Excellent post, and one with which I agree. When I became a baseball fan, in the late '70s and early '80s, the average length of a game was just over 2:30; the average is now a half-hour longer (20% longer than it used to be). If that 20% increase in game length was the result of 20% more action, that might be OK – but, in fact, there is less action, in the absolute, than there used to be, and thus, that additional 20% is pretty much entirely dead time.
Batting averages are down, strikeouts (which I don’t really count as “action”) are way up, on-base action (things like stolen bases and hit-and-run plays) is down, game stoppages due to pitching changes are up, and the incessant between-pitches f***ing around, by both pitchers and batters, is, of course, way up.
I don’t think it’s so much the pace of the game, it’s the style of play. Give me a game where there’s some action on the bases and some strategy to second guess and I don’t care how long it takes. The shift has ruined the game. Rather than try to hit 'em where they ain’t, everybody wants to swing for the fences. So we see strikeouts and homers. Remember when every team had a few guys over .300? Nowadays most teams don’t have any. I say deaden the ball a little to encourage steals, hits and runs, sac bunts and the like. The modern game is boring as shit, and it isn’t because the batters step out of the box every pitch.
Those are both problems. They are different problems, but they’re related.
Length and pace are two different concepts, and kenobi_65 hit the bullseye; a game that is 20% longer is fine if it’s got 20% more ACTION. If a game goes 12 innings, or it’s an 11-9 thrilled with lots of hits, it’s fine it it takes 3:15 to play. Similarly, if a game is 4-2 with a huge number of strikeouts but is wrapped up in 2:15, that’s fine too. All these types games have a brisk pace of play.
But what we’re getting now are the 4-2 strikeout festivals that take 3:15. So far this year the average nine inning game takes 3:07 to play (tied with last year for the longest in MLB history) despite the fact that there aren’t any more things happening. 25 years ago, in the 1996 season, far more things happened - there was a lot more scoring, and far fewer strikeouts - but games took 12 fewer minutes to play. 26 years before that (I skipped over the 1981 strike season) there was more action than 2021 - about the same number of runs were scored but it happened through more hits and stolen bases and far fewer strikeouts. Games took just 2:33.
We are seeing FEWER plate appearances than usual, fewer baserunners, fewer defensive plays, and yet the games are taking over three hours to play. They’re full of dead air. It’s so BORING.
If you solve the style problem and cut down on strikeouts you’ll add a bit more action - but you will still be spreading that action over far, far too much time. Watching a guy futz with his batting gloves is not interesting.
It’s seems to me that one the biggest correlations is between game duration and the number of pitchers used. How one can use that knowledge effectively I am not sure.
I did a comparison, last night, of this season (we’re two months in now, so the numbers are likely stabilizing by now) versus 1982 (because that’s when my Brewers went to the World Series). A nine-inning game was 2:35 in '82.
Compared to 1982, in 2021:
Batting average is down 25 percentage points (.236 versus .261)
Strikeouts are up 76%
Home runs are up 44%
Stolen bases* are down 39% (and stolen base attempts are down 46%)
Sacrifice hits (bunts) are down 63%
The number of pitchers used in a game are up 64%
That’s not to say that there’s no strategy anymore – there certainly is. But, strategy in the game has become massively driven by advanced stats, which is why things like stolen bases and sacrifices are much less common, why the defensive shift is used so much, and why teams switch pitchers much more often.
*- as @RickJay has pointed out in other threads, the 1970s and 1980s were a period in which stolen bases were a lot more common than in most of the rest of the modern era.
It’s not a ritual in the sense that they’re trying to get a better grip on their bat, or that the gloves actually need an adjustment - they’re just trying to break the pitcher’s rhythm and extend his time on the mound between pitches.
No, I don’t think MLB ever had a pitch clock. College baseball has experimented with it, as have some minor leagues.
Here is a January article from SB Nation touting the pitch clock.
All this is to say is that the solution is clear: implement a pitch clock and give it teeth. Enforce it. Pitchers and batters alike don’t like the idea, but you know what? Tough. A pitch clock is the single biggest thing that MLB can do to make games shorter, and it has the ancillary benefit of positively affecting the balls in play conundrum the league also happens to have.
I actually don’t think that is hard. Just make it a “once you’ve crossed you are at risk” situation. No “moving back” will save you. You could have the first base ump signal once he considers the runner “at risk” (not unlike some of the signals NBA refs make when enforcing various rules). Once that signal is made the runner can be picked off until the next pitch is thrown or he returns to the base safely.
My problem with limiting pitching changes is that it really punishes a team if a particular reliever has an off night. Maybe that’s OK though. I actually think the simplest thing would be that before each game both teams have to submit a list of “eligible pitchers”, and you can make that number as small as you need it to be to limit the number of changes. Might even bring back the “long reliever” if you can’t have a 13-man pitching staff, of which 8 of them are relievers.
I also really like the idea of the pitch clock. I see no reason not to put it in and enforce it. There is no reason it should take more than 20 seconds between pitches unless there was a foul ball off the hitter/ump/catcher.
Oh, and they absolutely have to get rid of the sticky crap that @kenobi_65 linked to.
It’s funny you picked 1982 because the Brewers made it to the World Series, because the 1982 Brewers hit 216 home runs - and at that time that was an amazing accomplishment. It wasn’t the all time record but it was in the top five or ten all time, an astounding number of homers, 30 homers more than any other team that year.
In 2019 the AVERAGE American League team hit 232 home runs.
It’s interesting, though I’m not sure what the ultimate conclusion is, that the recent trend is to eliminate what historically have been “National League” baseball traits in favor of the DH and less small ball. The style that people seem to want, more stolen bases, more sacrifices, more contact is what had been long considered a NL thing. But also lots of pitching changes, playing the matchups, bunts and general overmanaging has also been a hallmark of the NL. Certainly making the DH universal will almost certainly skew the stats towards more strikeouts, homeruns and less baserunning. It would also remove a fail number of bunts, sacrifices and pitching changes.
Though, even in the American League, pitching changes are up dramatically from where they used to be. Decades ago, as AL managers didn’t need to lift a pitcher for a pinch hitter in the latter innings, they did tend to leave pitchers in for longer than in the NL, and you’re right, that was a big difference between the leagues.
But, now, many pitching changes – in both leagues – are made to address specific matchups (e.g., the LOOGY, or “lefty one-out guy,” a LHP brought in to face one specific left-handed batter), or to prevent batters from seeing the the starting pitcher more than twice, or to bring in yet another fresh arm who can throw 95+ MPH fastballs for an inning.
And, it is the rare closer who regularly pitches more than one inning now; in 1981, when closer Rollie Fingers won the AL MVP and Cy Young Awards for the Brewers, he threw for 78 innings in 48 appearances, or an average of 1 2/3 innings per appearance – in other words, he often came in to pitch some of, if not all of, the 8th as well as the 9th.
I suppose it reduces strikeouts relative to having a pitcher hit, but I don’t think it increases baserunning. Or at least the kind of baserunning we’re talking about here. DHs are almost always slow, old, fat guys or position guys with a gimpy leg or back. These guys are not stretching singles to doubles, going first to third or stealing bases. Also, NL teams always used to use pinch runners more often because their line ups would get screwed up due to double switches. They’d steal and sacrifice more often in the bottom of the order trying to manufacture a run before the pitcher would come to the plate.
So I suppose in absolute terms, a DH getting on base more than a pitcher is more baserunning, managers needing to work around the 9 spot tended to cause a lot more creativity on the basepaths.
That hasn’t been true is quite some time, and even if they were all David Ortiz, Ortiz ran the bases WAY better than the average pitcher.
Today’s DHs:
Jake Fraley, Mariners; 26 years old, runs well
Shohei Ohtani, Angels, 26, runs well
Miguel Cabrera, Tigers, old, runs badly
Yasmani Grandal, White Sox, 32. catcher DHing on his day off from catching
Yordan Alvares, Astros, 23, runs okay
Randal Grichuk, Blue Jays, 29, runs very well
I’d go on but you get the idea. They’re mostly good athletes cycling out of defense just to rotate guys around.
I don’t entirely buy the premise. Certainly not every DH is a liability on the base paths, but that’s wasn’t the principle point. My point is that pitchers hitting forces managers to be more creative with the other guys to manufacture runs through aggressive running. Not having a hole in that batting order causes the managers to be more conservative, there’s less risk to getting thrown out stealing when the pitcher is standing there at the plate.