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.