Let’s create a stadium where the stands crowd up right next to the foul lines, give or take a few feet to allow for first- and third-base basepaths, as well as the batter’s boxes.
We are going to all but eliminate caught foul balls. What other outcomes would result? Batting averages would see a dramatic rise. Do hitters aim for the Three True Outcomes even more, if that’s even possible? Do pitchers revolt?
Batting averages probably would go up at least a tiny bit, with foul-outs becoming largely extinct, but I’m not sure that we’d see the “dramatic rise” you suggest.
I’m not sure that it’d cause a significant change in hitting strategy; most hitters are already trying to hit the ball in the air (“launch angle”) and hit it in fair territory, so I don’t see any of that changing.
One side effect you’d likely have is a greater frequency of injury among fielders, running into the walls while trying to catch fair balls. Those sorts of injuries already happen with some frequency, and I suspect that they’d happen more often. Also, with “zero foul territory,” you’d have to put the dugouts just a few feet away from the baselines, and that, too, would likely lead to more injuries, both for players on the field, and players (and coaches) sitting in the dugouts.
Runners intent on rounding third to head for home will have to slow drastically to make the turn.
Let’s assume dugouts that are in line with the stands next to them, and are screened/netted in like the rest of the stands (similar to how they set it up the stands in Japan).
Even so, your proposal would eliminate the distance between the dugout and fair territory, giving people in the dugout less time to react to foul balls (and bats) flying towards them, as well as still making it more likely that a fielder will accidentally run into the dugout; even if there aren’t steps, there are still railings, other people, and benches for a fielder to collide with.
I’m trying to visualize what would happen to wild pitches and passed balls. If the wall was just a few feet behind the umpire, then the ball would quickly carom back into the field of play, probably past the catcher and towards the pitcher. It would make for some interesting situations, to say the least.
There’s already a variant of baseball with no foul territory. It’s called cricket.
That’s kind of the opposite though, isn’t it? Cricket took the foul territory of baseball, quadrupled it to a full 360° around the pitch, and said that it’s all fair territory. This would take the foul territory between the foul line and the stands and shrink it down to near nothing.
Kinda. Cricket, of course, predates baseball by a few hundred years (which you probably know), so it didn’t really take anything from baseball.
But, the net is that, in both cricket and your proposal for baseball fundamentally both are “everything on the field is fair territory,” even if the shape of the field is quite different.
I found this website, which is a pain to read but gives various dimensions.
Interestingly, it puts the old Rangers stadium at about the smallest foul territory at under 19,000 square feet and the Oakland Coliseum at over 40,000. Might be an interesting comparison to start with if there were other stats that might be useful.
When I read the OP, I thought that the proposal would be to keep the fields the same, just… there’s no such thing as a foul ball. You tip the ball and it goes behind the catcher, that’s an infield hit. One question with that - if you hit it over a side fence, is that a home run? Do that and you’d have players aiming for the sides!
I’ve tried to devise a hybrid of the two sports, no foul territory at all, extra fielders, but have to run when you hit the ball, still 4 bases (maybe the hitter doesn’t run, all pinch runners, he hits from the middle of the playing field), balls strikes the same. You would have a lot more balls in play of course, fewer strikeouts. It would be wild, and alien.
I gave the OP’s proposal more thought today. Here’s where I’ve landed.
Historically, stadiums which had big on-field foul territories were considered to be “pitchers’ parks,” because more foul balls could be caught for outs there (balls which would have made it into the stands in smaller parks). The Oakland Coliseum (home of the A’s until last year) was well-known for this; it was the last of the “multipurpose stadiums” (most of them built in the '60s and '70s), which had to have dimensions which would fit both an MLB diamond and an NFL field, and that was likely part of why foul territory was so big there.
I looked for information on how many foul outs occur per MLB game, and didn’t find much; Google AI indicated that, in 2022, an average 9-inning MLB game had 1.43 foul outs (but didn’t give me a solid cite for that). Assuming that that number is more-or-less accurate, it means that, on average, an MLB team would have 0.7 foul outs “back” per game – that is, what would have been an out simply becomes a strike, because it reaches the stands. Of course, that doesn’t directly translate to 0.7 more hits per game; it just means that the batter gets one or more additional bites at the apple, to potentially make that at-bat into a hit or a walk.
Most modern MLB hitters already follow a strategy of trying to hit the ball in the air, and with power (and, obviously, trying to hit it in fair territory), in hopes of a home run, an extra-base hit, or (if there are runners on base) at least a sacrifice fly. The “contact hitter” – the guy who hits line drives and gets a ton of singles (maybe legging them into doubles) – is a dying breed.
Smaller ballparks (and the death of the big multi-purpose stadiums), the move back to natural grass, and away from the fast surfaces of first-generation Astroturf carpets, and advanced sabermetric analysis of every hitter and every at-bat, have all pushed towards fly balls as being the optimal hitting style. And I’m not sure that the lack of foul territory changes that calculus much, if at all.
Those two events (the former ruled the fault of the pitcher, the latter ruled the fault of the catcher) can have the same net effect: a pitched ball gets away from the catcher, typically rolling or bouncing towards the backstop; if the ball is loose for long enough, runners can and do advance.
As @Railer13 notes, with minimal foul territory behind home plate, wild pitches and passed balls can’t get as far away from the catcher (or the pitcher, for that matter), and thus, they’d be less likely to give runners an opportunity to advance.
I already touched on this above. With little to no foul territory, fielders may be more likely to run into the fence (or fall into the stands) while chasing fly balls, players and coaches in the dugouts would have less time to react to react to a foul ball (or a loose bat) flying towards them, and fans might be more likely to be struck by foul balls. (And, as @running_coach notes, runners rounding third base might also run into trouble with the wall.)
More netting/fencing could likely help protect fans and dugout occupants, but probably wouldn’t help the fielders (or the runner rounding third).
Just as an aside, I wonder which current stadium has the least amount of foul territory? Fenway or Wrigley come to mind, (Fenway has almost no foul ground down the right field line; Wrigley almost none in the left field corner), but that’s just an uneducated observation on my part.
Looking at the link which @asterion shared, the stadiums appear to be ordered by build date, which means that every current stadium other than Wrigley and Fenway is down near the bottom.
The smallest foul territories, according to that list, are indeed at Fenway (18,100 square feet) and Wrigley (18,600 sq. ft.). Of the newer stadiums which are currently in use, the smallest foul territory is at the new Yankee Stadium (19,700 sq. ft.)
The biggest foul territory at a currently-used stadium is listed as being at Rogers Centre (Blue Jays), at 29,000 sq. ft. – however, I’m not sure if that dimension for Rogers Centre is currently accurate, as the stadium was remodeled a few years ago, after the CFL’s Argonauts moved out, to make into a baseball-only venue rather than a multi-purpose stadium, and the stadium’s Wikipedia entry indicates that the renovation included reducing foul territory.
Wow, I completely overlooked that post. Thanks for bringing that info back into play.
Interesting in that the Oakland Coliseum had MUCH more foul territory than just about every other stadium on that list, except for Mile High, which was used by the Rockies for their first two seasons, and the Polo Grounds.
And I thought Banana Ball was a dramatic change to the rules. This would be even crazier!
Candlestick was up there too.
Candlestick was 7th, behind Oakland Coliseum, Mile High, Polo Grounds, Fulton County, Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, and the Metrodome.
You wouldn’t actually need to change the architecture of the stadia to get this effect, you could keep the fields the same as they are and just have the ground rules that any ball leaving fair territory is a foul ball and can’t be caught for an out.