MLB Attendance: Some solutions for another year’s decline

MLB Attendance: Remedies

His remedies include a pitch clock, but more so, banning an analytics-driven feature of the modern game – the shift. He would also require relief pitchers to face three batters or finish an inning.

Hmmm. Maybe something should be done.  By my count, if 2019 sees another overall drop in MLB attendance, that will make the seventh year in a row. (Macnow’s count there is, somehow, four, but let’s not get into which of us is pushing “fake news.”) Last year’s overall drop was close to minus-three million fans, or about 3.9% year-over-year; 2018 saw an MLB attendance drop below 70 million for only the third time since 1998, including that year, and for the first time since 2003.

Macnow’s solutions are not entirely wrong.  A pitch clock has been widely employed in minor league baseball for a few years now, so some current MLB hurlers have already been trained to deal with that. There have always been pitchers called “human rain delays.” They need to go the way of the dodo.

The shift ban is an idea perhaps less worthy. Would that mean a fielder could stand directly behind a base, or not, and how is “directly behind” defined? Why not just teach batters to hit to the opposite field?

Finally, I’m not sure about the three-batter/finish-the-inning rule for relievers in all innings. It’s not really a great idea, taking management away from the managers, but I could see it before the 6th or 7th inning.

All that said, though, I could live with all three ideas exactly as Macnow suggests.