.1M
1 Milwaukee 2.0M
Going by population, looks like NYC and LA could both get a third team, plus several options for first teams and perhaps a handful of one-team areas that have the population to take on a second.
I’d argue that it probably makes more sense for NYC and/or LA to get a 4th team before Pittsbrgh gets a second.
Is there a point though in which you would prefer there be less? Take the extreme, how much would you enjoy them if strikeout and home run were only two outcomes of an at bat?
Obviously that won’t happen but my point is for some people the current rate at which we see strikeouts and home runs has decreased their enjoyment of them, they want more balls in play.
See this is why saying that this would make baseball “better” is not working for me. I would like fewer home runs, but does that make the game “better”? It doesn’t as soon as I get outvoted by bglick4 and their home-run-loving friend.
Pitcher clock with no men on base, no clock when runners on. No batter timeouts unless runners on.
On steals, if the player comes off the bag minutely despite beating the tag, he should still be safe, none of those stupid overturns. Obvious disengagement like missing the bag badly is still an out.
Limit pitching changes, not batters faced, and positional players are not included, so we get more position players involved and possibly more two-way investment by the league.
No more live feed strike zone boxes. I want to be caring subjectively and not relying on a piece of tech to sedate me as the pitch happens. Then show it afterward on really close pitches to answer my question of what was it really
Get baseball commentators in general and especially for the playoffs that are more interested in giving baseball that unique flavor. I’m tired of the commentators being generic for multiple sports. It is one aspect that just isn’t as engaging as it needs to keep a fan watching. This should honestly keep more TV viewers from falling asleep. Baseball used to be tense and interesting because people had to pay attention to understand what was happening. No one has to pay attention to understand. It makes it difficult to care if you aren’t invested in knowing whats happening.
I hate those strike zone boxes in telecasts. With a passion. It has actually caused me to watch significantly less of a ballgame.
To those arguing to move the mounds back: I say 60 ft, 6 inches is sacred and should never change – not to mention the arm injuries that would occur as pitchers have to all of a sudden change the distance they need to pitch the ball. Changing distances that pertain to the mechanics of playing the game (basically just this and 90 ft basepaths) should be off the table.
Agree with both, and also either-or-both a) lower the mound, b) move the mound back. During early COVID, watching 80s baseball games, the big change is that the top 10 HR players had significantly less power than the median modern player. Home runs today often land halfway up the bleachers, in the 80s, most HRs were wall-scrappers or just barely.
Here’s an easy way that I think everyone can agree would make baseball better:
Give the umpires a PA mic to explain challenges and non-hand signal calls.
Keep all rules as is, but also put a hungry lion on the field.
Just one? Lions usually hunt in groups. It might get lonely.
How about intersport play?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=147&v=bEl8nZREi4M&feature=youtu.be
The obvious answers as stated in the comments are either implementing the pitch clocks and/or eliminating the “step out of the box after every pitch” nonsense. Neither fundamentally alters the game and taken together will have the most impact on time of game. Will it put more hitting into the game ? Probably to some degree. If you want more doubles and triples, just move the fences back and create more outfield space. Again, a relatively non-invasive way to get more movement without altering the game too much
I think the news that the Negros Leagues being classified as major leagues has certainly improved baseball.
I wonder what Fangraph’s take on that will be. How would WAR even work anymore? Or any league-adjusted metric for that matter?
WAR is defined using the idea that an all-replacement level team would have a W% of .294, a figure that happens to produce a nice, round result that a 30-team league playing a 162-game season will have exactly 1000 WAR to fill in the gap between replacement-level records and the .500 result that must, tautologically, be the average record league-wide.
If you have fewer teams in the league, and they played fewer games in a season, the same methodology still works. Scale down the number of teams and games to determine the total number of league-wide WAR for that season, and divvy it out between players using the same allocation method as before.
Well, it works because you can assume if the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland A’s each need a replacement player, they would get similar levels of talent in a replacement player (on average).
But when you have separate leagues that take from separate populations, that assumption can no longer be obvious, especially when one takes from a much larger population than the other does (like comparing stats from a 2A school with a 4A school).
Hitting .300/.400/.500 in one league is not the same as doing it in a totally separated league. For all we know, maybe doing it in the Negro League was harder because maybe the Negro League had pitchers with better stuff on average. Maybe Ted Williams would have only hit .310 in the Negro League instead of his career .344? Or maybe he would have hit .370? The point is that we don’t know. We cannot assume they’re the same and then just base all league-adjusted metrics on that assumption.
Don’t futz with the ball, just call the rulebook strike zone and lower the pitcher’s mound.
This is the correct answer.
I totally disagree! The game is awesome as written!
If your worried about losing fans then make it much easier for poor kids to catch all the games on TV. I used to drive for Lyft and Uber on weekends and I would always have the radio broadcast of games on my phone on while I drove. When boys from families without cable or satellite TV found out they could get the radio broadcast from MLB for $25 for the entire summer it was common for them to buy it right there in my car. They want to consume games, it just not affordable for a family pinching pennies to buy a TV sports package.
what about a rule that penalizes strikeouts? like if a certain number of consecutive or just batters in general strikeout then you lose one defender for the next half inning
I would like to see active roster sizes increase, with limits on the number of pitchers, so more position players. 27 is a nice baseball number, and 30 might be better. This would allow for more platooning resulting in more favorable matchups for batters, more/better pinch hitter options, possibly more pinch running specialists who could add speed to the basepaths in key situations, etc.
This, of course, would not be easy because more players means with larger total payroll for the owners or lower salaries on average for the players.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve agreed with something so intensely. If I wanted to watch the sum of discrete outcomes of a guy throwing a thing, I’d watch darts. Baseball is balls in play. Baseball is fielders attempting to retire baserunners. These two simple changes would restore that.
I like these suggestions, Craig. Something must be done to put more balls in play.
I’ve believed for a while that two moves would go a very long way to solving the problem:
First, limit the number of pitchers on the active roster to eleven (and include rules that prevent teams from gaming the system by constantly rotating arms via minor league options, etc.). This will force starters to throw more innings and will naturally reduce velocity as all-out effort won’t be feasible any longer except for the very few. Relievers, too, will have to be used differently. Burning five pitchers in a nine inning game will once again become a rarity.
Then I’d incentivize hitters to level out their swings a bit by having every park move their fences back by 12-15 feet. That will reduce homeruns and force outfielders to cover more ground. I believe that will make for a much more entertaining game.
Lastly, on the subject of making the game more enjoyable to watch…. definitely implement a pitch clock. And keep batters in the box. Watching older games during the pandemic really highlighted how much quicker – and better – the pace of play was. Pitchers stayed on the mound. They threw the ball, the catcher threw it back and they were ready to go again in seconds. Hitters didn’t step out after every pitch and go through an elaborate ritual adjusting their gloves. Nine inning games in under 2 1/2 hours! Heavenly.
Craig, thought-provoking stuff. Finding a way to reduce strikeouts and walks and increase the number of balls in play is crucial to the game’s future, and that’s all the SABR Science and Baseball Committee (which I chair) has been discussing for the last five years or so, in our annual meeting. I agree that restoring drag to the ball will be a component of any fix, as a counterbalance to fixing what we’re calling the “Contact Crisis.”
I don’t think the strike zone fix works, however. I built a regression model for MLB attendance from 2004 to 2018 that I presented at our 2019 meeting, using four factors: competitive imbalance (measured by the kurtosis of Win%), Contact %, HR / Contact, and SO / Non-Contact. The CI factor was 57% the present year and 43% the previous, while all the play metrics were the previous year’s figures. The model has an adjusted r^2 of .92; Dick Cramer was impressed and gave me some tips to check for overfitting, which I’ll do after I finally update it for 2019.
I also did some simple regressions of Contact %, which is the crucial killer. From 2008 to 2018 (complete pitch/fx years) you get an adjusted r^2 of .96 with just FB velocity and FB %. So the fewer strikes being thrown are not causative; they just come with the higher percentage of secondary pitches. You’re probably aware that FB velocity peaked a few years ago at about the same time that folks like us figured out that pitchers should throw fewer fastballs. We don’t know when that trend will reach saturation.
Now, back to the model: all those three play factors were positively correlated to attendance. HR / Contact is thus a large factor offsetting the collapse in Contact %, but not, I think, because homers are inherently exciting to that degree. When you reduce other hits to such a low level that it becomes increasingly more difficult to string together an old-fashioned rally, the promise of a 3-run homer — by the #8 hitter to the opposite field! — is the one thing keeping a 4 or 5 run deficit from looking like a death sentence. You won’t need that promise once you restore the traditional rally as an alternative.
The crucial finding that’s relevant for your idea is the third factor. Given a fixed number of PA that end with either a SO or BB, SO’s are better. This actually makes perfect sense, given that the modern game is entirely about hitters paying for hard contact by a willingness to strike out. A strikeout is thus the make-or-break outcome and an exciting event for half the fans. That’s why they put up the K cards! No one is excited by a BB. How exciting is a walk-off BB compared to a walk-off single?
This means that a small rise in walk rate, combined with a drop in K rate, will offset some of the gain in excitement produced by having more balls in play. How much? I’ll try to run some numbers when I update the model, but I don’t think it can be dismissed.
But the bigger problem with shrinking the zone is the assumption that pitchers will alter their approach to attempt to limit the increase in walk rate as much as possible, and thus throw more hittable pitches. Given the ever-increasing ability to get swings and misses (in or outside the zone) and hence strikeouts, the optimum strategy is probably to limit contact (hard and otherwise) by allowing somewhat more walks. So I think you’re going to see a smaller increase in PA resulting in contact than you expect, and a bigger rise in walks, and both of those reduce the desired effect.
And note that if I’m right about this tradeoff of walks for less hard contact, you’ve made a pitcher’s ability to strike guys out even more important, while guys who can paint the corners receive no benefit at all (they can paint them no matter where you put them). So you’ve created a further incentive to find strikeout pitchers, and moved the game in the direction opposite the one intended. It’s unclear that you’ll even see a significant increase in contact PA; the chief effect might well be an extra couple of batters walked per game and stranded on base.
The committee does have a solution we like quite a bit, and we hope to go public with that sometime this year. (And no, it’s not moving the mound back.)
My idea: the game should be 7 innings long instead of 9. In my opinion, the best game state at the end of 2 innings is a close, low-scoring affair that is moving quickly. Shortening the contest by 2 innings would guarantee this outcome while still leaving plenty of game to enjoy. This should eliminate concerns about pace of play and increasing game length, and it wouldn’t change how the game is played on the field at the most basic level.
Manfred after reading this:
“Triples in the 3rd inning count double”
“Umm…that’s not really helpful”
“Homers are now officially called Rocket Blasts”
“This really doesn’t do what we…”
“Teams now have 11 man rosters, there is a salary cap of $26.43 , all games are played in my backyard, and the game is now called Batball”
Agreed on both counts. Here’s another suggestion, admittedly a minor tweak: rethink the checked swing. In my youth (the 50s) a batter could take the bat well past the plane of the plate without being charged with a strike as long as he did not “break his wrists”. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I would use the foul line rather than the plane of the plate as the rule of thumb.