Ban the shift. Eliminate the DH. But add the 4th OF.
Posted on 04/02/2022 9:14:08 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Joe Maddon selected an adjective usually applied to a gallon of milk. Then again, for all the romance that surrounds the sport, baseball is a consumer product too.
“Once you eradicate National League rules, then everything becomes homogenized,” the Angels manager said.
With the adoption of the designated hitter in both leagues this year, and with the expansion of interleague play next year, Major League Baseball is giving their consumers what the league believes they want.
The National League dates to 1876, the oldest surviving professional sports league in the world, according to MLB historian John Thorn. The American League dates to 1901.
The time could soon come to retire the leagues. They have outlived their usefulness.
For almost a century, the two leagues had a distinguished and at times bitter rivalry. Never did an NL team play an AL team, aside from the World Series.
Each league president determined his own discipline. Each president’s autograph was stamped upon the baseballs used in his league. The umpires in each league wore different equipment.
For generations, fans and players anxiously awaited the All-Star game, the result of which would be trumpeted as the determination of the superior league. Stars played all nine innings, for the glory of their league.
That’s all gone now. Interleague play turns 25 years old this season.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
ping!
Ban the shift. Eliminate the DH. But add the 4th OF.
Banning the shift is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve heard in sports in my lifetime. It’s like banning pass rushing in football to make it easier for QBs to throw for 500+ yards every game.
They need to get rid of the virtual batting box and other graphics that distract from watching.
http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2017/10/25/baseball-unwatchable/
“But nobody talks about that much anymore. How many people make note that the Chicago Bears were an NFL team before the merger? Or that the Patriots were an AFL team?”
Not a lot of people, no. Here in the Bay Area, occasionally you’l hear one thing or another about some aspect of the Raiders’ pre-merger history in the AFL. Or more rarely you’ll hear some REAL old-timer talking about the 49ers’ 3 seasons or so in the All-American Conference.
“...Take the pitcher out of the batting line-up...”
And that removes part of the strategy of the game. Who’s in the pen, who is available to pinch hit, who’s on base and if they can run, what is the inning, how many out, is a base open, sacrifice or bunt and can the pitcher in the lineup do it, hitting to the right side, can a stolen base help, hit and run, fly ball...? All of that disappears and the need for decisions goes with it. And what happens when the pitcher out of nowhere drives the ball up an alley for a bases clearing hit double?
It all gets down to the long ball and that isn’t done that often even though they lowered the mound, jazzed the ball, shortened the fences or made them lower, and outlawed a number of pitches that made hitting a little more defensive and less aggressive. According to Fox Sports, there were 5,944 home runs hit in MLB in 2021. And there were 161,566 plate appearances. If you do the math, that’s a home run every 27.1 at bats. If a pitcher throws a perfect game, that means none to be hit. But if the pitcher faces everyone twice as many times as that, that will mean 2 home runs from 54.2 plate appearances.
And they are trying to speed up the game by using pitch timing rules, keep[oinmg the batters in the box, and camera strike zones because it’s so slow. And extra innings are starting with the last put out starting at second base to speed it up.
It’s a whole new game called getting richball. And all sports are playing it. In MLB, it’s not that the rules need to be changed. It’s that they need to find people that can play it.
wy69
I can’t believe people get this upset over grown men playing a children’s game.
My suggestion was to try to simplify the rules with doing the least violence to the game. The DH is like the enforcer in hockey, not a beautiful feature. Yes, I’d like the rules that governed play in the Negro Leagues but I don’t see the game returning to those pristine days. By removing the pitcher from the batting line up we can ditch the DH and possibly approach the real game.
I know it sort of sucks but it’s way better than seven inning double-headers or a man on second for the tenth inning.
Does anyone really care?
I agree. And now that both leagues are going to have a DH, can complete platoon baseball be far behind?
I spent some time at in Philly waiting for deployment in the early 80's. I don't recall there being an issue getting to the ballpark. What I do remember is Philly fans were totally nuts. I went to several games. I saw Mike Schmidt launch a couple of upper deck homers during the game. The fans went crazy. A few days later he went 0-4 and the fans were ready to draw and quarter him...
“By removing the pitcher from the batting line up we can ditch the DH and possibly approach the real game.”
It depends on what “the real game” is. MLB is more than they throw it I hit it, they hit it I catch it. So simplifying the game by removing it’s parts is not doing so, it is changing it into an unrecognizable business for making cash, not sport.
And if it is changed enough, it morphs into something that has nothing to do with the game. And using either eight or nine hitters in the lineup, and waiting for the long ball, it becomes homerun derby rather than baseball since for the last 20 years averages have gone down but home run amounts have gone up. And I often wonder how much beer is sold when the game is on because a series of batters that hit .230 with few homeruns are not going to keep people interested in the game but in their thirst.
Oh, the owners are presenting a product on the field, but is it entertainment? Only if you can sit on the edge of your seat and watch three quarters of the people playing fail at it. And then pay them the profit from rising ticket prices, and food/drink concessions calling them stars and heroes. Especially when in the long run, their profession means almost nothing in the short or long run.
The game doesn’t need change. It needs competence at what is there. And that’s why it fails whether rules are put in to make it more “entertaining” or not as all it does is back the cake with less chocolate in it. (But sell it at a higher price)
wy69
Do many of you realize that in suburban Atlanta which was always a hotbed of baseball they now have trouble getting enough kids to field a league. The best of the best are now in year round leagues where if you arent in there forget D1 baseball scholarships etc. Baseball has lost the American youth to Ipads, video games, etc. They should now call it Major Latino Baseball MLB.
It isnt coming back to America no matter how rules are changed. Baseball’s heyday is gone. Like trains. Sorry for my pessimistic look but reality has to set in.
Ditto Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles, L.A. Angels and L.A. Dodgers, S.F Giants and Oakland A’s, if the A’s stay in Oakland long term.
San Diego Padres and the Chula Vista Little League 12U Champs,
Lacrosse has replaced baseball as the American youth spring sport.
LaCrosse is growing but primarily in the wealthier suburbs. Soccer is huge too.
In the Dominican Republic baseball is one of the only ways out of the stifling poverty. Same in Venezuela, PR, Cuba, and places in Mexico.
Always found it interesting that DR and Haiti share an island but baseball isnt played in Haiti. Turns out the French wouldnt allow cricket way back because it was British.
Most American kids have caught on that if they arent the second coming of Bo Jackson or Mantle you can forget baseball.
“Baseball’s heyday is gone.”
It certainly looks to be a problem. Before the official MLB academies began, a former minor league player, Epifanio “Epy” Guerrero, built the first talent development facility on a patch of farmland north of Santo Domingo in 1973 and even prior to that Ozzie Virgil became the first Dominican-born player to play for a major league team in the United States in 1956, NL Giants.
But according to Fred Guerrero, Epy’s son and current Latin American scout supervisor for the Minnesota Twins, “it was very hard for [Epy] to get players to commute every day to his field, so he needed to build some sort of a house where he could house them so they wouldn’t have to commute . . . that’s where it all started.”
By 2003, all 30 MLB teams had active academies in the Dominican. These facilities were places where players from ages 16 through 21 could not only practice on smooth fields, but also build up their bodies by eating well, lifting weights, and sleeping on bunks with sheets.
But the work within the academies turned into money. The clubs could pay as much as $700 a month to players in the academies and that would be more money at the time than their parents made in over 15 years annually. And when they did move on, the biggest money went to the developers and not the players developed.
And the clubs could bring up players through the system that had the talent to play at the MLB level and then if they did finally make the big club, their salary was so dwarfed by other players, they felt taken….and they were. But after a couple of years when they spent enough time in success and complained enough wanting more money, they were released, sent down and buried, or traded to a small market team that couldn’t pay them their worth so they faded out of the system when new “stars” came into the league.
A real good site for information on the camps in places like the Dominical and Venezuela is here:
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1201&context=ijgls
Wy69
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