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Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

yup! lets not also forget that fan attendance and TV viewership have plummeted (and not came back like the NFL's fan base) for MLB.

Stadium avg attendance - https://www.statista.com/statistics/235634/average-attendanc...

Viewership down as well - https://frontofficesports.com/mlb-attendance-hits-37-year-lo...

Contrast that to the NFL which is seeing record viewership now - https://sportsnaut.com/nfl-tv-ratings-viewership-numbers/

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Fan attendance was limited by Covid-related restrictions for the first half of the season, and the Blue Jays played in Buffalo in a minor league ballpark for part of the year. By the time the NFL season started the capacity restrictions had been lifted. The TV ratings are a worrying trend for most leagues other than the NFL.

True, its why I also listed the link for TV viewership also falling. If 2022 doesn't end up losing alot to contract disputes, this years park attendance should come up alot from 2021.

I think part of the problem is there are 162 games in a regular season. It's way too much. Hell, I like baseball, but rarely watch a regular season game unless it has big implications for the playoffs, and usually only read recaps or watch the highlights, because who has time for watching that many games really?

Baseball would be such a different sport if there were say 40 games per season instead of 160. You would need far fewer pitchers too if there were only 2 games per week.

There is more randomness in an individual baseball game that necessitates a longer season to crown a winner. Football teams have gone undefeated during the regular season. The best regular season basketball teams of all time have won close to 90% of their games. The baseball team with the most regular season wins in the last century had a record of 116-46 for a winning percentage of just under 72%.

There is and old baseball saying that no matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference.

40 games simply wouldn't be enough to figure out which teams are actually good.

If the season were shorter the tactics would be very different and what you said might not be true anymore. For instance you might only need 2 starting pitchers. If you can have Scherzer pitch half your games that’s gonna be very different than having him pitch 1/4 of your games. There’s also the playoffs to consider as a case study. There you have far fewer games so the strategy is very different, and arguably the games are more interesting.

I don't think there is much reason to think that would happen. We don't see evidence of that in the regular season as Scherzer's career record is 190-97. We don't see evidence of that in the postseason when even the best teams will generally lose a few games. And we don't see evidence of that in baseball history when in the past a team's best pitcher might start up to half of that team's games. Randomness is just inherent to the game of baseball.

Why do they have so many pitchers now? I just looked up the 2019 Yankees roster [1] and see 30 pitchers. For comparison I checked the 1927 Yankees roster [2] and see 10 pitchers.

In 1927 they played 154 game seasons, so I doubt the season being 6 games shorted than the current 160 game season explains the '27 Yankees only needing 1/3 the number of pitchers.

[1] https://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=2019...

[2] https://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1927...

I don't know the real answer, but my guess is: Pitchers these days pitch harder, train harder, and put more spin on the ball (putting more load on their arm/shoulder). Also, there are more tactical usage of pitchers (putting in someone to get the next out and that's it).

The tactical swapping is part of it, especially since once a pitcher is taken out they can’t go back in for the rest of the game. A lot of the roster pitchers are backups and relievers who don’t play many innings. The starters usually take at least 3 days rest after pitching.

Baseball is just not an entertaining sport to watch.

It's possible tastes have changed, but historically it's been pretty popular in the US. I think the games going much slower and longer and the change of the game to be more about power hitting and strikeouts at the expensive of balls in play has made it worse even for the people who might otherwise still be interested.

Pitching changes lead to a commercial break - and current coaching strategies lead to frequent changes. Combine that with everyone consistently swinging for the fences vs. putting the ball in play with runners aboard, and the game gets tedious to watch.

Baseball had a first mover advantage which helped them a lot. Playing just about every day also helped create a routine for people. But as new generations come people are realizing that baseball has the least to offer among the big 4 sports in the US.

Baseball is one of the worst sports for television because the game is done when the game is done. That just doesn't work so well for the half-hour time slots that TV uses. All these dumb rule changes lately to try to get the games to always take no more than 3 hours is MLB trying to fit the TV model.

In-person and streaming don't have this constraint. That's what MLB should be emphasizing. So this is a great move. We need baseball to be an in-person/streaming-first, tv-last game. Then just say "we're not like the others, how about enjoying baseball and your other favorite sport?"

I'd beg to differ. Especially in Japan, it's an incredibly popular sport. The problem is that MLB does not have a single clue how to market it, especially to younger fans. Not only that, but it continues to lose lifelong fans whenever the owners cause a work stoppage (like the current one).

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