Quote:
Originally Posted by RainMaker
I also think a lot of the complaints about baseball and rule changes is due to the fact that modern athletes sort of broke the sport. It was not designed to have a stable of guys on a team that could hit 98 with spin and throw crazy sliders. Or have freak athletes throughout the diamond playing defense. Or have most of the roster capable of blasting a 420 foot homer whenever someone leaves a pitch up in the zone.
There's some rules I find silly like the ghost runner and shift rule. But I also think there has to be changes to a sport when players get so good that it turns it into something it's not. The reason the game isn't the same as it was in the 80's is because players are so much better that it's practically a different sport.
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All of this has more bearing on the game than anything to do with the pitch clock for me. I want to see the great athletes do the great things. Give me all the great athletes doing great things on the field and I will hang around. I will make the time to watch them do so no matter how many times they readjust their batting gloves. I recently caught Greg Maddux's 1997 game against the Cubs in the first game of a doubleheader It was not memorable to me because it only took two hours and seven minutes. It was memorable to me because he threw 75+ pitches and 60+ of them were strikes. I would watch three hours of a Maddux masterpiece
Again, I am not against the pitch clock. If that is the change that is needed to make it a better watch from everyone else, that's great. For me, none of that matters if all I am seeing during those two hours and forty two minutes are strikeouts, walks and home runs with the occasional single to the opposite field. The thing that brought me excitement watching baseball was aggressiveness on the base paths. Even with the larger bases, has it suddenly become rewarding enough to have more base stealing attempts the data showed it was not worth the risk just a couple of years ago. Beyond that, are we still only going to bringing hitters whose swing have the proper launch angle to hit 420 foot home runs? Is it still going to be sacrilege to have say a Tim Wakefield chucking knuckle balls to the plate every fifth day as opposed to the guy with 98+ and the crazy sliders. In other words, if the modern athlete has broken the sport, where are the changes that actually fix the sport outside of stopping them from fixing their gloves for thirty seconds in between each at bat.
I am not sure where we came up with the 162 four hour games. As best as I can tell the highest average game length time was 3.11 hours in 2021. I have no issue watching 3.11 hours of baseball as long as it is quality baseball (both offensively and defensively) in the same way I don't have a problem watch 3.11 hours of quality football.