MLB finds itself very much in a period of transition—a process accelerated by last year’s COVID pandemic—enacting a series of rule changes to account for the game’s evolution. America’s past time isn’t quite on life support, but as declining attendance figures and television ratings would suggest, baseball is in crisis, struggling to find its identity in a cluttered media landscape with more devices and viewing options at our fingertips than ever before (it probably doesn’t help any that our collective attention spans have never been shorter).
MLB has taken certain liberties to make the game more watchable in recent years—moving to seven-inning doubleheaders, limiting mound visits, the use of “deadened” balls, requiring a three-batter minimum for relief pitchers, beginning extra innings with a “ghost” runner on second base—but clearly the league still has significant ground to make up on that front. Between the emergence of infield shifts, launch angle, the advent of “openers,” pitchers throwing harder than ever (the Atlantic League has experimented with moving back the pitcher’s mound to combat this) and teams embracing baseball’s three-true outcomes aesthetic, the sport’s on-field product has never been worse. That might seem like hyperbole, until you look at these worrying numbers presented by Cubs announcer Jon “Boog” Sciambi.
It’s easy to see why baseball’s contact rate has dropped so dramatically—it seems half the league can hit 100 mph on the radar gun these days—but if MLB wants to appeal to a younger audience, having players whiff on over 27 percent of their cuts isn’t a great selling point. Neither is hitting .232 as a league, which would be the lowest average on record. It’s hard to fathom the Yankees, a perennial juggernaut with a payroll hovering around $200 million, slashing an anemic .203/.302/.348 as a team, but with home runs and strikeouts taking over the game, this is the fate baseball has arrived at.
In speaking on the current state of baseball, former Red Sox and Cubs exec Theo Epstein acknowledged that home runs have lost their novelty while doubles, steals and triples—the three most exciting plays in his estimation—have become endangered species in today’s feast-or-famine MLB. Baseball’s streaming numbers are reportedly on the rise and the Dodgers’ simmering rivalry with division-rival San Diego is quickly moving up the latter of must-watch television. But if baseball wants to pull even with football and basketball in America’s sports hierarchy, hitting .232 won’t get them there.
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