It is the sad state of current commentary that so much time and ink and bandwidth is dedicated to what is wrong with baseball today.
Baseball has always had an overabundance of reverence for its history, which can often be a good thing, reminding us of the notable names, moments and performances of the past. But that nostalgia leads many to inherently judge the current state of the game as lacking when compared to the days they most cherish.
And in this particular moment in history, those who remain devout to the way the game was played in the past are finding the increasingly unorthodox approach harder to square with those memories that they value.
If, on one hand, baseball’s pace of play has remained stubbornly slow, the pace of change in the game has moved at a confounding rate.
Just a couple of seasons ago, the number of defensive shifts grew exponentially. It began as a few teams adding more extreme shifts more often, and soon, every team was employing them. Now, every team is shifting, to the point where every batter has some sort of defensive alignment applied against them. Some teams shift within at bats, depending on the count. Players have cheat sheets in their back pockets or tucked into their caps. The concept of playing "straight up" seems almost quaint.
Hitters have broadly changed their approach to seek greater loft, launch angle and exit velocity in their swings, in part because the defence is effective and turning doinks and dribblers into outs, but also because those factors are measurable beyond the eye to see them or the ear to hear the sound of the ball of the bat.
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Meanwhile, billions and billions of revolutions of the baseball leaving pitchers’ fingers are being quantified, and their approach is being adjusted to account for those results. Concepts like "you pitch off your fastball" are being abandoned for some pitchers, who come to understand that their breaking pitches are much more effective. The result is a more efficient approach to the pitcher-batter showdown, or more plainly, more strikeouts.
The statistical revolution has changed the game at such a quickening pace in recent years because there is not only an abundance of data, but the ability to capture and quantify what it means. The result is a game which is aesthetically different, and for those who remember a different game, with skinny players in skinnier pants and stirrups worn high and taut, and lots of "balls in play," which we are supposed to imagine led to more offence (it didn’t) and more excitement (which is arguable.)
What is argued – especially by former ballplayers, though the ink-stained columnists are not immune — is that the game is worse off, and would be better if things would only revert to the way they were in 1991 (or some other sufficiently idealized date, probably when John Smoltz and the Braves were running roughshod through teams in the regular season.)
But in baseball, as in most things in life, you simply can’t go back to the way things were. Once progress is made, and change is identified, there are few ways to revert backward. You can attempt to legislate against it, but you’ll only push teams to the edge of the new rules, or to find a way around them.
And that’s because this isn’t a poorer or sloppy version of the game. This is what baseball looks like when it is optimized. This is baseball being played in a strategic and organized manner, not depending on old yarns and superstition to guide teams through.
And really, those balls in play that everyone misses so dearly? They were perfunctory pop flies or slow rollers to the second baseman. They weren’t inherently more exciting than a strikeout.
The opener strategy is the latest innovation that runs counter to the traditions of the game. But if you think about it, it is playing out a version of a speculative strategy that many fans would have considered over beers for years: Why not start the game with a closer or high-leverage reliever?
The fact that this new strategy lays waste to some of the conventions of the way that we think about players’ roles, or stats like "games started" or "quality starts" or especially "pitcher wins" isn’t a drawback of the new approach. There are whole new ways of thinking, and they should be relished.
The reason for the ubiquity of these new approaches is that they work. Teams have an abundance of data, and the willingness to apply it. It says something about where we are in baseball today that when Mets manager Mickey Callaway boasted of his resistance to 85 per cent of the statistical analysis that is fed to him, his pretension was met with very little support, and mostly with ridicule.
Certainly, there is fun in the unpredictability of baseball, and the imperfections that lead to plays not made and errors and runs. That chaos can be entertaining, and in spite of the declines of balls in play, it’s still a part of the game.
But we should not look backwards as fans to pine for something from our memories as a purer form of the game. Baseball is progressing, and there are more changes to come. The players are bigger, faster, stronger and — maybe most importantly — smarter.
To win in today’s game requires more than an adherence to traditions and rules. Baseball, for all it’s sepia-toned wistfulness for the past, is changing, and rather than spending untold energy looking backwards and resisting, we should be embracing this change.
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