Good morning everyone, I am once again returning to Hem and Haw about something I care about. In last months episode, I told you all to be like Davy Crockett. [https://www.themotte.org/post/1635/why-you-should-shoot-black-powder] In today's installment, I am going to do what my friends call "Clocking in as the VP of Finance" for Major League Baseball. We say this because we all love to moan and complain about what we would do to change the game like we are on the board of directors, even though we do not have any power to do so. I have loved the game of baseball since I was a small boy. I still play now as an adult - albeit poorly - but as long as I can, I always will. I am hoping in the next few minutes I can mostly get you to agree with the following opinions:
The Mound should be moved back
Strikeouts do suck actually
A return of .300+ hitters would be a good thing for baseball
Baseball traditionally hates change. Since the very beginning, people have fought, bitched, moaned, complained, and damned every single change to the game. Candy Cummings invented the Curveball throwing Oyster Shells with his friends down at the docks; hitters demanded its ban. Billy Hamilton reading the rulebook one night realized the ball was always in play and the next day simply ran to second base while the pitcher stood on the mound; people laughed and told him to return to first. Black men were told they simply could not cut it for years and years, now they occupy Cooperstown just like those from all other walks of life. My point being every time the game has a change proposed to it that ends up becoming something we can't imagine the game without, we still end up fighting it for years.
Bill James is a very smart man, I do not think anyone can discredit him for that. He came up with a very visionary system in the mid 1970's called Sabermetrics that challenged traditional baseball thinking to its core. Basically the tenets of his idea are that all points of the game of baseball can be quantified and an optimal strategy can be made to get a team to win games. His argument comes down to outs, outs are what is valuable in a game and it does not really matter how they are made as long as they are held onto for dear life. For years this idea was ignored. Of course there are ways an out matters! People would say putting the ball in play is all that matters - swing and put it in play. If you played baseball as a kid, you probably remember being taught that Striking out was basically the worst thing you could do. Central to Bill James' idea is that this is simply not true. It took a while, but about 25 years after He started writing about this, Major League Baseball was forced to take notice after the Oakland A's put this idea into practice and made a winning ballclub. I do think that the logic of get on base any way you can makes sense and it has been proven that it can win ballgames, but it has also created a brand of baseball that is just flat out boring to watch.
With the addition of Sabermetrics to baseball Professional players are being taught now that strikeouts don't matter, Walks are very important, hitting the ball hard if you do swing is all that matters. This has lead to a rise in what are called "Three true outcome" hitters. If you liked baseball as a kid but now think it is rather boring it is probably because you dislike these without realizing it. The three true outcomes are Walk, Strikeout, and Homerun. In the 1970s it was very rare to see a player like this; Dave Kingman is an example: Huge power, bad average. They were the exception, but now they have become the rule. It is normal, if not totally expected, for a player to hit .240 with 15 home runs a season now with 150+ strikeouts. If you go over baseball stats you will find dozens of guys just like this. Personally, I think this should go the way of the Dodo. You can't make them unlearn an idea obviously though so how do you go about fixing this? This is where my argument for the mound moving back comes from.
Recently there have been other changes to the game. If you have not watched in a while you may be surprised by the speed of a game now; they are about 50 mins shorter than before that's to the addition of a pitch clock. I am a true believer of the pitch clock. Some say that it has ruined the game (see above to see what people used to say) but in reality it is a return to normalcy. Over the last 30 years or so, another revelation a lot of clubs had was that with no clock there was nothing stopping the hitter or pitcher from setting the pace. This lead to players doing all sorts of things between pitches - nut scratch, play with batting gloves, walk in a circle - really just brutal to watch as a fan. I am so glad this is dead and buried - good riddance!
OK so I have covered a little prehistory and now you are up to speed as to why we are where we are today. Let's talk about why I think moving the mound back is a good idea.
Pitching has gotten more powerful as the years have gone by but especially so in the last 15 years. Pitchers are bigger and stronger than before. In the early days of baseball they had almost the same exact problem we have today. Pitchers threw underhand out of a box 50 feet from the plate, but in 1884 due to increasing pressure overhand pitching as you know it today was made legal. What basically happened was overnight the Pitcher went from an irrelevant part of the game to the most important man on the Diamond. If you want to see an example of how dramatic of a change this was let's look at a player and see how his numbers changed. Charlie Sweeney in 1883 (last underhand year) had a 3.13 ERA with 48 Strikeouts in 140-odd innings pitched - honestly, not bad numbers. In 1884 Charlie Sweeney had a 1.70 ERA with 337 Strikeouts in a little under 500 Innings pitched. He also set a record 19 strikeouts in a game that stood for over 100 years until it was beaten by Roger Clemens. Pitchers were simply outmatching all hitters they faced and in 1893 to help deal with this the mound was moved back 10 feet 6 inches to where it is today to give hitters a better chance; just a little more time to see the ball.
So ok yeah sure I know you are saying "these guys also fought at the battle of Gettysburg for spring training how hard could they have really been throwing?" Well the short answer is: we really don't know. The long answer is, probably about what you would see today at your local Varsity Highschool baseball game; right around the Mid 80s. This was probably true up through about the 1950s. Pitchers that were truly great threw in the 90s, even 100s, way back in the 1920s. Walter Johnson was measured throwing about 95; so was Bob Feller, and we all know about Nolan Ryan. So since the early days pitching was pretty constant and for years it stayed that way. But since about 2005 speeds have creeped and now the average fastball is about 94MPH. I think this tied in with our previous discussion about three true outcome hitters has created a perfect storm.
I think it is time we move the mound back another 10 feet, with the speeds pitchers are touching now these days it is to the point I think hitters are simply outmatched. We have been trending this way for the better part of 70 years, there has not been a .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941 and I don't think its because hitters are simply worse than he was; I think it is just because our players are starting to outgrow the confines of their current field. so lets go over some pro's and con's of what moving the mound back would do:
Wouldn't this just kill pitchers' fastballs and make every game a hit-a-thon?
I think this will definitely take some zip out of peoples fastballs sure, but you also have to think a pitchers big hammer curve will also then have another 10 feet to break. Think of how much more breaking stuff will be effective! I think it will let the pros get an extra half second to see and swing at a ball helping hitters sure but also probably working in favor of "stuff guys" as well giving them more real estate to work with. I think the cream always rises to the top and the best pitchers will still be the best pitchers, same with the hitters. I think this will just make offense a more common occurrence. Plus think if Vlad Guerrero Jr can hit .323 with 30 home runs while seeing 100 mph from 60 feet imagine what he could do from 70.
So Pitchers will stop striking guys out all the time?
Ideally, yes this is what moving the mound back should do. A return to the offense of the 1920s-1960s: stolen bases, high averages, this was a time when baseball players were household names. In fact, I bet if you asked a random person on the street they could probably name you one from that 40 years faster than they could one guy today.
Would this lead to more injuries?
This was the argument made as well for keeping the clock out but there has not been an uptick and everyone is still playing just fine.
All in all I will always love this game but I think it might be time to really think about addressing this and maybe making a step forward by taking about 10 steps back, also to this point if you are a I miss steroids guy im telling you man you don't miss steroids you miss offense!
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Notes -
Because it's literally the most popular sport on the planet and has been for decades.
Look, we've tried smaller fields and more intense action... it's called "futsal," and it's great on its own merits, but it's just not as good as soccer. Soccer is damn close to a local maxima of entertainment.
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