GentlemanJim
08-17-2021, 06:35 PM
That's what we presented to ESPN MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Alden Gonzalez, Tim Keown, Joon Lee, Kiley McDaniel, Jeff Passan, Jesse Rogers and David Schoenfield -- and we got a range of ideas, from the subtle to the radical.
Here are their eight proposals.
Shorten the season
The MLB regular season should be shortened by a month.
Baseball hums along just fine as America's summer sport. The July 31 trade deadline provides energy and momentum at a time when it's needed, but not long after teams welcome their new players, the dog days of August are upon us.
By the time the pennant races begin to heat up in September, the country has mostly moved on to football and even the start of other sports' seasons. October arrives more with a whimper these days.
And that's not even mentioning the teams out of the race: One month of meaningless baseball to rate prospects is just fine. Two months is too long. It always has been.
Picture this: The excitement of the trade deadline leads right into the pennant races. As football inches its way to the starting gate, baseball ends its season with a bang. September playoffs won't feel secondary to the pigskin sport; they'll be right next to it in the headlines.
The secondary impacts of a shorter season only bring positives. Careers of star players, especially pitchers, could last longer, making up for the loss of revenue for them because of fewer games. Within a season, there would be less reason for star players to take games off. Stands would be filled even more with fewer games to choose from. Playoff weather would no longer be an issue.
As for the crusty, old-school fan who cherishes baseball's numbers over 162 games, those days are long gone. Counting stats are out and percentages are in. An OPS based on 132 games will still have the same meaning as it did based on 162. -- Jesse Rogers
Expand and realign the leagues by geography
I'd like to see baseball expand to 32 teams sooner rather than later. When that happens, baseball will have an opportunity to leverage the regional appeal of the sport with a revised structure. As a traditionalist, this would offend my history-loving sensibilities. But since it's probably inevitable anyway, once MLB grows it'll be time to rip off the Band-Aid and go heavy on geography-based realignment.
That means the timeworn American and National League designations go away. If you start shifting teams that have been around for 120 years, I don't see how you keep the league labels as they are. You'd go to an Eastern League and a Western League, each with two eight-team divisions, and within each division, you'd have two four-team pods. The playoffs would include six teams per league, with the four division champions earning a first-round bye.
The geographic pods within each division are important for scheduling reasons: These will be the most frequent matchups on the schedule. The winner of each "pod" will get a playoff spot, unless that team is the overall division winner, in which case the next-best team in the pod gets to go.
Finally, I'd arrange broadcast distribution like this: You'd have different levels of subscription access, and blackout rules will no longer apply. You can get an MLB-level subscription, a division subscription, a pod subscription or a subscription for an individual team. These would be stand-alone subscriptions for non-national broadcasts, so that Fox, ESPN, etc., would still broadcast games to which all fans would have access. These would be showcase games.
The driving force behind all this is regionalization. Build those rivalries, starting in the minors, which have already become more geographically aligned and presumably will only become more so over time. You don't ignore the national aspect, but baseball is already local to a significant degree. The structure of the sport ought to reflect that. -- Bradford Doolittle
Add a pitch clock
Hall of Fame owner Bill Veeck, in his autobiography published in 1962, wrote, "The game has become too slow. There would be nothing wrong with the now standard three-hour game if we were presenting two and a half hours of action."
If that sounds familiar, Theo Epstein said this earlier this year: "We need to find a way to get more action into the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more, and give fans more of what they want."
Baseball, of course, used to have a clock that forced a faster-played game: the sun. Barring a return to day games and tearing down stadium lights, we need a different solution to create fewer strikeouts, more action and a more rapid pace.
The solution: a pitch clock. It's used in the minor leagues. The Olympics deployed one without runners on base. It works. We need it in the majors.
1. Time between pitches is the biggest reason games are longer than ever -- 23 minutes longer than 2005 for a nine-inning game, 34 minutes longer than 1984 (and 35 minutes longer than 1962). A few years ago, Grant Bisbee studied two nearly identical games in terms of score, pitches thrown and baserunners -- one from 1984 and one from 2014 -- and found nearly 33 additional minutes elapsed in the 2014 game in dead time between pitches.
2. Rob Arthur's study at FiveThirtyEight in 2017 showed that velocity increases when pitchers take more time between pitches. With pitchers maxing out more than ever on every pitch -- especially relievers, who are throwing a higher percentage of innings than in 1962 or 1984 -- that walk around the mound and wipe of the brow adds up over 290 pitches.
So institute a pitch clock and force batters to remain in the box. Both sides lose a little something, but pitchers will be forced to work faster and they probably won't throw quite as hard. Command pitchers who work fast (think Mark Buehrle) will be more in demand, batters will make more contact and fielders will get more opportunities to display their athleticism. -- David Schoenfield
Bring in the robo umps
The concept of the strike zone is simple. The stewards of the game identify a vertical space over the irregular pentagon that is home plate. If a pitcher throws a baseball in that space over the plate, it is a strike. Anything else is a ball. This sounds easy.
It is not. It is not easy because the human eye is fallible and the human brain susceptible to bias. It is not easy because catchers have been taught to exploit these fallibilities and biases. It is not easy because umpires who get 95% of ball-strike calls correct are considered the best of the best, and umpires who get 85% right remain employed, and every single day there are manifold examples of balls that are called strikes and strikes that are called balls.
It is time to end this charade and transition to the era of the robot umpire. MLB has christened this system ABS -- automated balls and strikes -- because robot umpires sound like something Boston Dynamics would make. I don't care if it's a creepy Chuck E. Cheese animatronic behind home plate. If it calls balls and strikes accurately and consistently, it will be a massive upgrade.
Yes, the technology remains a work in progress. Breaking balls are a challenge. So is defining a hitter's proper strike zone. And the league-wide zone may adapt over time, as it often does. But at least it won't by dozens of different interpretations of the zone by individual umps. The underpinnings of the system are sound. The iterations being made after use in the Low-A Southeast League are instructive.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. -- Jeff Passan
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32008079/pitch-clocks-realignment-end-blackouts-mlb-look-were-designing-now
Here are their eight proposals.
Shorten the season
The MLB regular season should be shortened by a month.
Baseball hums along just fine as America's summer sport. The July 31 trade deadline provides energy and momentum at a time when it's needed, but not long after teams welcome their new players, the dog days of August are upon us.
By the time the pennant races begin to heat up in September, the country has mostly moved on to football and even the start of other sports' seasons. October arrives more with a whimper these days.
And that's not even mentioning the teams out of the race: One month of meaningless baseball to rate prospects is just fine. Two months is too long. It always has been.
Picture this: The excitement of the trade deadline leads right into the pennant races. As football inches its way to the starting gate, baseball ends its season with a bang. September playoffs won't feel secondary to the pigskin sport; they'll be right next to it in the headlines.
The secondary impacts of a shorter season only bring positives. Careers of star players, especially pitchers, could last longer, making up for the loss of revenue for them because of fewer games. Within a season, there would be less reason for star players to take games off. Stands would be filled even more with fewer games to choose from. Playoff weather would no longer be an issue.
As for the crusty, old-school fan who cherishes baseball's numbers over 162 games, those days are long gone. Counting stats are out and percentages are in. An OPS based on 132 games will still have the same meaning as it did based on 162. -- Jesse Rogers
Expand and realign the leagues by geography
I'd like to see baseball expand to 32 teams sooner rather than later. When that happens, baseball will have an opportunity to leverage the regional appeal of the sport with a revised structure. As a traditionalist, this would offend my history-loving sensibilities. But since it's probably inevitable anyway, once MLB grows it'll be time to rip off the Band-Aid and go heavy on geography-based realignment.
That means the timeworn American and National League designations go away. If you start shifting teams that have been around for 120 years, I don't see how you keep the league labels as they are. You'd go to an Eastern League and a Western League, each with two eight-team divisions, and within each division, you'd have two four-team pods. The playoffs would include six teams per league, with the four division champions earning a first-round bye.
The geographic pods within each division are important for scheduling reasons: These will be the most frequent matchups on the schedule. The winner of each "pod" will get a playoff spot, unless that team is the overall division winner, in which case the next-best team in the pod gets to go.
Finally, I'd arrange broadcast distribution like this: You'd have different levels of subscription access, and blackout rules will no longer apply. You can get an MLB-level subscription, a division subscription, a pod subscription or a subscription for an individual team. These would be stand-alone subscriptions for non-national broadcasts, so that Fox, ESPN, etc., would still broadcast games to which all fans would have access. These would be showcase games.
The driving force behind all this is regionalization. Build those rivalries, starting in the minors, which have already become more geographically aligned and presumably will only become more so over time. You don't ignore the national aspect, but baseball is already local to a significant degree. The structure of the sport ought to reflect that. -- Bradford Doolittle
Add a pitch clock
Hall of Fame owner Bill Veeck, in his autobiography published in 1962, wrote, "The game has become too slow. There would be nothing wrong with the now standard three-hour game if we were presenting two and a half hours of action."
If that sounds familiar, Theo Epstein said this earlier this year: "We need to find a way to get more action into the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more, and give fans more of what they want."
Baseball, of course, used to have a clock that forced a faster-played game: the sun. Barring a return to day games and tearing down stadium lights, we need a different solution to create fewer strikeouts, more action and a more rapid pace.
The solution: a pitch clock. It's used in the minor leagues. The Olympics deployed one without runners on base. It works. We need it in the majors.
1. Time between pitches is the biggest reason games are longer than ever -- 23 minutes longer than 2005 for a nine-inning game, 34 minutes longer than 1984 (and 35 minutes longer than 1962). A few years ago, Grant Bisbee studied two nearly identical games in terms of score, pitches thrown and baserunners -- one from 1984 and one from 2014 -- and found nearly 33 additional minutes elapsed in the 2014 game in dead time between pitches.
2. Rob Arthur's study at FiveThirtyEight in 2017 showed that velocity increases when pitchers take more time between pitches. With pitchers maxing out more than ever on every pitch -- especially relievers, who are throwing a higher percentage of innings than in 1962 or 1984 -- that walk around the mound and wipe of the brow adds up over 290 pitches.
So institute a pitch clock and force batters to remain in the box. Both sides lose a little something, but pitchers will be forced to work faster and they probably won't throw quite as hard. Command pitchers who work fast (think Mark Buehrle) will be more in demand, batters will make more contact and fielders will get more opportunities to display their athleticism. -- David Schoenfield
Bring in the robo umps
The concept of the strike zone is simple. The stewards of the game identify a vertical space over the irregular pentagon that is home plate. If a pitcher throws a baseball in that space over the plate, it is a strike. Anything else is a ball. This sounds easy.
It is not. It is not easy because the human eye is fallible and the human brain susceptible to bias. It is not easy because catchers have been taught to exploit these fallibilities and biases. It is not easy because umpires who get 95% of ball-strike calls correct are considered the best of the best, and umpires who get 85% right remain employed, and every single day there are manifold examples of balls that are called strikes and strikes that are called balls.
It is time to end this charade and transition to the era of the robot umpire. MLB has christened this system ABS -- automated balls and strikes -- because robot umpires sound like something Boston Dynamics would make. I don't care if it's a creepy Chuck E. Cheese animatronic behind home plate. If it calls balls and strikes accurately and consistently, it will be a massive upgrade.
Yes, the technology remains a work in progress. Breaking balls are a challenge. So is defining a hitter's proper strike zone. And the league-wide zone may adapt over time, as it often does. But at least it won't by dozens of different interpretations of the zone by individual umps. The underpinnings of the system are sound. The iterations being made after use in the Low-A Southeast League are instructive.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. -- Jeff Passan
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32008079/pitch-clocks-realignment-end-blackouts-mlb-look-were-designing-now