Let's fix baseball

[Sterling_Archer]

How about we get rid of BOTH the DH and letting the pitchers hit? What is wrong with an 8-man batting lineup?

[ElvisL1ves]

You’re tinkering with the sacred Nine-Man Lineup, as handed down on stone tablets from St. Alexander Cartwright his own self, son.

But the ninth guy could go in the field. Give the DH a glove and let him be the shift infielder.

[Typo_Negative]

@Laggard

I have no idea what is wrong with a draw.

A draw is an abomination. There should never, ever, in any sporting event, be a draw.

If we have draws, we might as well play soccer.

<<shudder>>

[Typo_Negative]

@markdash

I’m a fan of an NL team, and I can tell you that I really enjoy having pitchers hit. I can recall several very memorable hits by pitchers that were super exciting not just because of the game state but because the pitcher isn’t expected to do anything.

And when you see a reliever come to the plate? That’s just golden.

One vote for comic relief?

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@leftfield6

What I hate is that one 19 inning game will screw up both the winning team and losing team’ bullpen for a week or so later. A week during which they are playing other teams who have not recently played a 19 inning game.

This is a big problem which has emerged as bullpen usage has changed in the last 10-15 years. Never mind 19 innings, even a fourteen-inning game can wreak bullpen havoc.

I’d like to see baseball adopt the Japanese rule of a tie after 12 innings, except (obviously) during the postseason. By the 13th inning everybody has left the stadium and most of the TV viewers have gone to bed.

No mound visits, ever; by the time he gets to the major leagues a pitcher should be able to get through an inning without his pitching coach holding his hand. Pitching changes should be phoned directly from dugout to bullpen.

[YogSothoth]

I’m not much of a traditionalist in life, nor am I a baseball fan. As such, I’m the perfect person to fix baseball!

1. Electronic strike zone, eliminate the need for umpires in that respect. Also for anything that’s a judgement for what’s in or out of play

2. Standardize all rules between the leagues, there should be no difference between how the National and American leagues play. Let’s please all drop the pretense that each league is separate and they only collaborate? Its one sport and one league

3. Further standardize all MLB parks. If the field of play is a certain size in one park, it should be exactly that size in another

4. I’ve always hated the balk rule. Pitchers should be able to fake out batters and runners. Let pitchers fake a pitch then throw to a base. Let them do a throwing motion but hold on to the ball. More strategy, more fun

5. Get rid of that rule where fielders can’t drop the ball on purpose to freeze up the runners. Runners should be able to determine for themselves whether or not its safe to run, and fielders should determine whether or not they want to catch the ball and get that sure out vs. drop the ball and try for a 2 or 3 out play

6. Fuck the unwritten rules. Either write them down or suspend every player that tries to follow it. In the NBA, if you throw a punch or get into a fight, its an automatic suspension. Some players will get themselves tossed on purpose to prove a point or retaliate. This baseball habit of people throwing the ball at batters because of some perceived slight is getting tiresome because of the wink wink that goes on. It should either be legal to throw at a batter for violating the rules, in which case the umpire determines that the teams are even and any further violation is forbidden, OR all pitchers should be suspended significantly for throwing at a player no matter what the cause

7. Speed up the game by instituting a pitch clock and a batter’s clock

[Acsenray]

I can agree with brushback pitches. All pitches intentionally thrown at the batter should be cause for ejection. No tolerance for retaliation for perceived slights. Grow up.

[Telemark]

I could get behind removing the DH, but frankly I think the AL game is more interesting to watch than the NL game. Yes, deciding when to substitute for the pitcher is interesting, but I’d rather watch good hitting matched against good pitching.

We could lose interleague play and I wouldn’t care at all. Its time has past.

The pitch timer should be instituted - or just give the umps free reign to speed things up warning pitchers and batters when they are dicking around - the award a strike or ball as needed.

I don’t like the idea of robo-umps, having an ump behind the plate calling balls and strikes isn’t IMO broken so no need to fix.

[wonky]

@leftfield6

:dubious: No one is bored. Never said that. The pitchers that would be redeployed into the field would do their absolute best to field their positions. No one wants to lose. BUT, there is a limit to how long a baseball game can go on before it begins to have negative impacts on players bodies, and their ability to recover for future games.

And again, if a team wants to concede the game, fine.

But to try to fuck them over by forcing them to have players in to make mistakes is goofy. They are putting in a position player by necessity. You’re saying to force them by an arbitrary rule to also put in a pitcher in the field so that they will make mistakes so that they can lose the game faster. It’s not benefiting the bullpens at this point because when a position player is playing the bullpen is no longer involved. So saying this is for the bullpens is a little weird.

[RickJay]

@ISiddiqui

Yeah, but Tampa is already in the AL. I’d rather expansions not lead to teams having to change leagues (esp since Tampa has somewhat of a rivalry with Boston).

If any team was gonna move for geographic reasons, the one just recently minted in 1998 seems a logical choice. And let’s be honest, Tampa Bay and Miami could use any help we can throw them.

[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
7) Speed up the game by instituting a pitch clock and a batter’s clock
[/QUOTE]

The problem with using clocks is that in some cases it’s perfectly valid for a pitcher or batter to take a little extra time - not usually, but sometimes. So now we’re introducing judgment anyway, since every time a batter gets brushed back, or takes a foul ball off the foot, or a catcher take a hard foul, or the pitcher gets something in his eye, the umpire will have to overrule the pitch clock anyway.

Far better to simply not have a clock and let the umpires run the game the way they used to, where they’d actually hurry things along. As smarter people than me have written on more than one occasion, this was once pretty standard, because some games ran up against the unstoppable clock known as “the sun,” and so umpires had to in some cases keep things going to ensure nine innings got in before it was too dark to play. The same urgency, with perhaps a clarification of the rule prohibiting batters from leaving the batter’s box without a good reason, could take at least ten minutes off an MLB game (and ten minutes is a lot. You’d be surprised how much faster paced that will make things.)

Really, this is one of only two significant problems, in my opinion, with modern Major League Baseball, the other being umpire errors (and THAT problem isn’t as bad as it used to be.) Most of the other stuff discussed here is either twiddly little stuff - like the appeal rule, which really is stupid, but rarely comes up - or matters of personal preference like the DH (I’m fine either way, btw) or how they determine who hosts the World Series (could not care less.)

[ISiddiqui]

@RickJay

If any team was gonna move for geographic reasons, the one just recently minted in 1998 seems a logical choice. And let’s be honest, Tampa Bay and Miami could use any help we can throw them.

Tampa really needs a new stadium, but the St. Petersburg plan was nixed (it looked really cool, though).

I mean I guess I could see Tampa moved to the NL South and the expansion Charlotte put in the AL East, but that would also put 2 expansion teams in the AL.

[YogSothoth]

@RickJay

The problem with using clocks is that in some cases it’s perfectly valid for a pitcher or batter to take a little extra time - not usually, but sometimes. So now we’re introducing judgment anyway, since every time a batter gets brushed back, or takes a foul ball off the foot, or a catcher take a hard foul, or the pitcher gets something in his eye, the umpire will have to overrule the pitch clock anyway.

I disagree. Any other sport with a clock tells you to just play on. If the batter’s not ready, tough, the pitch is coming anyways. Take a strike or take a seat. If the pitcher’s not ready, well, too bad, he has to throw something anyways. In basketball or football, if someone’s not ready because maybe they lose a shoe, or get injured, their team has to either call a time out or wait until a dead ball. There’s even precedent in baseball. Say a pitcher gets hit by a ball. Play doesn’t stop for him, the batters still run the bases. Only when the ball’s dead officially can they stop play and take the guy out.

[Laggard]

Oh yes. A foul ball on all strikes is a strike. Eliminate this silly five foul balls on the third strike crap complete with the required adjusting of gloves between each foul.

[RickJay]

@YogSosoth

I disagree. Any other sport with a clock tells you to just play on. If the batter’s not ready, tough, the pitch is coming anyways. Take a strike or take a seat. If the pitcher’s not ready, well, too bad, he has to throw something anyways.

He isn’t going to “throw something anyways” if he isn’t physically on the pitching rubber.

In every other example you provide, play isn’t continuous because a clock exists. It’s continuous because it is continuous. Hockey doesn’t keep going when a guy is hurt because the clock is running, it keeps going when a guy is hurt because the other team hasn’t got any reason to stop; it would take the active intervention of the official to stop play. But in the case of baseball, play HAS stopped - time has not been called, but the problem you’re trying to fix is not that time is called, it’s that players are playing too slowly for your liking. The appropriate comparison is not an injury in hockey - it’s the 24-second clock in basketball, or at least that’s the closest we can get to a comparison; basketball would actually be* completely broken as a sport* without a shot clock.

The question is whether a pitch clock would help or just be a pain in the ass, as opposed to the simpler fix of enforcing a rule against leaving the batter’s box. I’d rather try to latter before the former.

[cmosdes]

@RickJay

The only time in MLB history teams played exactly as many games against other teams is when there weren’t any divisions. Once divisional play began, that ended.

I have a recollection of a change to MLB where the schedules became unbalanced. Did balanced used to mean that teams in the same division played the same number of games against other teams as all the other teams within their own division? What did balanced vs. unbalanced mean?

[Little_Nemo]

More of a promotional idea than a change in the game: neutral city road games. Have thirty games a year played in stadiums outside of the MLB home cities. Each team would play the same number of games. Each home stadium would still have eighty games a year. But this would bring major league baseball out to fans that don’t otherwise get a chance to see a game in person.

[Little_Pig]

@Little_Nemo

More of a promotional idea than a change in the game: neutral city road games. Have thirty games a year played in stadiums outside of the MLB home cities. Each team would play the same number of games. Each home stadium would still have eighty games a year. But this would bring major league baseball out to fans that don’t otherwise get a chance to see a game in person.

Agreed. Play the games in minor leagues parks at least 200 miles away from a major league park. Boston vs. the Yankees in Podunk. 10 bucks to get in. 5 dollar beers. 2 dollar cokes and 1 dollar hot dogs. Dream on Dream on…

[Acsenray]

So you’re basically killing minor league baseball. Why would you want to do that? Instead, we should make the minor leagues more competitive by limiting how the majors can snatch away stars mid-season or right before the playoffs. I think we could commercially support five or six major leagues with 10-12 teams each instead of just 30 teams in two leagues.

[Enginerd]

@RickJay

In every other example you provide, play isn’t continuous because a clock exists. It’s continuous because it is continuous. Hockey doesn’t keep going when a guy is hurt because the clock is running, it keeps going when a guy is hurt because the other team hasn’t got any reason to stop; it would take the active intervention of the official to stop play. But in the case of baseball, play HAS stopped - time has not been called, but the problem you’re trying to fix is not that time is called, it’s that players are playing too slowly for your liking. The appropriate comparison is not an injury in hockey - it’s the 24-second clock in basketball, or at least that’s the closest we can get to a comparison; basketball would actually be* completely broken as a sport* without a shot clock.

The question is whether a pitch clock would help or just be a pain in the ass, as opposed to the simpler fix of enforcing a rule against leaving the batter’s box. I’d rather try to latter before the former.

I think a better analogy is the play clock in football. The previous play is over and play has stopped. The game clock may or may not be running, but the play clock is, and the offense has to keep up or lose yards. It changes from 25 to 40 seconds depending on the situation, and the officials have the flexibility to overrule it in extenuating circumstances (malfunctioning clock, injury, delayed spot, etc.). Still, it kicks on at the end of almost every play and it keeps the game moving faster than it otherwise would.

[Colibri]

@Acsenray

So you’re basically killing minor league baseball.

He’s talking about two games per team per year. An MLB team would play in the city of one of its minor league affiliates only every two years or more, maybe. Not sure how exactly that would kill the minor leagues.