MLB: Five changes to save baseball from being boring

Too many strikeouts

As Crash Davis famously noted, strikeouts are boring. They’re also fascist, but that’s an issue for another day.

In 2020, nearly one-quarter of all MLB batters struck out. There are numerous reasons for this trend. More batters are swinging for the fences because statisticians and agents both tell them that’s the way to produce runs and cash. They are seeing more 100 mph arms. Pitchers are used differently.

None of those factors can or should be legislated away. But MLB can take one very simple step that is almost certain to improve batters’ ability to put the ball into play off even modern pitchers. It can move the mound back.

The pitcher’s rubber is set 60 feet, six inches from home plate. It’s been that way for more than 125 years. But it was not always thus. Prior to 1893, there was no such thing as a mound; the pitcher delivered from a box positioned 55 feet, six inches from the plate.

That change fit the style of play prominent in the 1890s, and for several decades thereafter. When pitching threatened to overwhelm offense in the late 1960s, the mound was lowered several inches. There has been no significant change to either its position or composition since then.

Obviously, it is well past time for another adjustment. A re-positioning by as little as one or two feet would provide the hitter a greater chance to more frequently put the ball in play.

The risk, obviously, is that the change would too greatly shift the balance in favor of the home run hitter, which is not what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re trying to more frequently put the ball in play. So this change should not be undertaken except in company with one or two other changes that would make this move particularly favor the contact hitter. Let’s get to those.

Home run distances

Home runs are not in and of themselves evil. They certainly are not boring, and “not boring” are the two words driving these ideas. Strikeouts, however, are boring. We need a fix that will encourage batters to swing for the gaps, not the fences.

Here’s one: Effective with Opening Day 2021 – except where structural aspects make doing so physically impossible – every MLB park must have at least one spot where the distance from home plate to the fence measures a minimum of 450 feet.

And every park constructed or reconfigured after April of 2021 must also have at least one spot where the carry is at least 450 feet.

This will not necessitate the tearing down of Wrigley Field’s bricks and ivy, which will be grandfathered in.  It may, however, force the Boston Red Sox to relocate the Fenway Park bullpens. Until those bullpens were created, that space was all in play…and the carry to the bleachers approached 450 feet.

Fenway’s Green Monster and its Pesky Pole? Unaffected.

Many other MLB parks can be easily retrofitted to comply. At Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, all you need to do is remove the center field fence and relocate it at the base of Ashburn Alley. The same is true at Oriole Park. Busch Stadium in St. Louis has a sodded ‘batter’s eye in center field that can easily be backed up or removed and put into play. And so on.

Yes, there will be fewer home runs. But there will be more space to hit the ball and thus more action. And that’s a good thing.

The Ball

A major league baseball is required to undergo tests to determine its resiliency. Under the existing rule, a ball must have what is called a ‘coefficient of restitution’ – think of it as a bounceback factor – between .514 and .578.

If that sounds like a very broad range, it is. But that’s just the letter of the rulebook. The reality is very different.

In baseball’s real world, balls are constructed to meet far more exacting standards, with coefficients of restitution rarely varying much from .55.

Thus, under the existing rules, it would be completely legal to construct a significantly softer baseball for use in a MLB game. Such a ball would dis-incentivize overswinging, and incentivize contact.

And you don’t even need to change a rule. All you need to do is instruct the ball manufacturer to henceforward set the normal coefficient of restitution down five or 10 tics, into the range of .45.

Such a change would actually conform more closely to the legal .46 midpoint anticipated in the rulebook. Confronted by an ever-so-slightly softer ball, batters should do the logical thing…try to hit it. Putting the ball in play is less boring,  which is what we’re all about.

Those who want to continue to try to kill it will be the worse for the experience.

Too many walks

We dealt with the strikeout problem by moving the pitcher back. We can deal with the walk problem, too, by making walks harder to get.

There are two ways to do this, and since both achieve the same purpose feel free to advocate for whichever you choose.

The first — also the simplest — is to slightly enlarge the MLB strike zone…probably at the top. Pitchers are throwing higher these days anyway, and having moved the mound back to disadvantage the pitcher we need to compensate them in some way.

Moving the top of the zone up to the bottom of the armpit – where, for the record, it was until 1987 – would accomplish the purpose.

But there is another, albeit more revolutionary way. Change the number of balls required for a walk from four to five.

There are disadvantages to this, the most obvious of which is tradition. Batters have gotten a walk after four wide ones since 1889. The other drawback is that this change would, to at least some degree, lengthen MLB games, which is the opposite of what the commissioner and most everybody else is trying to do.

So it may be best to focus on a larger strike zone.

Speaking of the strike zone

If we can agree on nothing else, could we at least agree to equip plate umpires with the same technology every other fan watching the game has … an instant, laser-activated view of whether the pitch is in or outside of the strike zone?

There is no reason why an MLB plate umpire could not be given a hand-held device providing him with an instant check on his visual instincts. Umpires might even appreciate it. After all, they’re not trying to randomly work batters or pitchers over; it just happens.

And it’s a big deal. Numerous studies have amply demonstrated that on a one ball, one strike count, the average hitter’s subsequent performance is impacted more than 150 percentage points – from about a  .170 batting average to about .330 – depending on whether the next call is Ball Two or Strike Two.

With stakes that high, umpires ought to be given the tools to get the calls right. Considering that pitchers routinely aim for the very edges of the zone – the area of the greyest ball-strike calls – the matter is even more delicate.

Such a change would not necessarily make the resulting game less boring. It would, however, more fairly reward skill, either in placing a pitch or in judging its placement and reacting accordingly.

And fairness is also desirable.