I don’t envy the mission that MLB has. I also don’t believe anyone in charge of it has a sense of challenge, but that’s another topic for another time. Baseball’s charm will always be rooted in its history and simply the length of time it has been a part of American culture. While professional football may have been around for a century, it’s really only been part of the consciousness for 50-60 years. NBA… maybe just 40. 50 max. But baseball has doubled that. There simply isn’t a modern American era without baseball.
So for MLB that omitting that would be silly. That’s what makes it unique. In that sense, baseball can never be “cool,” no matter how hard it tries. I don’t think it needs to be popular, but it’s hard work to thread a needle so it doesn’t look cool and still be popular. Definitely apart from me.
But there’s a difference between capturing your history and longevity and trying to make your game look like its history again. That’s put it heavy, too much, but that’s the feeling MLB rules change means to do instead of deal problems for the game.
That’s not to say some of these changes won’t be welcome or won’t improve the game. Larger bases don’t seem to have any downsides and can help improve the chances of bases being stolen or get more bases after being hit, or prevent injuries. No worries there.
The pitch meter will also have benefits. Rugby players and batters that take 40 seconds essentially standing there or adjusting their batting gloves don’t really serve anyone, except the action that anyone running for beer or peeing can have. can miss. Cutting more than half will almost certainly benefit fans. And it can have the side effect of reducing velocity and spin, which are the real problems for baseball’s lack of action.
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Still, it follows as yet another offensive in Rob Manfred’s war on the length of the game, which has seemingly been his only quest other than monetizing every aspect and making sure everyone thinks of him as “Asshole Smurf.” The rule of relievers having to face three hitters except if they end an inning is rendered merely for aesthetics because of the second part of that rule. If it were truly about changing strategy or players’ skills, they would always have to face three batters no matter what, or they’d always have to end an inning. It was just about removing pitching changes mid-inning to speed games up.
Which is fine, because baseball games are probably too long (three-plus hours). But you know what really makes games long, especially in the playoffs? The ad breaks between innings. There’s no logical reason that between innings breaks couldn’t be completed in 90 seconds or less if we so wanted, except there’s ad space there that can be sold.
There’s been this urge to get games back to lengths of the 70s or 80s, but that’s not coming back because A) of said ad breaks and B) the way at-bats are constructed now. Even with a pitch clock, it’s not likely most ABs are going to be just one or two or three pitches again (though perhaps a drop in velocity in spin could make that happen). Strikeouts may drop, but they’ll never get to those levels again.
The changing of shifts (it’s not really a ban because teams will still have a shortstop or second baseman right up against the base instead of on the other side of it) is almost certainly about aesthetics at the top. There isn ‘ there’s not much evidence that restricting displacement actually causes more shots and certainly won’t affect the number of balls in play. And even if that happens, it will only reward the kind of approach that takes us into this vacuum of action that the game finds itself presently, i.e. the lift and pull of most giants leads to many K and walk more.
But what seems to excite the game operators, at least to the extent that they’ve changed the rules, is the natural reaction to the part of the game they’ve watched in 30, 40, or 50 years that is no longer available. apply anymore. It was to see a left-handed player smash a pass to the right side of the field that was clearly going over the head of the second player. Or ground pointed to the middle. In our mind, as soon as we see that contact, our brain reacts “hit!” Or, it did, and with it comes the excitement of seeing your team succeed or the deflation of your opponent doing the same.
Except it doesn’t end that way all the time anymore. Sometimes, there’s someone standing there to catch/hit the ball that we only know as the “basic shot”. And maybe “run” and “win”. Even now, you can feel the gears stopping or the wires catching on fire as something in our natural baseball watching instincts has yet to calculate. Or maybe you’re used to it and you know how it ends by now and your viewing experience has been tuned. That takes time, and it seems like the amount of time the game moderators don’t want to take or think any fans are capable of.
And that’s what the limitation or limitation of this change aims to address. To make what looks like a hit for so long like a hit again, not to actually make more of it. But the aesthetic of any sport, its playing aesthetic, changes over time. A shot from above the circle in hockey is used to indicate a prime scoring opportunity. You can now see a shooter beat an off-screen keeper from more than 40 feet a handful of times per season. A three-pointer for rest time in basketball is used to mean running the next circuit until you throw up. Not so much anymore. It’s just a natural evolution, through strategy and fitness improvement of actual athletes.
Baseball still has a lot going back to its history and roots. The parks still look unique to any other sport. The uniform is still an homage, and hell, the Tigers, Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Pirates, and Reds are basically still wearing their uniforms at home as always. The general gameplay is still the same, it’s just the inner nuances.
It’s a difficult balance to know what’s in the game that will always be the same and what’s never going back. But baseball will never bring everything back to where it was before, and neither should it. The players are too good and the people who run those players know too much. Fans will always tune in, and no one shuts down baseball because a player in the middle isn’t always successful. And damn, fans who can’t adapt to that reality will die soon (I’m trying!). From a macro perspective, baseball will always be the same as always. Vi cannot go back.
