SWING STATE
Mlb batters have shown no interest in learning hot to hit
IHAVE a friend who sees things in an odd way. His son had just failed introductory college French as a mandatory language requirement. But my friend had a logical explanation: “He doesn’t know French.” That’s what has happened to MLB by MLB. If players, managers, GMs and analytics savants last season all wore “Kick Me” sandwich boards, what ails baseball couldn’t have been more clear.
For the first time, batters had more strikeouts than hits. The average per team was 1,374 strikeouts to 1,367 hits.
The reasons were plain; ya couldn’t miss ’ em. 1) Regardless of the count and game circumstances, batters tried to hit home runs. 2) Batters batted directly into defensive shifts.
So the question, as spring training opens, becomes: What will MLB teams do about this?
Will they drill to hit the other way or to drop down fairly easy bunt singles to defeat or at least combat the shift? Will they drill to shorten swings on two-strike pitches to make contact rather than strike out?
Or shall we expect more of the same, perhaps worse?
At a time when MLB is in decline as a sport predicated on the practical application of winning fundamentals, will those fundamentals continue to be ignored or further diminished in service to MLB becoming a home run or strikeout game, the way the NBA is becoming Frankenstein’s monster, the grand game of basketball losing to the excesses of 70 or more threepoint shots per game?
The episode of last June 24 still seems impossible. Tied, 7-7, against the Dodgers, a man on and none out in the 10th, the Mets’ Dominic Smith, a five-year pro, struck out on three pitches rather than try to bunt the winning run to second — while batting against a first-base shift. The Mets lost in 11.
The explanation sounded more like a plea bargain. Smith, according to manager Mickey Callaway, had “never bunted in his professional career.”
Why? Because he doesn’t know French.
So what are the Mets and the rest of MLB’s teams going to do about this and other basic, winning baseball skills, this spring training?
New Mets hitting coach Chili Davis, fired in October by the Cubs, has said the team will emphasize contact. But that remains to be seen.
Even if this past World Series had been played at greater-good TV hours, it still would have appeared as drudgery. The Red Sox and Dodgers totaled 109 strikeouts to 76 hits. In the five games, seven Dodgers struck out five or more times — trying to hit two-strike home runs.
Soon we’ll find out if anything has changed for the better or if we’ll watch MLB further erode beneath the sad rationalization that, “The game has changed.”
But I suspect that managers, even as you read this, are plotting, regardless of circumstances, who they’ll have pitch the sixth inning and who will pitch the seventh.
Casey Stengel to Don Larsen, 1956 World Series: “I’m pulling ya, kid. Analytics. Twice through the lineup, you know how it works.”
Next spring? Who knows? Maybe teams can work on intelligent, successful ways to slide into bases. In the meantime, baseball?