LOSING BATTLE
Lack of basic fundamentals makes it awfully difficult to win
“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face.” — Mike Tyson
A T the All-Star break, MLB is in critical need of a plan to reverse its inexorable decline in the fundamental applications of multiple-skills, winning baseball — a serious case of punching itself in the face.
Our practical senses tell us that winning remains unimportant compared to enacting spread-sheeted decisions that seduce managers into taking turns trying to lose, A Game of Throwns.
To that end, June 24 may have provided the most telling game and broadcast of the season, if not the era. It was the clincher, the one containing indisputable evidence that The Game has lost its heart, soul, good senses and mind.
On SNY, Ron Darling watched the Mets play more fundamentally bereft and bullpen-senseless losing baseball, an 11-inning game of modern home run-or-whiff ball against the home run-or-whiff Dodgers. With both teams pulling effective relievers as if they’d arrived at their one-station stops, 14 pitchers appeared.
Darling: “It seems teams now try to win games through some math algorithms in real time, when the game is calling for you to do something to win the ballgame.”
Or, as the long-ago radio comic Fred Allen said, “The only thing I know about algebra is that X equals my old man’s signature.”
And it was Darling who last season said what logical fans have for years been saying to one another: “They pay the big money to the starters, then expect the relievers to win the games.”
June 24’s game presented final, indisputable evidence of a game in needless free fall. In the bottom of the 10th, the Mets had a runner on first, no out. Next, even against a radical shift, Dominic Smith, 11th overall pick in the 2013 draft, didn’t try to bunt the runner over, perhaps even for a hit. Instead, he struck out on three pitches.
Afterward, Mickey Callaway offered both a stunning — or was it? — explanation and indictment: Smith had “never bunted in his professional career.”
At the All-Star break, the Yankees have proven that a team can be competitive playing one-trick, home run-or-whiff ball because most everyone else does, except with fewer, less-ex- pensive sluggers in mostly larger parks.
At the break, the Yanks had 821 hits. But as MLB concludes its likely first-ever season with more strikeouts than hits, the Yanks had 866 strikeouts. Consider: The 1978 World Series champion Yanks finished the regular season with 100 wins and only 695 K’s.
Modern slugger/superstar Aaron Judge, in roughly two full seasons, has struck out 382 times. In 13 seasons Joe DiMaggio struck out 369 times. In 18 seasons, Yogi Berra never struck out more than 38 times.
And Bryce Harper, this season with 102 strikeouts and 70 hits — and a career disinclination to run to first base — is the new standard in must-get, mega-millions superstardom.
But we’re not going to abandon the game we love. With all the millions spent for fourth and fifth starters and .235 batters, money should not preclude the cure. Thus we propose:
MLB teams’ Directors of Bunting, Shift-Defeating and Opposite Field Hitting. That could cause a significant swing in wins over losses, no?
From there, who knows? Directors of Running To First Base (with video case-studies of why it’s important). Catching With Both Hands coaches. Directors of Allowing Effective Relievers to Pitch a Second Inning. Instructors of Base Runners Noting Where Outfielders Are Positioned.
At a time when games are managed to keep both sides in them, how many more games would a team win playing winning baseball? As Groucho Marx said, “Outside of the improvement no one would notice a thing.”