get rid of the DH
there is too much time in between pitches a lot. adjusting gloves and stepping out of the batter’s box
but I don’t know how to speed it up without messing up times when it is appropriate to draw out time between pitches. there are situations where drawing out time is good
brushback pitches and beaning people is good strategy
so is collisions at home plate. banning these things is just adding to the pussification of american sports
standardizing ballpark sizes is bad too. different sizes of parks is what makes baseball unique compared to other sports
Seeing as I know nothing about baseball I feel fully justified in adding my ill-informed “reckon”.
Ban catching mits except for the armoured fella behind the batter, nothing hard about catching a ball in a glove. wimps.
Allow a certain ratio of pitches to either a) bounce b) aim for the batter. Keeps them on their toes
also,
Change the number if innings to 2, the number of players to 11, widen the bat, make the ball a little harder and heavier, make it red, have two batters on at a time and reverse the pitching ends after a certain number of pitches, have a physical pitching zone to aim for…wooden sticks or something, give more than just a single run for a ball that clears the boundary (what is it with you Americans and low-scoring?) make it 4 or 6 instead. Surely you want a score that runs into the hundreds yes?
Oh, and stop halfway through for cakes and ham sandwiches
Baseball is by far my favorite sport, so I get this sentiment.
But there is, to me, no doubt that the pace of the game could stand improvement. It is noticeably slower than it was in the past. Being glad when a game ends in three hours should not be normal for regular season baseball.
The roboump wouldn’t work. What you see on television is an indication of where the pitch was at one point in its travel. It may well have nicked a corner of the plate prior to where it appears on your little onscreen graphic. What you can’t show is the 3d prism that is the strike zone along with the complete path of the ball to either enter or miss that prism.
What we need to do is (shudder) add two more teams. Then we could have four four team divisions in each league and no need for interleague play. At first, interleague play existed in order for the Yankees and Mets to play each other (and to a much lesser extent, As-Giants, Dodgers-Angels, and Cubs-White Sox). Now it exists because you have an odd number of teams in each league. Then each division winner and only division winners advance to the playoffs, each round should be 7 games. And let’s rebalance the schedule a bit. As it is, you only visit non-division teams in your league once per year. We need to fix that. And let’s bring back Sunday doubleheaders. Make each team play 14 of these and shorten the season by 2 weeks, letting you finish the World Series well before Halloween.
The play itself doesn’t need fixing. What we need to do is cut back the time between innings. Also get rid of the hyper-patriotic God Bless America 7th inning stretch.
Finally, fix the uniforms. You’re on the road, you wear gray or blue gray uniforms with your city name on it. Just like the Yankees do. When you’re at home, you’re in white. No dark jerseys with light pants. That’s for softball teams. ONE home and ONE road uniform for each team.
I think 7.13 is one of the best experimental rule modifications MLB has adopted.
The rule does not ban collisions, it merely limits the type of collisions and the conditions in which they may or may not occurr.
It’s simple really:
The runner must touch home without deviating from his baseline or deliberately interfering with the catcher.
The catcher cannot block home unless he has possession of the ball.
Whether the umpires will be able to enforce it properly and/or whether players will adjust their play to circumvent the rule is the experiment.
ETA: WOW! 70 posts and no-one has mentioned the elephant in the room… the biggest problem with baseball is salaries.
I don’t know if a pure salary cap would level the playing field, but it may be an idea worth looking at. I know that being a big market team with a huge TV contract, or even your OWN network, does not automatically lead to a dominating team. BUT it does make it difficult for mid and small market teams to retain their homegrown talent.
No way it’s happening though, the horse is long out of that barn.
I have absolutely no problem with salaries in baseball.
You may notice that as we speak the division leaders in the AL are the Oakland A’s, the KC Royals, and the Toronto Blue Jays. The NL has the small-market Brewers leading the Central.
Revenue-sharing? Sure. Salary cap? Unnecessary, IMO (and may actually hurt small-market teams if “max” players choose to play in the big cities for exposure and marketing reasons - see LeBron James for one example).
Well, on the field, the biggest problem is all the strikeouts. The issue with trying to fix such a thing is that you could thus make the cure worse than the disease (as they did in the 60’s when they raised the mound and expanded the strike zone). We’re now up to an all-time high of 20.3% of all PA’s ending with a K, a trend which may not have any immediate plateau coming up.
But what do you do? Shrink the strikezone? Now you have a ton of walks. Ideally, you’d like to get back to having more balls in play, but I see no easy way to legislate that.
There’s lots of strikeouts, sure, but scoring is still pretty decent. I kinda like having more pitching prowess available to watch.
Yes, baseball needs serious revenue-sharing, serious salary caps, and non-guaranteed contracts. It isn’t good for the game *or *the business to have structurally second class franchises.
Ending the DH. The DH is a smart rule and there’s a good reason virtually every baseball league in America (meaning basically all college, high school, little league etc) use the DH and only the National League doesn’t. Baseball is a sport with specialization, and that becomes more pronounced at the highest levels. It’s nonsense to have the specialized pitchers bat, it adds no fun for the fans, and to be honest makes the games less interesting.
I don’t really care if the NL always holds on to the DH, but going the other way isn’t a good thing. I’d personally like to see the NL adopt the DH rule.
Any sort of clock of any kind in baseball. RickJay has the right of it, the answer is for the Commissioner’s office to pass down some guidance to the umpiring crews that it’s time to start enforcing some of the rules on timeliness that were once enforced. A few players getting dinged for it would step things up a good bit.
Ideas I like:
In 2007 the minor leagues instituted a rule whereby if you exit the batter’s box after a no-swing pitch, you are immediately charged with one strike. This rule is still in effect, but like many baseball rules went unenforced in the minor leagues after 2007 because it resulted in game-ending blunders by batters who to that point in their life had never been truly restricted to the box. However, some of the guys in MLB today that started their minor league careers in 2007 are among the strictest and quickest at working through their at bats–suggesting it had its intended effect. Undoubtedly this would result in at least a whole season of fan-enraging incidents, but these are millionaire athletes paid to play a game and not fuck up–I think they’d learn in about a season they can’t step out after every pitch to adjust their glove. It might also help shine attention on how stupid it is to adjust your glove when you haven’t swung the bat.
Immediate out if you leave the dirt circle as a batter. There are batters that when they back out actually briefly walk around and even get on the grass. This is rare, but it should never be permitted. Declare such batters out and send them on their way. This is a minor change because I can only think of a few players that ever do this.
No more mound visits. Hand signals exist in baseball for a reason. If a manager wants to pull a pitcher he should call time, motion for the pitcher to leave the mound and then the replacement should start making his way in from the bullpen. Also, these are theoretically professional athletes (or at least professional baseball players), I’d fine any pitcher that doesn’t make a prompt trip from the bullpen to the mound. You’re not on a Sunday stroll, don’t be afraid to break stride.
Enforce rule 8.04, which used t be enforced by the culture of the game. This rule requires the pitcher to deliver a pitch within 12 seconds of receiving the ball anytime there are no runners on base. I don’t like the concept of clocks being used, but umpires can enforce this rule without clocks by using an internal count and then they can simply give a signal that it is time to immediately pitch or be penalized.
No more entrance music and slow entrances for batters. Ban entrance music and require batters to not stop at any point in their journeys from the dugout to the on deck circle and from the on deck circle to the plate. When their at bat is up if they do not immediately leave the on deck circle, charge them with a strike.
Oh god yes. Entrance music is stupid. Last game I went to those cheesy slow motion intro graphics made me laugh out loud for their ludicrousness. This is a game for Pete’s sake, not an HBO drama.
One thought on this - are you by chance an AL fan? Because there are pitchers out here in the West NL that can actually hit. Not all of them by any means, but some have real batting averages (admittedly on the low side but still, not .000). My Dbacks even used one of the starting rotation (can’t remember who.) as a pinch hitter (and not to bunt, either). Having your starting pitcher hit a two run double in a close game is pretty exciting.
