No Action?

I suspect anyone who watched the Dodgers pound the Reds 18-9 Monday afternoon didn’t come away from the game thinking the game lacked for action. The Dodgers collected 21 hits, 1/3 of them for home runs. It’s the fourth time this season a team hit seven home runs in a game. Adrian Gonzalez led the way with three. The Reds collected 14 hits, and while there were no home runs, half of their hits went for extra bases.

Paul Swydan warns against Rob Manfred’s ideas of changing the rules:

The bottom line is this: no rule change that MLB makes is going to lower the time of game or pace of game to a significant enough degree that the game is ever fast paced enough to compete with today’s other product offerings. Products/services like Twitch and Snapchat, iPods and iPads, HBO Go and Netflix will remain at our fingertips, and using them will require less time and focus than a baseball game. The way to get more people to watch and pay attention to baseball is in its marketing. As Adler mentioned in her piece, most casual fans probably don’t even take notice of defensive shifts or times between pitches. These are “inside baseball” issues. The people MLB needs to be capturing are those outside of baseball.

We hear too much about what’s wrong with baseball. We need to hear more about what’s awesome about baseball. Mike Trout is possibly the best baseball player in the last 50, 60, 70 years. Market him! Giancarlo Stanton has some of the most ridiculous power the game has ever seen. Market him! Make sure these guys are on every TV screen in America every night of the week.

Today’s game went four hours. As noted before, it’s tough to get more action and shorter games.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2bvl3Fp