Baseball could pick up the pace of play

Bnot going anywhere, but could pick up the pace MLB reaches the All-star break in a weird place — and I don’t (necessarily) mean Miami.

In many respects, the game is thriving. The influx of young superstars like Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger this season to go with Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa (all 25 or under) and many others is invigorating. Home runs are being hit like never before — at a rate exceeding even the so-called steroids era. The playoff races are wide open. For the most part, attendance is booming, local ratings are holding steady, and revenues are flowing.

But here’s the weird part. Despite all that, there’s a strong perception that the game is in a major bind, with big-time trouble brewing. Its most avid fans are too old. Its showcase event, the World Series, is waning in national appeal.

Most important, the game itself is simply too slow, too disjointed and too lacking in consistent action for the video-game generation.

I disagree with many of those assessments, but, guess what? I’m in the dreaded 50-and-over demographic that baseball has become too reliant on. They’ve won me over, for life. But can they win over my children and their friends?

Sure they can. But it’s going to take some work, and some change, for baseball to be as relevant culturally as it is financially. Let’s face it … for most of the sports buzz these past two weeks has been about NBA free agency. Even the summer league performances of Lonzo Ball have been a hotter topic than major-league pennant races. The Home Run Derby continues to garner positive attention (for one day), but when NFL training camps open in two weeks, it will dominate the sports media landscape.

I could point to survey after survey showing baseball has failed to develop a “Face of the Sport” despite having so many dynamic players. And therein lies the first solution: MLB must find a way to market its appealing young players so that they can approach the national appeal of Lebron James, Steph Curry and Tom Brady.

This is an old lament. Ken Griffey Jr — perhaps the last breakout baseball persona — used to complain all the time that baseball did a lousy marketing job. It doesn’t help that Trout has no desire to be out front selling the sport. Judge and Harper have the personality, but MLB must get over its ingrained reluctance to showcase its top players.

But the biggest tweaks need to come on the field. Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated did a beautiful job recently of detailing the shocking decline of real action. As what sabermetricians call the “three true outcomes” — home runs, strikeouts and walks, none of which are reliant on defense — increase in prominence to record numbers, there has never in the history of the sport been fewer balls put in play.

One-third of all at-bats, specifically, end in one of those three outcomes, which means that the truly exciting elements — the extended rally, the batter flying around the bases for a triple, the circus catch — are dwindling.

Couple that with batters taking longer and longer to get into the box and pitchers to deliver, and you have a game that is losing the elements that made it magical.

Commissioner Rob Manfred seems determined to address the pace of game issues. That could mean a pitch clock, limitations on pitching changes, and an altered strike zone.

I’m not predicting baseball’s demise. I’m old enough to have lived through quite a few of these, “What’s wrong with baseball” crises.

It has always bounced back, and it will this time, too. The game is simply too rich and too inherently fun not to.