Former Pirates manager Jim Leyland believes the current state of baseball is “chaotic” but everything will settle down eventually.
“It’s just different baseball, and it’s not the type of baseball you and I are used to or the type that I prefer with all the strikeouts and everything, I think it’s ridiculous but at the same time these are the best players in the world and I enjoy watching them,” Leyland took Ron Cook on The Fan Friday.
The legendary manager believes that pitchers using substances, like Spider tack, to gain an advantage are cheating and that they would all just be allowed to use pine tar.
He says it doesn’t increase spin rate but gives the pitcher better control of the ball.
While Leyland believes the game needs “cleaned up a little bit,” the best way to do that is by leaving it alone.
“Just let the game take care of itself, it’s taken care of itself for a longtime and I don’t think we need to be making all these super changes that they’re making,” said Leyland.
Leyland adds that the rule change of having umpires inspect pitchers for illegal substances is something that should’ve been done at the beginning of this season, or added before the beginning of the 2022 season.
Brining it in mid-way through a season only adds the chaos.
And while it may be some pitchers that are cheating, he believes it’s batters who are more responsible for all the strikeouts and low averages.
“The hitters just don’t control the strike zone anymore,” said Leyland. “Most every strikeout . . . the guy either swung at one bad pitch, in a lot of cases, two, they’re not picking up the ball, they’re not recognizing balls and strikes, they’re swinging at bad pitches all the time.”
Another problem with hitters is everyone, even littler guys are trying to swing for the fences every pitch.
“You got these little guys that are going to hit four or five home runs a year, swinging out of their fannies, trying to lift the ball, it’s just no good.”
With all these walks, strikeouts and the biggest culprit the length of some games, Leyland believes there is the potential the game is in trouble.
“You know we’ve lost our young audience a little bit and that’s the audience we got to get back, because let’s face it, the young people want action, they won’t want to sit there,” said Leyland.
He adds that there is a fine line when it comes to speeding up the game and that adding too many rules to try to control that, could lead to even more problems.
While he is a baseball rationalist, Leyland does like some of the changes, including starting the 10th inning with a runner on second and 7 inning double headers.