A Curmudgeonly Look at the Upcoming Baseball Season

This week the Players Association and the Team Owners of the MLB FINALLY reached consensus on the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Which meant the lockout was over and baseball could make its appearance in our lives once more.  To top it off, I heard (and I’m still trying to confirm how they will accomplish this) that we will get a full 162 game schedule season.  

Hallelujah!  For me, the time period between the final out in October, and the first pitch in Spring Training is a huge sports desert.  Super-what?  Can you call that oblong thing they throw and carry a “ball.”  Balls are round.  And the best ones have 144 double-stitches using red thread (just as many double-stitches as their are beads on a full sized rosary.  Coincidence?).  

But since the announcement that the game will be coming back soon, there have come some changes to the game.  Changes that tell me that the game I love so much is becoming…  Different.  Changes that the ones making them claim will make the game “better” in some way.  

Maybe it’s a sign of my steadily advancing age that I look at some of these changes in askance.  Changes that make me feel, it some nebulous way, that those running the sport (here in North America at least) don’t care if they get my patronage or not.  That kinda stings.  But the sport, which was once the dominant, most favored sport in the nation (followed by Boxing and Horse Racing, up through the 1940s), is losing share to other sports and entertainments.  

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I remember the references to baseball indicating that no one on Earth played it anymore.  But that it was still out there, being played in a bush league sort of way, similar to how it grew and spread at the end of the 19th century, on colonies here and there throughout the Federation.  I’d like baseball to have a better future than that.  

So, what was initially intended as a rant against the League, where one could image me sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch, shaking my fist in rage at the way things are going to pot, is now what I hope will be a more considered and level-headed response to some of the rule changes that will taking place in the coming season.  

We’ll see.  I’m keeping an open mind.  I hope they’re right.  And if wrong, I hope they’ll see it and fix it quickly.  

AND, I would remind them that, in the Star Trek future I referenced, the Vulcans had discovered the game of baseball and had taken it up themselves.  Which goes to show just how logical the appeal of the game can be. 

Universal Designated Hitter - Reaction: Hate It

Ok.  I SAID this had changed from a rant, but this is the most rant-worthy change in the coming season.  It has been long in coming.  The league has been creeping toward it for years.  They used the Covid-altered season of 2020 to bring it forward.  Next year, they’ll be two types of people playing baseball (IMHO).  Real Baseball Players.  And Pitchers.  

The Designated Hitter, or DH, is a player that is put into the batting line-up in place of the pitcher.  The first time it was ever brought up for a vote in the National League was in the 1890’s, when it was voted down.  The American League adopted it in 1973.  It is the rule in the International game, as played in the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic.  The Japanese also have half the teams use it (Their Pacific League) and not use it (The Central League).  

Since it has been used so much in baseball overall, why do I dislike it so much?  Well, let me tell you…

First off, because without it there is more strategy in running a team.  Joe Torre, the Hall of Fame manager who skippered both the New York Yankees in the American League and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League said once that he thought the DH should be removed from the game because took out strategy and fan second-guessing from the game, and that lowered the degree to which young players are taught to play a specific position.  It may sound like a lot from having one hitter out of nine be someone better at hitting, but it’s true.  It figures into when a pitcher might be pulled for a pinch hitter in the late stages of a game.  It figures on who gets put in the line up ahead of the pitcher.  And what a manager might think to do if an opportunity to get runs in high leverage situation comes up. 

Also, from a philosophical standpoint, I prefer players that are rounded.  There have always been players that were barely good enough to play a position, but were in the lineup because of how well they could swing the bat.  Ted Williams, the best hitter in the game ever, was in that class.  But at least players like that couldn’t be BAD at fielding.  They at least had to not hurt the team while in the field.  

Pitch Clock - Reaction: Ok, but…

There is a rule in the game already that says a pitcher has through a pitch within 12 seconds of the batter getting set.  It’s just not enforced.  But it will be now that there will be pitch clock counting down the time.  

When I talk to people about baseball, the most common complaints from people that don’t care about the game that I’ve hear are “It’s too boring” and “It’s too long.”  Both of which can be combined into “Nothing Happens.”  

This enforcement is meant to change that perception by picking up the pace of the game.  It has been used in some of the minor leagues, and the overall impact from what I’ve read has been positive.  The most common thing I’ve heard is that you don’t notice the pitch clock after the start of the game, but the game “feels” that it’s moving long faster.  The one piece of data I’ve seen is that games with a pitch clock run about 20 minutes faster that games without it.  That’s a bit more than 10 percent faster, and a 10 percent change is about what an average person can detect in a process or situation.  

My only concern is that, without reading the rule book completely, it seems to put the pressure on the pitcher to deliver, when quite often it’s the batter slowing things down by stepping out of the box.  George Will, the well regarded conservative political commentator and baseball aficionado, once pointed out that the World Series of 1955, when the Brooklyn Dodgers one the franchise’s first World Series title, had an average length of game of around 2 1/2 hours (if I recall correctly).  This compares to the closer to 3 1/2 hours an average game takes today.  The difference, he pointed out, was back in 1955 no batter left the batter’s box.  

If you want to quicken the pace and get the game back to a shorter time frame and keep its flavor, then you need to make sure neither the pitcher NOR the batter is creating delays,  

Banning the Shift - Response: Bad Move

The Defensive Shift is when the team playing defense will move players from one side of the diamond to the other when defending against batters that show a propensity for hitting into that area.  Typically it’s used against left-handed batters, who tend to do hit balls into the right side of the field (this is a natural result of the follow-through of their swing.  Right-handed batters tend to hit balls into the left side of the field for the same reason).  

What is harder to explain, even to more than casual fans of the game, is why the shift works.  When it’s in place, you can hear fans all around say things like, “Why do they do this?  All the guy has to do is bunt toward third base,” or, “Punch the ball toward third base and he gets a hit!”  This is usually followed by the batter hitting right to one of the extra players pulled to that side of the field to make the shift work.

There are two reasons why the shift works.  One is that when the shift is in place, pitchers don’t through balls that can be easily bunted or can be hit by choking up and shortening one’s swing.  So the opportunities to do what seems obvious are much rarer than one might think.  The second reason is that the kind of flexibility and adaptability to change your swing at the plate is getting rarer in the league as time goes on.  Batters these days work to drive the ball.  To get a pitch they can get a good exit velocity on to send it deep into the outfield or, even better, out of the playing field for a home run.  The game has become enamored with the long-ball and shows no signs of giving up it up.  

My hope, once teams started using the shift, was that, over time, it would encourage players to work to be more balanced.  To give up trying for a game winning home run in favor of a hit that moves his teammates forward on the base paths, or at least getting a hit and depending on your next teammate in the lineup to move your forward.  

But it looks like it’s not going to happen.  I wonder what football fans would say if the NFL passed a rule that you couldn’t use a Cover-2 defensive scheme, or one that teams could only play man to man coverage.  This feels something like that.  

Bigger Base Pads - Reaction: Huh? 

This was a change that apparently had agreement with both teams of negotiators.  When I heard about it I though, “What?”  Is this something that was really needed.  

I guess it was.  This season, the bases will go from 15 square inches in size to 18 square inches.  Doesn’t sound like a lot.  But the consensus is that it will make running the bases safer.  And will reduce players called out after they’ve reached base safely.  The safety factor comes from making a base a bigger target for a running to reach, which will allow him to slide a bit more one side to the other, and avoid the player defending it.  The reduction in called out comes from players reaching the base, but then bouncing past it as their momentum carries them along.  A wider base will give them more surface area to stay in contact with. 

Ok.  I get it.  Three inches doesn’t seem like a lot.  But then again it doesn’t take a lot go make a difference in the game.  

Like with the other changes they’re making, I’ll have to wait and see.