Major League Baseball announced that they are taking steps to "deaden" the baseball in an effort to cut down the record breaking home run rates around the league. While pitchers across the league complained about the ball feeling "different", MLB continued to state that nothing had changed with the ball.
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| AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill |
Before I dig into why I think "deadening" the ball doesn't make much sense, let's take stroll down memory lane. During the 2014 season, many people were complaining about offense being down and hitting being at historical lows around the league. Pitching was dominating and batters seemingly had no answer at the plate. Not only were hitters around the league slumping, but fans were growing more and more frustrated with the product on the field. At the time, analysts blamed strikeout totals (which is interesting due to baseball folks now blaming launch angle and a focus on analytics, but we can save that for another discussion.) A "Grantland" article from 2014 did a bit of a deep dive into the offensive woes of that season and while I don't want to rehash the entire article, it's interesting to see their arguments and they're mostly the same things people blame nowadays (most notably: shifts and strikeouts).
Let's face it, modern day baseball has evolved into a data and scientific driven sport. The most efficient way to score is by hitting home runs (and taking walks). Batters can now see their swing and launch data in real-time and have become much better at not only fixing their swings, but also improving their approach at the plate. Just a few seasons ago, fans and analysts were clamoring for more offense, but now that we have a more offensive driven league, they suddenly want to go back to having pitchers dominate? Isn't that counterintuitive? We can say the previous ball was "juiced", but MLB continued to state that wasn't the case. While I personally think the balls were a bit juiced, it doesn't change the fact that the rise in offense was brought about by a change in player training and the new emphasis on embracing technology (Edgertronic cameras literally changed everything about player development.) Training, development, and technology organically drove the offensive advances in the sport.
It's no shock that MLB feels the need to cut down on the amount of home runs. If you watch a baseball broadcast, you're likely to hear out-of-touch commentators lambasting "launch angle" and "defensive shifts" etc. You may even hear a few commentators pushing for more bunts and wondering why teams aren't playing "A-B-C baseball."
To me, deadening the baseball is just another attempt by MLB to artificially bring change to the sport. Much like the Wild Card "one-game playoff", which was brought about by the organic energy of Game 162 back in 2011, we are seeing a push towards a man-made change that'll accomplish exactly what the "old-school" folks want to see and not what new age fans want to see. MLB has already eliminated bullpen specialists and imposed a three batter rule for relief pitchers, which I feel takes late game strategy away to improve pace-of-play by a whopping fifty seconds! In addition to that, during the time before folks claimed the ball was "juiced", pitching stats were a bit inflated, but the great hitters still put up their numbers, albeit with a few less home runs. Now, with the offense being boosted a bit, the best pitchers in baseball (DeGrom, Kershaw, Cole, etc.) have all continued to dominate. Which brings me to ask, why do we need to change? If a few scrub hitters slap a few more dingers, is it any different than some scrub pitchers having career seasons due to a dead ball? I'm sure things will once again level out, but do we seriously need to change the ball to cut down on home runs? Who asked for this?
MLB continues to fall flat in appealing to new, and younger, audiences. Will a change back to more bunts and fewer home runs really bring in new fans? Instead of deadening the ball, why not fix the archaic blackout policies? Why not work on bringing down ticket prices? Why not stop teams from moving from the city to the suburbs (looking at you, Atlanta...)? Why not punish owners who tank the franchise for a tax write off? There's plenty of ways to improve the sport, but "deadening" the baseball will only set the sport back.
