Sometimes there are radical changes that need to be made to compensate for how the game has evolved over time. There was nothing inherently wrong about the evolution of making multiple pitching changes in an inning - that’s good strategy. But it’s bad for baseball as a spectator sport, and it’s even worse in a digital age in which baseball is becoming essentially as boring to watch as golf.
I get that part of the intrigue of professional baseball is its history and its records, but we’ve already seen a number of changes over the years that have significantly changed the game. And I think change is good. It’s better to change - even radically - than to let the sport sink into obscurity.
Baseball has to move faster. The games have to finish sooner, or more and more people will stop watching.
I like the idea of the pitch clock, but that’s just a start. We should consider experimenting in other ways. For example, why not just shorten the season - 162 games is insane when you think about it. Why not just play, say, 87 games. Each team plays every opponent 3 times. Do away with AL and NL and instead have a Western and Eastern Conference, like in the NBA.
As for extra innings, the first two extra innings could be just like regular innings. After the 11th inning, a home run contest - like penalty kicks in FIFA. Either a pitching machine throws a pitch or a team’s own pitcher could throw the pitch, which might make it more interesting as it would require coordination between a team’s pitcher and slugger. Either that or teams flip a coin and play sudden-death extras, with teams alternating first at-bat in each additional inning. So let’s say the visiting team wins the coin toss and bats first, after that, the home team would get first at bat, and then the visitor would get the first at bat in the following inning and so on.
With regard to pitching changes, perhaps we don’t put a limit on pitching changes per game; instead, put a limit on the total number of pitching changes for an entire series, whether it’s a regular season 3-game series or a post-season series. For example, we could say that a team generally makes about, say, 3 - 4 pitching changes per game, right? If some saber metrics wunderkind manager wants to show off his IQ in game one by making 6 or 7 pitching changes, fine, let him. But he’ll pay for it on the back end. An obvious question is, well what happens if he’s exhausted his pitchers and injuries become a factor later. That’s a tricky one and I’m not sure I have an answer. I’m sure some teams would fake injuries - perhaps there could be a rule requiring an injured player to sit out the remainder of a series. But I think that this approach would encourage managers to be economical early in the series and make more decisions later, which is actually when these kinds of decisions become more interesting and meaningful anyway. If a series is down to the wire and going into the final games, then managers on both sides have earned the right to have more of an influence on the game. And fans would probably have more patience with pitching changes.
