I used to not despise Rob Manfred. I miss the days when he was suspending Alex Rodriguez for being a cheater. Baseball is back, but these days Rob Manfred tries to make the sport worse. It’s great watching National League baseball again without the DH, but it seems like it’s coming. Here’s the argument in favor of the DH: most pitchers are bad at hitting. That’s it. Let’s keep going with that logic. Why have bad fielders play in the field? Let’s make baseball like football and have nine designated hitters and eight designated fielders plus the pitcher.
And we still have the ridiculously stupid magical extra innings runner this season. It’s pretty much baseball’s version of college football overtime. You get something (a runner in scoring position in baseball/good field position in college football) for nothing. Let’s make it more like college football. If it goes to the 12th inning, you start with the bases loaded. After 13 innings, you have three hitters from each team having a home run derby. That would get to be a little like the hockey shootout. I’ll note that there is a reason for the hockey shootout. The alternative is a tie. Of course, they don’t use the shootout or silly overtime rules (3 on 3) in hockey in the playoffs. Baseball didn’t use the stupid extra innings rule in the playoffs last year, but I wouldn’t put it past Manfred. There really is no reason for the rule. In 2019, 8.6% of games went to extra innings. Only 2.3% went past 11 innings. But baseball fans enjoy those games. I remember a Mets-Cardinals game that went 20 innings 11 years ago today and it was awesome.
Game 3 of the 2018 World Series was awesome. The magical runner is designed to prevent games like that from happening. Nobody is going to start watching baseball because of this rule. Some people might actually stop watching because of this and the other stupid things Manfred does (I won’t stop watching, but it legitimately reduces my enjoyment of games, I root against extra innings now). What would help would be finding ways to make sure that nine-inning games don’t last three hours and 45 minutes.
And I’m not unreasonable. I’m fine with seven inning doubleheaders during the pandemic when you get games cancelled for reasons other than just weather. But when the pandemic is over, I want nine inning doubleheaders back. And while this is much less offensive than the DH in the NL or the magical extra innings runner, I would be really mad if I had tickets for one of the games of a split doubleheader and I only got seven innings. If it’s a traditional doubleheader, then whatever, but how can you give seven innings to fans who paid for nine? And even on the DH, I’m not unreasonable. A year ago, we thought one possibility for the baseball season was having the whole season played by teams at their spring training sites (Arizona and Florida bubbles). So instead of the NL and AL, you’d have the Cactus League and the Grapefruit League. If that had happened, I would have been okay with the DH (I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have been okay with it). You would have had AL teams who of course had planned to have the DH so it wouldn’t have been fair for them to not have it. But when we ended up with the traditional NL and AL (even though the schedules weren’t traditional), there was no reason for the DH in the NL.
I’m not against all rule changes. I just don’t like rules that make the game worse. The Atlantic League is using some experimental rules this season as part of its partnership with Major League Baseball. They’re using the modified DH. You lose the DH when you take out the starting pitcher. That’s much much better than always having the DH because there would be strategy involved and it would encourage teams to leave starting pitchers in longer. But it would still violate the first rule of baseball: “1.01 Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.” The other problems are that it would mean that pitchers never it (relief pitchers would pretty much always get pinch hit for) and that it gives the visiting team an advantage. If both teams have their DH coming up in the seventh inning, the visiting team could have their DH hit and then take out the starting pitcher in the bottom of the seventh, but the home team would have to get through the top of the seventh to have their DH hit.
They’re making the strike zone wider, but not as tall. They don’t call the high strike as it is so I would think this would just mean more strikeouts. I don’t like the idea of making the strike zone greater than the width of home plate. If you want to make home plate wider, then that’s fine, but I don’t like the idea of the strike zone not being clearly above the plate. I guess that’s not really a problem in the Atlantic League because they use an automated strike zone, but I wouldn’t trust different umpires to be consistent if the width isn’t exactly the width of the plate. But apparently the Atlantic League strike zone is also changing from a three-dimensional shape above the plate to a two-dimensional rectangle at the front of the plate. If the ball is the right height and over the plate at any point, it should be a strike (I know it would be a very small percentage of pitches that aren’t strikes at the front of the plate that get to the strike zone at some point past the front of the plate). But if you can show me that changing the strike zone that way makes the game better, I’m fine with it. I just don’t see how that’s going to make the game better.
They’re also moving the mound back by a foot for the second half of the season. That sounds like a big change, but if you did that and didn’t say anything, I doubt most baseball fans would even be able to notice. Maybe that would reduce strikeouts and that would be good, but my suspicion is that it would just lead to even more home runs. If you can show that moving the mound back a foot improves the game, then I’m fine with it.
In the affiliated minor leagues, they’re using some other experimental rules. Triple-A will have slightly bigger bases. If it does anything to improve the game, fine (it does slightly shorten the distance between bases so that could lead to more stolen bases possibly and that would be good). Double-A has a rule that says "the defensive team must have a minimum of four players on the infield, each of whom must have both feet completely in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt." And they might require teams to have two players in each side of second base in the second half of the season. Sign me up for these changes. They would reward hitters for putting the ball in play more. You could still shift, but those shifts couldn’t be as extreme and third basemen would, you know, have to play third base instead of short right field. In High-A pitchers have to step off the rubber before attempting a pick off throw. Apparently the Atlantic League did this in 2019 and it led to more stolen bases. More stolen bases would be good so I could live with this. In Low-A they’re using the automated strike zone and limiting step offs or pick offs to two attempts per plate appearance. I’m fine either way with the automated strike zone, but I’m a hard pass on limiting step offs and pick offs. I want more stolen bases, but that seems too artificial. It would get to be too easy if you knew the pitcher couldn’t throw over.
Anyway, I thought of the logic of the DH being the same as having different players playing offense and defense in football, I was thinking of how we could make other new rules for baseball to make it more like other sports. I really hope Rob Manfred doesn’t ever come across the rest of this post because these are all terrible ideas, but he might actually like them because he does seem to enjoy making baseball less like the sport that baseball fans love. So if you are Rob Manfred, remember, these ideas are just as stupid as the universal DH and the magical extra innings runner and just like with those rules, they should never be implemented.
Soccer is the silliest sport so if we want to find ways to make baseball worse, that seems like a good place to start. If you hit a foul ball, the other team makes a corner pitch on the next pitch. Instead of pitching from the mound, the pitcher has to pitch from first or third base (depending on which side of the field the foul ball was on.
How about a clock? Nine innings with three outs each inning is so outdated. Let’s have quarters with a clock. Or if we want to be even stupider, let’s go back to soccer. You have two halves that are approximately 45 minutes, but it’s going to be a little longer than that and nobody is going to know when the game is actually going to end because the umpire is going to add a few minutes at the end, but when he says four minutes of extra time, that could three minutes and 52 seconds or it could be four minutes and 14 seconds or whatever.
If there is a questionable call, let’s give the manager the opportunity to challenge it like coaches in football. Oh, wait, they already did that. The NFL challenge system is imperfect, but it’s not terrible. Instant replay has been terribly implemented in baseball and basketball. It slows the game down so much. And in baseball, you now have plays like this that are now called the exact opposite way that they were called for the first 168 years of baseball. I would get rid of replay completely except to fix home run calls or plays at the plate. The way it’s mostly being used now in baseball and basketball is just making those sports worse.
In the NFL, you need to get two feet down in bounds and make a football move to establish possession. So you could make two feet and a baseball move to complete a catch on a fly ball or a force play. So Derek Jeter catching the ball and flipping into the stands is not an out if he didn’t have two feet down. Of course, you could extend that idea and say that you need to have two feet down in fair territory to catch a fly ball for an out. And if there’s a force at second, sometimes you’ll see the guy drop the ball, but it’s still an out because the drop happened on the transfer. Under this new rule, you don’t get the out at second base because you didn’t complete a baseball move (transferring the ball from the glove to the bare hand would be the baseball move that you have to complete to establish possession).
Let’s go through some quick football rules. You could have a coin toss before the game where the winner could choose to pitch or hit in the top of the first. If there’s a balk, the umpires don’t immediately stop the game. The pitch or pickoff happens and then the team that’s hitting can decline the balk if they get a good result. If they accept the balk, it’s a five yard penalty and the at bat is finished with the pitcher pitching from five yards farther back. In football, the offense can only have one player in motion at the snap. In baseball, you could make it so that if there’s more than one runner on base, only one is allowed to run before the batter makes contact. Why can’t baseball teams substitute freely like you can in football or basketball? Let’s make it so that players can come back in the game after being taken out (I’ll admit that most of these ideas are probably too ridiculous even for Rob Manfred, but I could totally imagine him going for this one). If a ball carrier is tackled in his own end zone, it’s a safety and the other team gets two points. Let’s make it so that if a team gets a run if they catch a foul ball behind home plate. In football, you get four downs to get a first down. On fourth down, you can risk going for it or you can punt or kick a field goal. In baseball, you get three outs, but there’s no risk involved. So let’s make it so that if you have runners on with two outs, you have to decide if you want to continue hitting. If you do and the third out is made, the other team inherits however many runners you had on base when the third out is made.
How about basketball rules? Of course in basketball, it’s illegal to block a shot that’s on the way down. Let’s bring goaltending to baseball. Rob Manfred has already ruined the most exciting games so why not destroy the most exciting play a fielder could make? He could make it illegal to catch a fly ball that would be going over the fence if the fielder didn’t catch it. We could make a baseball version of traveling. A fielder would only be allowed to take one step with possession of the ball. If they move their pivot foot, the play is dead and all runners get to advance a base. In basketball two technical fouls are an ejection. Instead of having baseball players thrown out right away, give them a technical foul and then they’re ejected on the second technical. The penalty is that the other team gets to choose any player to take one batting practice swing for a chance at a solo home run. And it’s illegal for the offense to touch the ball in the backcourt after they’ve crossed halfcourt. Applying this one to baseball is going to be tricky, but I can come up with something pretty stupid. If the team in the field throws the ball from the second base side of the imaginary line connecting first base with third base to the home plate side of that line, they can’t throw the ball back to the second base side. So like if there’s a runner on third and there’s a ground ball to the shortstop and he goes home, the batter can now advance to second base without the team in the field being able to throw down there. I know, it’s really stupid. So are all of these ideas (including the DH and the magical extra innings runner).
Hockey wasn’t an easy sport to get baseball rules from. You could have an intermission after the third and sixth innings. Also when a team ices the puck, they’re not allowed to substitute before the face off. How about if a team brings in a relief pitcher, they have to leave him in for at least three batters? Oh, wait. They started that last year. I have to say that I didn’t think about it much last year during the regular season. But I absolutely hated it in the playoffs. If there’s two on and one out and a team has a 3-4-5 coming up and 3 is a lefty and 4 and 5 are righties, I absolutely think you should be able to bring in a lefty for the number three hitter. Of course, the exception to this rule is that you don’t have to face three batters if you finish the inning. So if you come in with two outs and you get the first batter out, you can be taken out. If you made one more exception, this rule would be more tolerable for me (I still wouldn’t like it because of the scenario I just described, but it would be better). Let’s say it’s the same 3-4-5 coming up, but now you’re starting the seventh inning instead of being in the middle of an inning. You could leave the starting pitcher in and you could take him out at any point. But if you bring in a reliever, he has to face all three batters. So I would make an exception for starting an inning. If you can have a starter face the number three hitter leading off an inning and then take him out, why shouldn’t you be able to bring in a lefty to face the number three hitter leading off the inning and then take him out after one batter? Both scenarios result in the same number of pitching changes during the inning. Sometimes you can just see right away when a reliever doesn’t have it. When you see that and then he has to face two more hitters, that’s excruciating especially during the playoffs.
And I had to get curling into this blog post. Curling is segmented in a way similar to baseball with ten ends that are kind of like innings. In curling, only one team can score in an end. You could apply that to baseball by just subtracting run totals. So if a team gets one in the top of the first and the other team gets two in the bottom of the first, the score would be 1-0. That would be really silly, but it wouldn’t change anything about the way the game is played (1-0 is essentially the same as 2-1). But we could take the hammer from curling and put it into baseball. In curling (and in baseball), going last gives you an advantage. In baseball, the home team bats last. In curling, you have the hammer until you score. So you could make it so that the home team bats in the bottom of the inning until they outscore the other team in an inning. So if the home team never has the lead, they’re hitting in the bottom of the inning for the whole game. But if they’re ahead 1-0 after one, now they’re batting in the top of the second. And then they would go back to hitting in the bottom of the inning if the visiting team outscored them in the third or something.
If you are Rob Manfred, I cannot emphasize enough how stupid these ideas are. Given your track record of wanting to make baseball less like the sport that baseball fans love, I’m worried that you might not understand that. So many fans despise the DH. It’s just going to mean more home runs and there are too many of those as it is. If Clayton Kershaw hits a home run, it’s an awesome moment.
If a DH hits one of his 25 home runs that season, it’s entirely forgettable. If the Mets and Cardinals go 20 innings in April, it’s a game you remember 11 years later. But with the magical extra innings runner, there’s no way that game goes 20 and everybody forgets it 11 days later.
There are things that could change to make baseball better, but these are not the changes to make. The game has way too many home runs and strikeouts these days. I was looking at the all time leaders in strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Of the top 20, only eight of them are retired players. Here are some of the top 50 who are currently active: Oliver Perez, Patrick Corbin, Scott Kazmir, Sonny Gray, and Ian Kennedy (I don’t know if they’re all currently on active rosters, but I guess they were at least in spring training this year). They’re nice pitchers, but if they’re in the top 50 all time in strikeouts per nine, it’s way too easy to strike batters out. And strikeouts are so high not because of the size of the strike zone or something like that, it’s because batters go all out for home runs (because the balls are juiced, which was supposed to be address this year, we'll see how that turns out) and because pitchers go all out because they’re not expected to stay in the game very long. Average pitchers striking out a batter (or more) per inning and average hitters hitting 20 home runs in a season don’t make the game better. The game would be better with more players like Rickey Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, and Greg Maddux (308th all time in strikeouts per nine). Yes, those are some all time greats, but there’s nobody like those guys anymore. The closest thing we might have to one of those players these days might be Mookie Betts being like Rickey Henderson. Now their numbers are very different (because of the way the game is played), but I think their skill sets are similar. Henderson was probably faster, but there’s no way that he would steal anywhere close to the number of bases he stole if he was playing today (he had 14 seasons with at least 50 stolen bases and three with at least 100). Mookie Betts probably has more power, but he wouldn’t have hit as many home runs if he was playing when Rickey Henderson played and he would be stealing more bases. Not surprisingly, Mookie Betts is one of the most fun players to watch in baseball today. And it’s not because of the home runs he hits. I love watching Mookie Betts run the bases and play the field.
Baseball is such a wonderful sport and Rob Manfred is making it less wonderful. I don’t have all the answers, but find ways to have starting pitchers stay in the game longer, fewer home runs, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, and more base stealing . That would be a more fun game to watch.
