MLB Has Become Slow, Plodding and Boring. It Needs Help, Now.

 

Baseball has always had a decided advantage for pitchers. After all, the most elite hitters of all time might have gotten a hit just 35% of the time. But the advantage now enjoyed by pitchers is ruining the game.

Just 14 Major League hitters batted at least .300 this season. There are 30 teams, each with a 26-man roster. So there are at least 780 players. Again, just 14 of them were able to manage a hit at least 30% of the time.

Across the majors this season, there were 42,145 strikeouts, and just 39,481 hits. Yes, there were actually more strikeouts than hits in Major League Baseball this year. This trend has really screwed up the game.

As recently as 2008, there were just 32,884 strikeouts across the majors. So, the game now endures nearly 10,000 more strikeouts per season than it did just 13 years ago.

The league-wide batting average was just .244 this season, the lowest since 1972, after which the American League instituted the designated hitter. In response to the .242 batting average in 1967, MLB lowered the mound 10 inches to aid hitters. What will the league do this time?

For decades, Major League Baseball’s strikeout rate was roughly 15%-16%. These days, MLB hitters are striking out in roughly a quarter of all plate appearances (23.2% this year).

The level of ineptitude by major league hitters is just stunning.

The game is plagued by the Three True Outcomes: strikeouts, walks, and home runs. In fact, 36% of all plate appearances in 2021 ended with one of those three outcomes, as did 35% in 2019.

There were 5,944 home runs in the majors this year, the third-highest total of all time. The two higher totals came in 2017 (6,105) and 2019 (6,776). Do you spot a trend?

While home runs may be exciting, just as with walks and strikeouts, the ball is not put in play. In all three instances the defense merely watches, and there are a LOT of these instances these days.

Baseball has become slow, plodding and boring. And this is coming from someone who loves the game, who grew up on the game, and who played through high school.

Hitters should be compelled to stop swinging for the fences in every at-bat and simply put the ball in play. We need more runners on base, more steals, more sacrifices, more moving runners to the next base, and more runs via small ball. Simply put, we need more action!

Urging pitchers to throw 98-MPH fastballs isn’t just leading to lots of strikeouts; it's leading to a rash of Tommy John Surgeries. A whopping 105 major league and minor league players had UCL surgery in 2021. As of 2015, one-third of all MLB pitchers had undergone Tommy John surgery, according to Baseball Reference. It’s time to get back to the craft of pitching, not just hurling and flame-throwing.

There is an opportunity in the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement to fix some of what ails baseball.

Banning defensive shifts would be a start. Batters are no longer talented enough to avoid shifts. They can't even make contact anymore! A new rule should mandate that two infielders must be on each side of second base, and on the dirt.

It’s also time to let computers call balls and strikes; the umps all have different strike zones and get the calls wrong far too often. The technology exists. Everyone at home can see the strike zone box on TV. The calls should be accurate every time, but they're not. It’s affecting the game.

Lastly, the 12-second pitch clock, which is already in the MLB rule book (Rule 8.04), must be strictly enforced. Football has a play clock and basketball has one too, and they're enforced. It’s time for baseball to start enforcing its own rule too. 

Long, slow, plodding baseball games must be made a thing of the past. It’s time.