Baseball in crisis
What was once considered unthinkable may become sport’s latest crisis
With attendance down, a game headed for more strikeouts than hits may be on the way to striking itself out.
One thing you learn from studying baseball history is that people have always predicted the sport’s demise. Over and over, the game weathers every perceived crisis and continues to thrive. More than 70 million fans will attend major league games this season; another 40 million or so will go to minor league games. Countless more watch the sport on television and online.
And yet attendance is down, and more and more balls are being kept out of play. Some longtime observers consider the shifting landscape — hitters swinging for the fences, pitchers throwing everything with maximum effort, fielders standing in unusual spots — and wonder what has happened to their game.
“Keith and I were talking, and I said, ‘You know, our window is probably three years until we can’t work anymore,’ because the game is going to be so different,” said Ron Darling, the former New York Mets pitcher and broadcast partner of Keith Hernandez, the former Mets first baseman. “I mean, what was fair is foul, and what’s foul is fair.”
This could be the first season in major league history to feature more strikeouts than hits, a slowdown that worries many league officials. Thirty years ago, batters compiled nearly 13,000 more hits than strikeouts. Last season, that edge dwindled to about 2,000. This season, through Saturday, it was nearly even, with hits only slightly ahead: 31,369 hits, 31,210 strikeouts.
Fifteen years ago, only seven qualified pitchers averaged 8.4 strikeouts per nine innings. Now, the major league average is more than 8.4. Collectively, batters are hitting .248, the lowest average since 1972, the year before baseball introduced the designated hitter.
“There’s going to be a breaking point,” said Erik Neander, general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays. “In terms of purely watching a baseball game, seeing a few hundred pitches a night that aren’t put in play, there’s not a lot about that that’s entertainment. People don’t come to see the umpire call a ball or a strike or a foul ball. I think it’s something we have to be mindful of, because this is an entertainment business, and we are here for the fans.”
Fans may be sending a signal that the modern game — focused so much on power pitching and power hitting — is losing its appeal. Attendance across the majors is down an average of about 1,500 per game, with 18 teams experiencing a drop from last year.
When he talks with fans, Commissioner Rob Manfred said last month, he hears the same concerns over and over: the downtime between balls in play and the rise of strikeouts, shifts and bullpen usage.
“I think everyone realizes what’s going on,” Manfred said.
The worry, for baseball, is that the changes on the field could make the product less appealing for future customers. While declining interest is often tied to the local team’s outlook, especially if that team is rebuilding, the increasing emphasis on keeping balls out of play — by throwing the ball past hitters or bashing it over the fence — seems out of touch with
modern tastes.
“I just wonder if the issue has to do with the parts that appeal to people now in sports,” said the Houston Astros’ Charlie Morton, who reinvented himself as a power pitcher and became a first-time All-Star last month at 34 years old. “Do people like the chess game, or do they like quick action?”
In football and basketball, analytics and rule changes have promoted more action: the passing game rules the NFL, and 3-pointers reign in the NBA.
In baseball, though, the reverse holds true. For a pitcher, the surest way to get an out is to strike out the opponent, thus eliminating all fielding variables. For a batter, the easiest way to score a run is to do it with one big swing.
Home runs made up 10 percent of the hits in the 2014 season. That percentage spiked in ensuing years, rising to 11.7 percent in 2015, 13.3 percent in 2016, and a stunning 14.5 percent last season, which had a record number of homers. This season, home runs account for 13.6 percent of hits through Saturday.
“We know now, just like we did 15 years ago, that home runs are the best way to score runs, the most efficient way to get back to home plate,” said David Forst, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a surprise contender thriving with a power-packed lineup. “That’s sort of our style, and those are the hitters we go after. The patience and power profile is something we’ve never tried to get away from.”
Forst’s boss, Billy Beane, the team’s executive vice president for baseball operations, helped spark teams’ reliance on data as the subject of Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ landmark book in 2003. The lesson of the book was in the importance of finding undervalued assets to gain an edge; it was not purely an ode to numbers. But every team, to varying degrees, now employs a team of analysts seeking to uncover hidden value in the data.
Athleticism vs. analytics
No team mines the data more diligently than the Astros, whose general manager, Jeff Luhnow, came to the executive ranks with an Ivy League education, an extensive business background and no professional playing experience.
Luhnow acknowledged that extreme infield shifts spring directly from data, which — quite logically — encourages fielders to play in spots where batters are most likely to hit the ball, and thus encourages batters to hit balls over the shift and into the seats. But the power game, Luhnow said, has more to do with athleticism than analytics.
“Look at these guys last night,” he said before a recent game, after a succession of unheralded Oakland pitchers had dominated the Astros’ brawny lineup. “I mean, where are these guys coming from? How are you supposed to hit off these guys? And every team we face has guys starting in the sixth inning throwing 100 miles an hour with breaking balls.
“Granted, technology’s allowing them to fine-tune their repertoire and know how to use it, but holy cow, the development of these athletes — in the past you’d see one out of 100 guys in the big leagues like that. Now, they’re more common than they’re not. Of course, Nolan Ryan and those guys always existed, but there was maybe one in a division. There weren’t four or five in every bullpen.”
Amateur pitchers often train specifically to build velocity, inspired by examples like Trevor Bauer, the Cleveland Indians righthander who made himself into a star with help from the data-driven Driveline Baseball program near Seattle. Teams covet hard throwers and select from that ever-expanding pool, flooding their farm system with heat — not just in the bullpen, and not just with fastballs.
“I was in low-A last year and you saw guys in the mid- to upper-90s starting,” Buddy Reed, a top outfield prospect for the San Diego Padres, said. “Usually you see that out of the pen, and the starters would be 89 to 93, which is a lot different. Now you’ve got to be ready, like, right away — because not only is their fastball good, but they’re throwing harder sliders, harder curveballs and harder change-ups, too, with a lot of movement.”
Reed spoke last month in Washington before the Futures Game, which featured eight home runs (doubling the record for the 20-year-old event) and 16 strikeouts. Two days later, the major leaguers set a record for homers in the All-Star Game, with 10 in 10 innings, while fanning 25 times.
Velocity was the story. Fifteen of the 18 pitchers in the All-Star Game threw a pitch at least 96 mph, and everyone threw at least 93.8 mph — 1 mph faster than the average major league fastball, according to Fangraphs. The 92.8 average matches last year’s for the highest in Fangraphs’ data, which dates to 2002.
“We try to adjust as hitters, but it’s a different style of ball now,” Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Lorenzo Cain said. “Guys are throwing a lot more breaking balls in hitter’s counts. You can’t really cheat to a fastball anymore. I feel like pitching is going to continue to get better and better. As far as hitting, I don’t know how that’s going to go.”