Rob Manfred is open to taking the approach of other sports and making more aggressive changes to the game:
”Fans like home runs, it seems, and fans like strikeouts, it seems, and we have a lot of both,” players’ association head Tony Clark said.
Manfred agreed, but only if the strikeouts are by a dominant pitcher, such as a Clayton Kershaw.
”I think where it gets troubling from a fan perspective is tons and tons of strikeouts, no action, lots of pitching changes,” Manfred said.
The average ratio of relief pitchers to starters per game has climbed from 2.01 in 1990 to 3.15 last season. It stands at 3.10 this year at the All-Star break but rises each season after active rosters expand from 25 to 40 on Sept. 1.
”Other sports have been more aggressive about managing what’s going on on the field in terms of what their game looks like than we have been, and I’m certainly open to the idea that we should take a more aggressive posture,” Manfred said.
I remember, at the first MIT-Sloan Analytics Conference, Bill James brought up the idea of adjusting the game like football does (changing position of hash marks, rules for hitting the quarter back, position of the goal posts). At times, James even suggested that teams be allowed to set their own home base line length.
One of the reasons the steroid era was so poorly received was that some people felt they could no longer compare eras. Some of James’s ideas would make that even more impossible
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2t1VDf2
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