The Chris Moeller Archives

The pastural game plods on...

Major League Baseball has never been more popular or profitable-- but if faces a true existential threat to its popularity. No, I'm not talking about the pace of the game, nor its lack of nationally-known personalities. No, the threat is the fact that the people who run it think it’s boring. I don’t know where they got the idea. It certainly was not from their pocketbooks. It's not from last fall’s most buzzworthy postseason, and it’s not from the historic level of team parity. (It’s funny that nobody in the commissioner’s office ever thinks baseball is struggling when the Yankees are winning.)

Forget other sports leagues, it’s hard to come up with any other North American business that has so consistently shit on its own product as much as Major League Baseball has over the years. When a Hollywood studio inks a star actor to a blockbuster motion picture contract, industry officials taut the extraordinary financial health of the pictures business that allows for such a transaction. On the contrary, baseball’s usual strategy, after star players sign enormous service contracts, is to claim that the financial sky is collapsing. The sport's top league has all but shuttered the doors on its Hall of Fame and Museum by having enshrinement voting be hijacked by grumpy baby boomer sportswriters, and by a commissioner that has made some of the game’s most extraordinary, colorful, and beloved historical figures ineligible for enshrinement.

When an MLB player is fingered from any dark corner of the country as a steroid cheat, the league stays silent about it and seems handicapped to prevent all of the dialogue on the subject by the sports media to center on which persons or institutions should be at fault. Meanwhile, when the NFL’s most popular player, Peyton Manning, gets fingered as a steroid cheat by the man who delivered the drugs to his house, that league, instead, buys wholly into Manning’s bullshit story that the illicit substances were meant for his wife, even though the quarterback was fully immersed in physical recovery on his neck at the time and his wife has never played a single down in the NFL. Later that year, Manning’s a Super Bowl hero, and now a year after that, he’s filling guest roles on Modern Family. This encapsulates two starkly-contrasting P.R. strategies.

The newest tradition introduced by the Office of the Commissioner in Major League Baseball is to spend each and every off-season pitching a public debate over how the pace of the game can be sped up with circus tactics and/or subverting the soul of the game in return for an undetectable drop in the average length of the games. Last winter, the most highly publicized league proposal was making intentional walks automatic-- that is, the pitcher not having to throw the four wide pitches, but just awarding the base directly to the batter at the defensive team's insistence. By my educated guess, I’m thinking that this hypothetical rule change would save, at best, an average of about 20 seconds per game-- and maybe nothing at all after you factor in that there is still going to be the same amount of time taken in these situations for defensive shifting, coaching visits to the mound, and conversations there about upcoming pitch sequencing. Meanwhile, you’ve succeeded in blowing up the fundamental structure of baseball’s four balls-three strikes tradition. While we’re changing this rule, here’s another suggestion-- by me-- that is exactly parallel. When a batter hits a home run over the wall, why does he circle the bases? What a time killer! As soon as the umpire signals that the ball has left the park, almost always when the batter is still between home plate and first base, the triumphant batter should immediately leave the base path, wherever he might be along the trail, and go directly to the dugout. Touching each base on a home run, which has never before failed to happen, or at least has happened much more infrequently than a wild pitch on an intentional walk, is just a formality whose time has come and gone.

Next, to those dummies that think we should limit the number of bullpen changes that a team can perform. Here’s what you don’t seem to be getting-- no rule that strengthens the performance of the pitchers and the defense, to the detriment of the offense, adds to the length of games. Let me type that again so that it sinks in. No rule that strengthens the performance of the pitchers-- in professional or amateur baseball-- adds to the length of games. Offense adds to the length of games. The failure of pitchers to get batters out adds to the length of the game. The designated hitter rule adds to the length of games. If you question that last claim, check 44 years of statistics that show the average length of game in the American League and the average in the National League, operating as they are under two different sets of rules. Strong bullpens and the relatively-recent concept of what I call “maximum effort pitching” at all times has not added to the length of games. Shut-down bullpens have helped to trim the length of games-- even when you factor in the pitching changes. People get confused about this because what does add to the length of games, in this same vein, is that the league and its clubs attempt to jam a lengthy commercial break-- for the financial benefit of their television and radio partners-- into every instance in which there is mid-inning pitching change for either the home or away team. This is like me, year after year, claiming that I hate snow. No, I like snow. I hate driving in the snow. The snow is innocent. It's lovely.

The hottest suggestion during Spring Training 2017 is the fancy proposal that, in extra innings, each offensive team, in their half-inning, begin with a man already standing on second base. So here we have some tampering with what is actually the most exciting part of a baseball game-- if you’re even lucky enough as a fan to see this sort of free baseball when you buy a ticket to the stadium. Describing this particular idea as dumb is akin to calling Donald Trump emotionally sensitive. I don’t have the numbers here, but an overwhelming percentage of extra-inning games go only 10 or 11 innings. No more than that. That might add about 15% again more time to the game you’re already watching-- very consistent at least with the amount of time added to basketball or football contests in which one overtime is played. Tell me exactly how this idea would work. Each team gets a designated runner for extra innings games? Essentially, as this job would certainly be worth one roster spot for each team to have an Olympic-caliber sprinter that may have never touched a baseball bat in his life, for use in these important base running situations. Then each and every extra-inning game, I promise, becomes a bunt fest, and nearly every extra-inning game gets won by the team that can deliver a one-out sacrifice fly.

OR the next man due to bat is automatically put on second base. Maybe we do it that way. It might be a man capable of ending the whole thing with one swing, but now he’s essentially been intentionally walked two bases, and of course, the man behind him will almost always be walked as well to set up a force play. You are basically guaranteeing that the best sluggers will always get intentionally passed in extra innings. Those runs scored would also be recorded on that player’s career statistics, yet that person didn’t do anything to earn his way on base, except to be stranded in the on-deck circle during the previous inning. Here he is coming out of the dugout, folks, Rickey Nelson Henderson Jr., trying to break his father’s all-time runs scored record! Bottom of the 9th, down he goes, Dave Kingman Jr. strikes out to retire the side. There you have it. Henderson will have a chance to make history in the 10th! He will start the inning on second! I swear this one, in particular, must have been dreamed up by a group of sixth-grade phys-ed instructors. To tell you how ill-conceived and illogical this idea is, listen to how some of the proponents of the idea on sports radio suggest that maybe each team in extra innings should also start with one out. I hope I don’t really have to explain to you how that would add innings, not subtract them. Fortunately the Players Association came out this week and said that they would not consider the second base rule.

And all of these proposals for what? To speed up a game that was already being called slow and plodding in the 1880s? They haven't killed it yet, or even slowed it down. But not having a clock on this pastime absolutely causes some people to flip out. I'm sure it frightens your MBA-types in each team’s front office that still cannot fathom the enduring popularity of this most contrary of games-- the only major North American team sport that is not a variation on “defend the goal.”

Does MLB actually want new fans? Take it from a man who has had to introduce his foreign-born wife to the game: Keep it simple. Stick to the most logical parts of the game. When one goes to a game, I promise that he or she will have more problems explaining the concept of an intentional walk to a novice fan if the walked batter is ordered to first base, rather than having him just stand like a statute for half a minute while four wide ones are thrown. Intentional walks actually take place so quickly already that at games, I have found, particularly sitting in the upper deck, people often haven’t noticed yet when a player has been passed. Them: “Hey, where’s Pujols?” Me: “He’s on first. They walked him intentionally.” No fan has ever managed to fall asleep during the execution of an intentional walk so let’s put a cork in this one.

Got a ridiculous baseball idea, send it to the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, Robert D. Manfred, Jr., Commissioner, 245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor, New York, New York, 10167. Let him know what he can do to make the game more exciting to you. It’s time for him to Manfred up. How about a snake pit between the pitchers’ mound and second base? Sticky glue poured on the warning track? The shortstop wears a Yoda mask? A substitute batter always hits for the pitcher? (Oh shit, they actually did that one.) Even better than the DH, how about a six-man batting lineup? Think about it. You only ever need six men in a batting line-up before it turns over, not the traditional nine. Six men permits you to have three on base and three out. Why not ditch the pitchers hitting in both leagues-- and also two more weak-hitting players besides? Oh crap, that idea is too good. Now I’m worried that the wrong person might read this.

posted by CM @ 7:11 PM