Opinion: Speeding Up Baseball to Save It | Hacker News Reader

Opinion: Speeding Up Baseball to Save It

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14 pointsilamont23 comments

Counterpoint: stop trying to “save” baseball. It’s a fine game the way it is.

Jon Bois had the right of it: https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/there-is-...

I was a big baseball fan when I was a kind (like under 12). I lost interest after that and it was rekindled by watching Japanese baseball. My own personal opinion is that the length of the game is not really a problem. Take a look at cricket -- it's both longer, more boring and dramatically more popular than baseball.

The thing I find about American baseball is that I think it lacks drama. I've felt the same way about a lot of Premier league football (soccer). At the top end in soccer, they can pass the ball endlessly and then suddenly score for 30 yards out. It's breathtaking, but ultimately boring, IMHO.

With American baseball, it's similar. You have guys who can hit ridiculous home runs. You have pitchers that are so good that they can play the entire game without really losing much. Often, in American baseball, you'll only have 2 pitchers for the whole game.

What I've enjoyed about Japanese baseball is that it's really never over. Your pitcher can suddenly just stop being able to throw the ball over the plate. Or the batters learn their timing. Even if you are losing 7 - 0, you still have a chance! There is a saying that baseball doesn't start until there are 2 outs. Your whole goal is to get a man on base and then start putting on the psychological pressure. In Japanese baseball, it is common strategy if you have a man on base and no outs, to throw away your next 2 outs advancing that man to 3rd -- because this is where baseball starts.

With American baseball, the pitcher will just shut you down. The batters usually have a single goal: hit a home run. There are obviously amazing players in the US and all the best players in the world want to play there.... But, I don't find it as interesting, personally. Nothing at all to do with the length of the game. Longer games mean that I can drink more beer! (Just like cricket... Um... I assume that's not true of Pakistan. They must actually love cricket ;-) ).

>Often, in American baseball, you'll only have 2 pitchers for the whole game.

!!!???

You must have not watched baseball in the past several decades, major league teams are averaging 4.5 pitchers per game now and it's rare for a team to use three or fewer pitchers in a game. [1]

[1] https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/historical-lo...

Admittedly this is the truth :-) Maybe I should start watching American baseball again!

I feel this way about all the big professional sports! The sport the pros play is not the same as a normal human plays. These guys are genetic freaks selected for size at a young age and then trained to obsession.

I prefer college football for this reason (health / exploitation aside). A player can catch fire and dominate another team in college. In the pros, every single player on the field was “that guy” dominating other teams in college. The skill gap isn’t there, which makes it feel formulaic imo.

College baseball has that character. While the student-athletes are good, maybe AAA-league good, they are not as perfect as the pros. You never know when a pitcher will suddenly lose the zone, or a routine double-play will turn into a two-base run-scoring error. Also the tickets are far cheaper and the parks are small and comfy (Stanford Sunken Diamond for the win!)

> I lost interest after that and it was rekindled by watching Japanese baseball.

Try to find your local minor league team. It has many of the same elements.

> Often, in American baseball, you'll only have 2 pitchers for the whole game.

What? I think that in fact the main problem with baseball is that you end up with 4+ pitchers per game, and in fact, science will back me up on this[1]. "In 1964 (four years after the save rule first came to baseball), teams used an average of 2.58 pitchers per game, including the starter; today, they're using 3.92 pitchers per game".

[1] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-bullpens-took-over-...

Boring is in the eye of the beholder. Sports like soccer and the longer forms of cricket are the opposite of boring to those who value suspense more than constant "action" (where I use "action" to mean the scoring mechanism moving). Ctrl-F this Freakonomics episode for "soccer" to read it put better than I can:

http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/29/how-to-create-suspense-fu...

> Take a look at cricket -- it's both longer, more boring and dramatically more popular than baseball.

There has been a lot of innovation in cricket to make the limited overs form of the game more spectacular for modern audiences. Test cricket is the purest form of the sport and contains elements that are missing from the shorter versions but limited overs has experimented with a lot of rule changes over the years in an attempt to balance the game for the audience.

They limit the number of deliveries for any single bowler(pitcher). This means you have all rounders in the team who perhaps get hit a bit more. Imagine if a baseball team was required to share the load amongst 5 pitchers. And they have fielding restrictions in the game to balance things otherwise teams tend to start slow so they don't get out and chase runs towards the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_overs_cricket

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20

I'm not sure about of many of your facts (only two pitchers?), but I do agree that the drama is missing in today's game.

One thing that MLB can do, and they have been trying to address recently, is trying to get players to be more expressive during games. For years, the culture of baseball has promoted a certain behavior that goes against today's social trends. For example, after you hit a home run, it hasn't been considered acceptable for a player to be overly expressive immediately after hitting the home run (watch the ball, flip the bat, etc), as its been seen as embarrassing to the pitcher. Honestly, today's fans want to see it, and the apparent conflict that results between the pitcher and batter brings more interest to the game.

A volleyball female player once told me that she watched only female pro games, because it was much more dramatic than men's, you just as you described. More strategy involved, more "wow" moments, whereas men games were just endless "serve - smash - point". I don't know if that's true but I have heard the same argument made over football (soccer) when some friends watched the Women's World Cup.

I agree, but he doesn't really propose a solution. I guess he kind of hints that batters shouldn't be able to step out... but that only really works when the pitcher has a time limit... and that only works with no runners on. Am I missing something?

A magic bullet to speed up games would be welcome by all, but if they start making drastic changes (like 2 strikes for a strikeout and 3 balls for a walk, which I've seen proposed), I suspect they'll lose fans even faster

Drastic changes aren't needed. The rules just need to be tweaked to encourage efficient play.

Not allowing batters to step out is one good idea. Excessive pitcher changes is a huge problem. Each change adds 3-5 minutes to a game. One thing I haven't heard mentioned is providing a way for catchers (teams) to call pitches in a more secure manner. Catchers go through so many signs just to communicate a pitch type while a runner is behind the pitcher. Each pitch could add an 5-10 seconds to hide the sign from the runner, depending on the scenario.

For god's sake- please speed it up. I have a kid playing AAA little league and most games go over the 2 hour limit with just 4 innings played. Soccer, Basketball, Flag Football are all 1 hour games tops and involve a lot more running, action. Baseball has 1 poor kid pitcher trying real hard to get the ball in the strike zone and most often missing, walking the batter and repeat...while all the other players (batting team and fielding team) are just watching idly and praying- 'for god's sake just throw the damn ball straight, so we can move on!'

I have to disagree with the author's premise. The home run is boring in its current form. When it was a relatively rare sight it was more exciting and impactful. Because the home run is so much more prevalent (and other reasons of course) the truly exciting stuff is nearly gone. You don't see trick/special plays nearly as often anymore. When home run hitters are up every other batter, whats the point of risking stealing third base? There are less bunts, squeeze plays, pickles. Its the risks and the payoff (or lack thereof) that makes baseball games fun to watch (and to play, to be frank).

You end up with boring, high scoring games like 11-6, 10-2, etc depending on which team's home run hitters got streaky that game. The NHL had a similar problem in the past where scores were creeping way up and it wasn't uncommon to see things like 7-3, 6-1 kind of blowouts. Those are exciting if they are rare occurences but if they are regular it makes the game boring. A 2-1, 3-2 game is far more exciting in hockey. The NHL has made changes to curtail (and encourage) high scoring games and waffle back and forth on which they think is better, but its not really clear that baseball can really do the same without fundamentally changing the game itself or rebuilding stadiums to have a much larger minimum outfield wall distance.

Minor league games with a pitch clock[1] move at a faster pace.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_clock

I have a whacky theory to share - making baseball 6 innings with four outs instead of 9 innings with 3 outs. It will make the game slightly shorter but also make the scoring potential a lot higher

> I lost interest after that and it was rekindled by watching Japanese baseball.

I would recommend hitting up the local minor league baseball team, then.

I've always thought of baseball and American football as two sports designed to be televised for the amount and length of commercial breaks. Always found it impossible to watch a full game by myself

So they finally jazzed it up

What just happened? Why is the ball on that springy thing?

Baseball has a lot more problems than just length of play. Umpires, for example. A good way to get me to watch again would be to move to an electronic strike zone.

I have no interest in watching man-children think everyone is there to watch their show.

https://youtu.be/s-me7_Y42qQ

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