It’s been fun watching online the virtual gnashing of teeth from baseball old-timers to the new rules in baseball.
Baseball implemented a slew of new rules this winter, but the two that are getting the most attention are the pitch clock and the limited defensive shifting.
What the old-timers don’t seem to get is baseball is having to do this. Because the sport is bleeding younger fans. Baseball’s television ratings have been in decline for years. Why? Games are too long. The average game became well over three hours long the past few year. Heck, the average Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees game averaged close to four hours long the past 20 years with every game treated like a playoff game.
The new rules have shortened the games by roughly 30 minutes.
I don’t have that strong of an opinion about the pitch/batter clock. I see why MLB did it. People will get used to it eventually.
The rule I feel more strongly about is the limits to the shift. This is a profound change in the rules that I think could have a big impact on the game.
It reminds me of when the National Hockey League had a work stoppage in 2004. It lasted an entire year and wiped out the entire season. There were a lot of issues behind that work stoppage, but one of the biggest issues was changing the rules of the game.
Hockey in the 1990s had become a slog. Virtually every team in the NHL began using a Swedish defense known as the neutral zone trap. The defense worked so well it choked all the life out of the game. The only people who loved it were coaches.
The neutral zone trap took advantage of the three lines in the middle of the ice (two blue lines and the red line) to clog up teams’ attempts to enter the offensive zone. Teams couldn’t keep possession of the puck into the offensive zone through that defense. Hence, they got off few shots and scoring went waaaay down. The Buffalo Sabres once made the Stanley Cup Finals with a team that averaged 2.5 goals a game (207 goals in a season).
The popularity of the league was declining; no one was watching the Stanley Cup Finals. The NHL had to blow it up.
After a year-long work stoppage, the NHL came back with a bunch of new rules. No more three lines in the middle of the ice (Yeah, there’s still a red line there. Ignore it, it’s in your imagination. It takes practice and a lot of Zen), which completely neutered the awful neutral zone trap. Take that, Swedes.
Today? Your leading scorer in the NHL, Conner McDavid, has 62 goals. Seventeen teams, including the Seattle Kraken, have more than 250 goals.
There’s also hardly any fighting anymore. Why? With the new rules, teams emphasize speed and skill. The rule changes took some time, but they worked. Hockey is more exciting than it’s ever been.
The damned shift
Which brings me to the damned shift. Joe Madden with the Tampa Bay Rays started using extreme shifts in the early 2000s, especially against left-handers, putting the shortstop between second base and first base. It worked. It worked so well, everyone started doing it.
And it worked so well, it wrecked the game. Lineups were full of guys hitting .200 to .220.
Logic would dictate that the way to beat the shift is simply bunt the other way until teams knocked it off.
But, sabremetrics isn’t logical and told guys, “No, our numbers say bunting is evil! Try to hit a home run, instead.”
“But, wouldn’t it be more logical to bunt the other … ?”
“Nein! Sabremetrics has spoken! Try to hit a home run! Dumbkopf!”
So, half the guys in the league turned into .210 home run hitters … because metrics. It’s not how the game was designed 150 years ago.
The dogmaticism over sabremetrics had made the game boring with too many strikeouts and too much reliance on home runs as the only way to score. Last year, MLB had its lowest batting average — .243 — since 1969.
Already, it appears batting averages are coming back up. Leaguewide, up to .249 so far, and averages always heat up in summer. Take that, Joe Madden.
We tend to fear change. I’m a big believer that change for the sake of change is not, by definition, a good thing. Other times, like with hockey and baseball, it had to happen.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or plabossiere@peninsuladailynews.com.
