Fixing the Game

This passage struck me in this Joel Sherman article about the reaction of other GMs to the Red Sox illegal use of electronics. The first:

Let’s just concentrate on the technology because that is the larger issue here. Teams have been trying to steal signs since the advent of, well, teams. What MLB and its clubs must decide is how to police technological advancements that are moving quicker than ever.

Because I ran this statement by three executives Wednesday whose intelligence I value, and they all agreed with it: “The game is smarter than ever and too often worse for it.”

Sherman then goes on to give the examples of more pitching changes to prevent batters from seeing pitchers multiple times in a game, and disappearance of the mid-range shot from the NBA.

What this leads to is a lack of arguments through strategy. Gene Mauch liked to bunt early. Earl Weaver liked to get runners on and wait for the three-run homer. The two were arguing strategy the way they conducted a game, and fans would argue strategy based on those moves. Different managers tried different things, and some worked and some didn’t, and the gave evolved. At the time, there weren’t many people who could say for sure if Mauch was right or Weaver was right.

Now everyone knows all the run values of everything from a first pitch strike to a line drive two inches to the right of the shortstop. Everyone in the game knows the numbers, so there are no more strategy arguments. Teams feel they need to get an edge some other way, and the Red Sox chose electronics.

It seems to me there needs to be a way to introduce uncertainty into the game. Sure, there are still the bad bounces, and batters hitting a great pitch out of the park, so some fielder being out of position at just the right time. I’m thinking of adding a random number generator to the game for situations we want to reduce.

For example, we could devalue the ball hit out of the park. Rule changes in the early 1930s devalued the home run, as balls that bounced into the stands instead of clearing the fence would now be doubles. When home runs were rare, the bounce HR was fine. As clearing the fence became easier, those bounces were obviously not as good a hit.

So have a random number generator determine the value of the ball over the fence. The runners on base would advance that many bases. It might be a home run, but it might be a single. Even better, the weights of the four hits could be set before the game randomly, so one game there might be a 50% chance of a triple, in another a 75% chance of a double. If the value of hitting the ball out of the park isn’t all that clear, and if batters can only advance one base on a fence clearing single, it might be better to keep the ball on the field of play.

You could do the same with very fast pitches. If pitchers throw 96 MPH or higher and the batter takes the pitch for a strike, it’s treated as a foul ball. So no called third strikes on very fast pitches! Make the pitcher fool the batter into swinging, or at least fool him the strike zone with a pitch that has a chance of being put in play.

Increasing power by batters and pitchers resulting in more strikeouts, walks, and home runs appears to be the big problem right now. Devalue the power of the batter, devalue the power of the pitcher, and maybe the game will have a bit more action.

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