With Major League Baseball heading into the playoffs in this COVID-shortened season, whether it’s 60 games or the usual 162, there is one constant: MLB is a horrible television product.
Even if you love baseball, the games are mostly boring, although the drama admittedly picks up once the post-season unfolds. (Attending in-person like in the good old days — before fans were only represented by cardboard cutouts — is a completely different and fun experience). Baseball on TV used to be like a good friend that you interact with on a daily basis.
With all the non-action, now it’s pretty much unwatchable (at least prior to the 7th or 8th inning) as the pace of play remains tedious, and fans and former fans become increasingly apathetic. With nothing happening most of the time, it’s nearly impossible to watch a complete game.
Granted, with all the physical and mental strategy, players probably think the game goes fast. But they must consider the big picture.
MLB is about to implement a playoff bubble for the duration of the playoffs, but owners, players, and the MLB commissioner seem to be stuck in a figurative bubble, unwilling to admit that their TV presentation is tiresome and failing to attract the next generation of sports fans.
Many clever people have made lots of reasonable suggestions about how to speed up the game, so the following is just spitballin’, so to speak.
For one thing, however, the commissioner has stubbornly refused to implement a pitch clock, even though it seems to be a success in the minor leagues as well as MLB Spring Training in Florida and Arizona.
Players Must Stay at Their Work Station and Work
The pitchers need to throw the ball — preferably in the neighborhood of th strike zone — without contemplating the universe between each pitch, and the hitters must be ready hit the ball once they come to to the plate. No more stepping out of box between each pitch to adjust their gloves or helmet, spit, or other time-wasting habits. Umpires must be given an actual enforcement mechanism to keep things moving.
Another aspect that creates monotony in what was once America’s pastime (since supplanted by the NFL) is the players’ unwillingness to adjust to the defensive shift as no-contact strikeouts skyrocket.
Employees in other industries have to adjust to market conditions all the time. Why don’t pro athletes get it?
From Phil Mushnick of the New York Post:
With The Game in horrible, fundamental decay due to home-run-or-strikeout ‘strategies’ and managers who pull effective pitchers in search of arsonists, the simplistic cry has been renewed: Ban the shift!
In other words, MLB should continue to legislate changes to artificially treat badly eroded skills while sustaining or worsening the abandonment of smart, winning baseball.
MLB’s priorities are odd. To speed up the proceedings, it previously implemented a rule that made the intentional walk automatic. Unfortunately, that eliminated some of the wacky, unexpected things that can happen when a pitcher is issuing a walk — such as a wild pitch or a passed ball, or a batter going after an offering, etc.
Similarly, as part of the 2020 experimental rules changes, extra innings start with a man on second base. Commissioner Manfred is signaling that the rule might be made permanent (see below). Bad idea. Traditional extra-inning play, with all the strategy and weird configurations that go with it, is exciting. It ain’t broke.
Seven-inning double headers are kind of cool, because teams get to the end-point faster, but they are unlikely to be carried over. Maybe they could continue on a limited basis for rainouts or whatnot.
Requiring relievers to pitch to at least three batters seems like a good rule, however. How about further limiting mound visits to zero before the seventh inning?
TV Ratings Drowning: Playoffs Watered Down
The larger issue: Unlike say the NBA or the NHL, the baseball regular season is meaningful over the entire six-month period, and the playoff hunt often culminates down to the last weekend of the 162-game season. A footnote: Maybe 162 is too many, and there has been chatter about going back to 154.
Unfortunately, the MLB commissioner wants to devalue the day-to-day interest in the sport, too, in name of generating more TV cash (and gate revenue when authorities allow fans in the stadiums again), even though qualifying eight teams from each league this year was supposed to be one-time experiment.
From MLB Trade Rumors:
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he hopes to make the expanded postseason format permanent, adding that he believes the opposition to the universal DH is waning and stating that the extra-inning rule has been received better than he anticipated….Postseason expansion has indeed been floated speculatively in the past, although pushing all the way to 16 teams was an even more radical jump than ownership initially sought in return-to-play negotiations…Manfred cast doubt on whether seven-inning doubleheaders would remain in place beyond the 2020 season, characterizing the traditional nine-inning length of games as something that isn’t likely to be altered on a permanent basis.
Implementing the designated header may be okay, but if the DH is just going to strike out most of time going in vain for the long ball as Mushnick observed, it’s questionable how that will materially add to game action.
In a detailed article about the convoluted MLB playoff seating as the final week of the season unfolds, ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan asserted;
Expanded playoffs were always a Pandora’s box, and if the league and union can’t come to an agreement on what the format in 2021 looks like, it will simply become an item to bargain for in 2022. (Or, a cynic might say, whenever the impending lockout ends.) Either way, any rational person would agree that whether it’s a 60- or 162-game season, putting the No. 1 overall seed on the same plane as the lowest seed in the field is outrageous. That’s what these playoffs are…
This is untenable beyond the weakening of the playoff field, which is an entirely different problem and a reasonable one at that. One general manager recently said: “If I can have a mediocre team and still get in, why is my owner going to want to spend?”
Good question without a particularly reasonable answer. Which means that until MLB expands to 32 teams, fielding a 16-team playoff field is at best a bad look and at worst a problem. Twelve teams? OK. Fourteen? That’s pushing it, but at least it would offer opportunities to creatively reward the best teams and maintain the incentive to win.
Instead of throwing open the playoff floodgates, consider cutting down on interleague games, and reorganize the leagues so that teams within geographical proximity would play in the same division? For example, perhaps put the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, and Phillies in the same bracket. That would increase fan interest and also reduce team travel expenses.
TV ratings for all the major pro sports are down considerably (particularly the woke NBA). If you watch the feeds of games from other cities aired, for example, by the MLB network, you are well aware of the abysmal state of baseball broadcasting.
The play-by-play and color commentators, with a few exceptions, spew forth banal, antiquated platitudes that prompt a viewer to smash the remote mute button.
Either breathe some innovation into the gamecasts or eliminate these pabulum-regurgitating announcers altogether. Maybe the telecast should start in inning 7 because that’s often when things get real. Games should start earlier, too. Lots of Americans work flexible schedules (and hopefully more and more are back to work), so start night games at 6 p.m. local, or maybe earlier.
MLB just signed a $3.7 billion/seven-year TV deal with Turner Sports. Could Turner be that desperate for inventory?
Apathy Is Advancing
The above-referenced MLBTR article prompted a sizable number of comments. Here is just a sample:
It is simply unbelievable how tone-deaf Manfred is. He wants change for the sake of change, and the sake of the almighty dollar, and could care less what the players or the fans think. He’s reinventing the sport, but not in a positive way.
Because the playoffs is basically a crap shoot so why bother spending to be a top team in the regular season when you can just eek in with mediocrity and hope for a hot streak. Expanded playoffs will likely kill my interest in the sport.
The problem with expanded playoffs in baseball has to do with the nature of the game. The best team beats the worst team a much lower percentage of the time in baseball than in other sports. In the NFL or NBA, an eighth seed beating a one seed happens, but it happens rarely. It will happen a lot more often in baseball. The MLB playoffs are already a crapshoot. This will increase the crap part of the equation by including teams who haven’t really earned the right to compete for a championship. “October Madness” may sound great to the casual fan, but it will make it far less likely that the best team will be the WS champion. To me, that will make the sport worse, not better.
All of these gimmicky rule changes are terrible. The DH doesn’t make the National League more exciting, it’s monotonous. The automatic-runner-on-second doesn’t make extra innings more exciting, it makes victories feel cheap and scuffs up pitchers’ stats. The expanded playoffs might be worst of all because it’s quite conceivable we’ll have teams with losing records winning the World Series, and that’s just abominable. Get baseball back to normal as soon as it’s safe to get baseball back to normal. If you want to change the rules, how about an automated strike zone?
Added: Writing the context of billionaire hedge-funder Steve Cohen buying the New York Mets, Mushnick addressed the MLB big picture:
Simply put, how will Cohen’s ownership provide the stimulus or direction to avoid the tsunami that has made baseball a strikeout or home run, .200 batting average, empty-the-bullpens, all-night expensive enterprise?
How will Cohen’s administration remove the now time-tested insanity of managers trying to script games via inning-specific relievers, no matter how effective the previous pitcher and how long the game is stretched for no sensible reason?…
Baseball doesn’t merely need a makeover, it needs radical change, a throwback to when it was played smartly — to win — and was played at least as much to entertain TV audiences as to sustain TV revenue. How is Cohen’s ownership of the Mets — any team — going to perform such a better-very-late-than-never reversal?
