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Comment by okwhateverdude | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure anything but the last two innings of a baseball game (if it is close in score) was already boring. Pacing is already generally slow. So slow that it is super common to have all sorts of audience distractions (kiss cams, celebrity look-a-like cams, etc). If they wanted to make is more exciting to watch, they need to take a page from the american football clones (shortened field, reduced players, easier scoring).

Imagine if the game was shortened to 4 innings, no more home runs (hang a driving range golf net), no more foul balls (every hit counts, plus that big golf net goes all around the field). It would be a much more fast paced game, and rotund powerhouse smasher types replaced with more athletic, speedy types. Still need hits to get on base, but running the bases becomes much more important with the always force that happens with every-hit-is-a-hit.

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Is that the right move though? We can make any event exciting. Implementation is rarely the hard part. (funny how closely this parallels a chat I had with one of my engineers this week)

I like Baseball because it’s relaxed and it’s on for 3 hours and I can have it in the background, looking over on occasion whenever I hear something exciting. If I wanted a sport of non-stop action that demands my full attention, I’d watch hockey.

MLB is walking a tightrope right now of evolving to be better at what it wants to be, and to keep people engaged (it’s a business after all), but not to transform into something entirely different. The customers likely wouldn’t be happy if they all got what they wanted.

Agree , good post

> it’s a business after all

is it? I thought those sports organisations are not businesses but associations of the clubs. Is it different in the US?

The article is basically about professional baseball, which by definition is a business. I don’t think non-professional leagues have this problem.

They’re trade associations which effectively represent the interests of the teams/clubs which constitute them.

That's a fair point. The changes they did make are definitely steering the large container ship with very slight course heading adjustments. But the cynic in me says that the audience is not the actual customer, the advertisers are. If they were to fundamentally change the sport in a way that would drive viewership up significantly, those extra advertising monies would easily paper over the loss from disgruntled audience.

The article makes a good point about misalignment here. Teams want to win (winning helps sell merch), but the league wants to sell ads (ads need worthwhile content). If these incentives were better aligned, maybe we'd end up with a less boring game that doesn't end up as background noise.

I agree. The business goal is to sell ads, tickets, hotdogs, and beer. I think they’re executing on profitability but in a cautious way. Too much sudden change can definitely kill a sport, like it can any product.

>I agree. The business goal is to sell ads, tickets, hotdogs, and beer. I think they’re executing on profitability but in a cautious way. Too much sudden change can definitely kill a sport, like it can any product.

That's a serious oversimplification of MLB teams' business models. Yes, ticket sales, marketing deals, food, beer and merchandise do make some money. However, the bulk of the money made by the teams (MLB is, as others have mentioned, a trade association which has been given special exemptions from anti-trust law) is from media deals with the major networks and "Regional Sports Networks" (RSN) which handle all the ads and broadcast details.

A few of the teams have their own RSNs, but most rely on third parties for that. In fact, one of the biggest (with rights to broadcast 14 of the 30 MLB teams) just went bankrupt.

For more information about that, and some really good "inside baseball" (see what I did there?) read this article[0] from The Athletic, published just yesterday.

[0] https://theathletic.com/4409306/2023/04/14/mlb-streaming-tv-...

Yeah vertical integration is a big part. Rogers owns the team, stadium, and TV network.

“Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game.”

— Edward Abbey

It has been suggested to me that the best way to enjoy baseball is on the radio, and I think I have to agree. All the crap you've listed largely doesn't happen across the radio.

That said, as a Guardians fan who lives well outside the broadcast range of WTAM, it's been a while since I could enjoy a game on the radio. Perhaps they've managed to bring it down to the level of the TV broadcast now.

Mlb.tv offers radio subscriptions to all teams for $3 a month. Sadly you can't pay for a version with no advertisements

They did something similar to what you said with cricket and had some successful results. A traditional test cricket match takes place over four innings which can last up to 5 days at which point the game gets abandoned as a draw. In an effort to make the game more exciting and get more viewers they introduced Twenty20 (where each team has a single innings with a maximum of 20 overs each) and T10 (single innings of 10 overs each) which means games are dramatically shortened to less than 3 hours and 90 mins respectively. The result is a lot less tactical play, with batters frequently going for six (equivalent of home run) and a much more exciting match for viewers. I imagine some clever rule tweaks could do the same thing for baseball.

Check out the rules that the Savannah Bananas play by with "Banana Ball": https://thesavannahbananas.com/bananaball/

I always assumed they were like the Globetrotters: more choreographed entertainment than actual competition. Are they actually playing competitively, or are the rules more like stage directions?

Seems like it is a little of both according to this article on mlb.com: https://www.mlb.com/news/savannah-bananas-the-dancing-globet...

> Foul balls caught by fans are counted as outs.

Wow!

That isn’t baseball. Baseball us all about tension. What your writing sounds a bit like cricket.

Not a bad thing per se, but not baseball.

>no more home runs (hang a driving range golf net)

Just call them fouls, like any other ball hit out of the field.

Just reduce the amount of time between pitches and batters and I’d be happy. The amount of time a three strike out inning can take is absurd.

They have this year. A lot of rule changes were already implemented to eliminate the super tedious waiting bits.

And limiting player rotations will help. It ruined baseball for all leftie hitters completely.

For any HN readers, go look up this ridiculous practice. It will impress the number cruncher types, and it will impress you how much the TV companies practically cover it up so people think the game is still fair.

>Just reduce the amount of time between pitches and batters and I’d be happy. The amount of time a three strike out inning can take is absurd.

Ask, and ye shall receive[0].

[0] https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-l...

I haven't watched baseball since the 2016 World Series, so I might give it another go after all. I read through the rule changes and I can see how they might upset some "real" fans, but as a "fake" fan they sound fantastic.

> I haven't watched baseball since the 2016 World Series, so I might give it another go after all. I read through the rule changes and I can see how they might upset some "real" fans, but as a "fake" fan they sound fantastic.

As a "real" fan myself, I think it's great! Watching a batter step out of the box, spit, adjust their batting gloves and/or their athletic supporter, take a couple of shadow swings and then step back in after every pitch doesn't make the game better. Nor does a pitcher who stalks around the mound for half a minute, then shakes off the catcher six or seven times (it's almost always going to be a fastball when that happens anyway), sets, then steps off the rubber and goes through the whole rigamarole again. Yuck!

The larger bases and limits on throws to bases are fine, and banning the "shift" is wonderful!

It used to be (in fact, the "shift"[9] was first deployed against CY Williams[10] in the 1920s, but was much, much more famously used against Ted Williams[8], as he refused to do as Wee Willie Keeler[0] counseled and "hit 'em where they ain't.") that hitters would change their approach, i.e. "situational hitting"[1], but with the rise of analytics and focus on "three true outcomes"[2] and "launch angle"[3], using the shift became ever more effective because most hitters started just swinging for the fences every. single. time.

Which, combined with the "shift" makes watching the game much less enjoyable, even if it does provide some statistical[4] advantage.

Sure, I'd love to see my team win more games, make deep post-season runs and, hopefully even win the World Series.

That said, my team doesn't mail me a check when they win a game or the World Series. As such, I'd much rather see dynamic play (these guys really are amazing athletes) without the focus on the "three true outcomes."

There are two rule changes (not implemented this year, but during the pandemic and since retained) that really chap my ass: the designated hitter[5] in the National League and the "ghost runner"[6] on second base during extra innings[7].

So, no. It doesn't upset real fans (in fact, most of the response has been really positive so far -- not least because games are ~30 minutes shorter than last year) who really appreciate the game, IMNSHO.

[0] https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quokeel.shtml

[1] https://baseball.tools/baseball-situational-hitting/

[2] https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-growth-of-three-true-ou...

[3] https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/launch-angle

[4] If the game itself is the "meat and potatoes," statistics is the "gravy" everything is steeped in. Many, many decisions are made both in-game and to evaluate players based on statistics; and player greatness (e.g. Hall of Fame inductions), it permeates almost every aspect of the game.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_hitter

[6] https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-ghost-runner-rule-lea...

[7] https://www.baseballbible.net/what-are-extra-innings/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Williams

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infield_shift#History_in_Major...

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Williams

" and banning the "shift" is wonderful!"

I get why they did this, but this was the one change that I hated. I like letting the math nerds find optimal strategies to winning games.

Edit: Should say I also liked the addition of the DH, although I didn't really care either way. As an AL fan I prefer the DH, but enjoyed the quirkiness of seeing pitchers bat now and then. The ghost runners I *thought* I'd hate and initially did, but came to enjoy it as time went on.

>" and banning the "shift" is wonderful!"

>I get why they did this, but this was the one change that I hated. I like letting the math nerds find optimal strategies to winning games.

A fair point. Although isn't that what Fantasy Baseball is for?

>Edit: Should say I also liked the addition of the DH, although I didn't really care either way. As an AL fan I prefer the DH, but enjoyed the quirkiness of seeing pitchers bat now and then. The ghost runners I thought I'd hate and initially did, but came to enjoy it as time went on.

I get it. As a lifelong fan of an NL team (I'd also note that the DH wasn't adopted in the AL until the early 1970s), I always found games with the DH to be less interesting because, since most pitchers are poor hitters, there's a good deal of tactical and strategic thinking that has to go into whether to bat for a pitcher or let him come to the plate.

If your ace is rolling, but he's coming up with men on base and two outs -- what are you going to do? Remove him from the game and burning a bench player as a pinch hitter?

What happens when you run out of bench players because you burned them all (except, presumably, the backup catcher) hitting in the pitcher's spot?

Do you make a double switch, putting a position player in the pitcher's spot in the order to stave off having to take out a reliever who couldn't hit a tee-ball?

There's all kinds of wonderful complexity and nuance there that the DH just destroys.

As for the "ghost runner," my objection is less well founded. I just don't like that there's a base runner who didn't earn their way on.

All that said, I dig your point of view. That's one of the wonderful things about baseball: we can argue about the finer points, but still enjoy the beauty of the game.

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