Time to fix a broken game
MLB’s deep thinkers needed to help correct a problem they created: Lack of entertainment
In less than two weeks, baseball will hold its first Washington All-Star Game since 1969, when the newly renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium hosted a contest in which Bob Gibson relieved Steve Carlton, in which Ernie Banks pinch-hit for Gibson, in which Roberto Clemente replaced Banks. Seventeen future Hall of Famers graced Washington’s ballpark for a rain-delayed Midsummer Classic that featured the best the sport had to offer: Willie McCovey homering twice for the victorious National League, hometown hero Frank Howard countering once for the American League.
That summer, though, was important for baseball for more fundamental reasons. When Carlton, then of St. Louis, and his counterpart Mel Stottlemyre of the New York Yankees toed RFK’s rubber to start the matchup, they did so on a mound that was just 10 inches above the playing surface, five inches lower than the previous summer.
If 1968 was the year of the pitcher — and it was with Gibson’s modern era-record 1.12 ERA the leading data point — 1969 showed that, faced with a crisis, baseball could adjust and fundamentally so.
With the All-Star Game bringing baseball’s focus back to Washington in a way it hasn’t been in nearly half a century, it’s worth reflecting back if only because that’s what’s necessary to move forward. You’ll hear it in the run-up to and the coverage of the All-Star Game itself: Baseball is in crisis; it needs to fix itself. Being open to radical change must be part of the process.
The issue, right now, is elemental to the game. Hitters have long argued the most difficult pursuit in all of sports is to hit a pitched baseball. Right now, it’s as if they’re trying to prove that en masse. Their collective batting average through last weekend was .246 — which, if it ended the year as such, would be the lowest mark since 1972 and the second-lowest since that offensive wasteland of 1968.
Attendance is down to 28,052 per game, off by more than six per cent from last year and would be the lowest average, should it hold, in 15 years.
There has to be a relationship between those two issues.
Now, ticket-buying trends don’t show up in real time. They settle in. Maybe that makes the attendance number more alarming because the seeds of such a drop-off must have been sown in previous seasons.
Batters are striking out in 22.3 per cent of their plate appearances, an all-time high. Fastball velocity averages 93.6 m.p.h., down a tick from last summer’s record (since 2007, when PitchF/x began measuring stats in all parks), but right in line with the previous two years. And teams are now using 4.23 pitchers per game, according to Baseball-Reference.com, which would be a record should it hold up.
Put aside the specific numbers and the conclusion is easy: Fresher, more specialized pitchers throw harder. That causes batters to swing and miss more often. That removes action from the game. The result: Majorleague hitters have produced more strikeouts than hits — which would be a first should it hold. And it will.
The game and its teams are now run by bright people, people who could be running hedge funds or solving physics problems or exploring space. Instead, they have brought their analytical brains to baseball and applied that manner of thinking to the game.
The result has been detrimental to the game as an entertainment product.
Smartly deployed defensive shifts play to probabilities and help the pitching team record outs. But defensive shifts also take away baserunners, which decreases the action for the eye to follow. Clever front offices concluded players should sacrifice contact for power and try to hit the ball in the air more frequently — by increasing their “launch angle” — which generates more home runs, but decreases sustained rallies and all the subtleties contained within.
Smart business executives who are reluctant to overpay for assets prefer to use younger, cheaper players to fill out their rosters, but that leaves out veterans with whom fans have a history. A walk is as good as a hit if you’re trying to win a baseball game; if you’re sitting in the stands, it’s not nearly as interesting to watch.
This applies even in team building. Losing was the right way for Houston to build a World Series-winning club because it provided them high draft picks they used wisely and allowed them to trade their established players for prospects that developed more cheaply, meaning they could add established, expensive veterans of their choosing when the time was right.
But the fans who watched the Astros on the road from 2011-13 — when Houston averaged 108 losses — were punished by having to watch a non-competitive outfit.
So something has to give. Baseball can’t ask its clubs to hire stupid people. The smart people must be asked to identify their role in creating this problem and contribute to fixing it.