MLB: Five changes to save baseball from being boring

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.