quote:

Originally posted by KMitch200:
Nope, nope and more nope.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game. It should ALWAYS be played on the same field. Moving the mound and increasing the base size is just dumb.

To speed up the game, make the frigging replay calls *much* faster than now. If they can't tell in 20-25 seconds what happened in the age of high-def before that, the play stands as called. Mound visits are part of the game strategy, limit the time but don't eliminate it.
DH is what you get when a manager doesn't know how to manage.

Robo-ump at the plate...I'm on the fence with that - I think there's an argument for both sides. There should be more scrutiny on which umps totally SUCK at calling balls/strikes and they should be let go or never used behind the plate.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game.

The infield yes, the outfield varies from city to city.

A home run hit should be the same everywhere.

Want to speed the game? Why do batters need to check their batting gloves, belt, shin protector, elbow protector after every pitch?

quote:

Originally posted by Floyd D. Barber:

quote:

Originally posted by KMitch200:
Nope, nope and more nope.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game. It should ALWAYS be played on the same field. Moving the mound and increasing the base size is just dumb.

To speed up the game, make the frigging replay calls *much* faster than now. If they can't tell in 20-25 seconds what happened in the age of high-def before that, the play stands as called. Mound visits are part of the game strategy, limit the time but don't eliminate it.
DH is what you get when a manager doesn't know how to manage.

Robo-ump at the plate...I'm on the fence with that - I think there's an argument for both sides. There should be more scrutiny on which umps totally SUCK at calling balls/strikes and they should be let go or never used behind the plate.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game.

The infield yes, the outfield varies from city to city.

A home run hit should be the same everywhere.

How would you control for weather, elevation? I like the idiosyncrasies of different ball parks.

quote:

How would you control for weather, elevation? I like the idiosyncrasies of different ball parks.

I love the variety of the different parks and fields. I love that the turf is a bit different and that weather totally plays a role. I love that CC Sabathia was choking on flies a few years ago, and that rain and sun can play a part in the game.

(I feel bad for CC, but I love that it was a part of the game that night. What a pain, but what a fun bit of variety.)

quote:

Originally posted by striker1:

quote:

Originally posted by Floyd D. Barber:

quote:

Originally posted by KMitch200:
Nope, nope and more nope.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game. It should ALWAYS be played on the same field. Moving the mound and increasing the base size is just dumb.

To speed up the game, make the frigging replay calls *much* faster than now. If they can't tell in 20-25 seconds what happened in the age of high-def before that, the play stands as called. Mound visits are part of the game strategy, limit the time but don't eliminate it.
DH is what you get when a manager doesn't know how to manage.

Robo-ump at the plate...I'm on the fence with that - I think there's an argument for both sides. There should be more scrutiny on which umps totally SUCK at calling balls/strikes and they should be let go or never used behind the plate.

Baseball has been played on the same field since the beginning of the game.

The infield yes, the outfield varies from city to city.

A home run hit should be the same everywhere.

How would you control for weather, elevation? I like the idiosyncrasies of different ball parks.

Actually, baseball hasn't always been played on the same field. Lowering the mound in 1968 comes to mind. Pitchers had gotten too dominant, so they changed the field to restore competitive balance. Same concepts in play here, at least with moving the mound. The average fastball speed in the majors is increasing every year, so to give the batters the same reaction time as in the past you have to move the mound back. That's the argument being made. (Note: I disagree with the changes, because bat speed has also increased over time.)

As far as controlling for elevation, MLB actually attempts this already at the two highest elevation stadiums in Denver and Phoenix. Denver installed a humidor for ball storage in 2002 and Phoenix added one last year. A soggier baseball has a lower coefficient of restitution and, thus, doesn't fly as far.

Oh, and outlawing the shift is stupid. Teach kids to slap the ball the opposite way or lay down a bunt and see how long the shift lasts. It only works because everyone is taught to chase home runs from little league on up. Tony Gwynn or Wade Boggs would have hit .450 against the shift. Bring back basic hitting skills rather than changing the rules.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
Speed the game up, 15seconds or less to pitch from time pitcher gets ball back. No more than 1 mound visit per game without pitching change. If a batter steps out of the box, its a strike. A walk gets 2 bases. But for goodness sakes, make the game faster!

No, absolutely not. There's a ton of strategy that goes into controlling the speed of the game. Pitchers like to pitch with a certain cadence, so batters step out of the box or take their time to change the pace of the game to unsettle the pitcher. Pitchers will wait out batters who like to get in and hit quickly. Pitchers who get out of synch can many times slow down and get back in the groove.

As I've noted many, many times, if potential fans don't have the attention span necessary to sit through an entire baseball game, let them go watch TV instead.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Except the shift. Hate the shift.

The shift could be rendered utterly worthless if managers would have their batters lay bunts down the third base line every time the opposing team shifts. Simple rule of thumb...games are won by getting runners on base.

If you have ever watched Scherzer quick pitch a batter you know this to be true. Man I love this game and I get that four hour games eat into network broadcast money. reduce the number of mound visits, how many games there are etc. there was an interview with Joe West and he had some neat ideas, one of which was removing the DH rule, another was to take away the walk up music. he referenced a study that showed that Umpires are correct 99.5% of the time so no to robo umps.

In the documentary "fastball" they talk about the perfect balance of the pitcher and the plate. Moving the pitcher back would only favor the batter. I believe this would upset the game to create more offense. I hate it. MLB please dont be like the NFL, please dont. . . .

quote:

Originally posted by PeteF:
Want to speed the game? Why do batters need to check their batting gloves, belt, shin protector, elbow protector after every pitch?

Logos, brah. Gotta be sure those are visible to the camera. Just be glad they can't take their Subway sammich out for a cameo moment....

quote:

Originally posted by PeteF:
Want to speed the game? Why do batters need to check their batting gloves, belt, shin protector, elbow protector after every pitch?

Read my post earlier in the thread about controlling the pace of the pitcher.

Some of the changes are designed to add more offense and scoring to the game to make it more interesting to the fans. Some of the others are to shorten the game time. Don't they realize that a 10-8 game is going to take a lot longer than a 2-1 game?

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by PeteF:
Want to speed the game? Why do batters need to check their batting gloves, belt, shin protector, elbow protector after every pitch?

Read my post earlier in the thread about controlling the pace of the pitcher.

A pitch clock on the pitcher and keeping the batter in the box puts both players on equal footing for rule changes. The game is too slow. The average length of the game in 1920 was 1:47, now is over 3 hours. The occasional 17 inning dual between teams is actually interesting to me - those are always competitive games. But the constant waiting for the next pitch to be thrown is mind numbingly boring.

I would argue to increase the pace of football as well. 2 hours for a televised event seems good to me, I've got a lot of other stuff that I need to do!

quote:

Originally posted by Sacramento Johnson:
No, No and more NO!
Stop meddling with it! Leave it alone! You want a faster higher scoring game, go watch basketball!
Part of what has made Baseball unique and important as a sport in the US is the overall consistency of it over the years. (Hmmm, doesn't James Earl Jones say something along these line in "Field of Dreams"?)

Eggactly!

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
The game is too slow. The average length of the game in 1920 was 1:47, now is over 3 hours.

This is the best response in the entire thread to the “purists” who insist on “no changes!!!”.

The game played today is completely different from what it was when it was at it’s heyday. Let’s figure out a way of getting back to that.

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
The game is too slow. The average length of the game in 1920 was 1:47, now is over 3 hours.

This is the best response in the entire thread to the “purists” who insist on “no changes!!!”.

The game played today is completely different from what it was when it was at it’s heyday. Let’s figure out a way of getting back to that.

From the earliest days until about the mid-fifties, you’d be hard pressed to find an average game longer than two hours. It then jumped to roughly 2-1/2 hours through the early eighties, when it again changed to closer to three hours. I think the biggest time-waster is the individual batter’s walk-on, plate prep, and other batter’s box antics.

Grant Brisbee (SB Nation) studied this and here is the result:

“Going into the project, Brisbee figured that commercials -- primarily between-inning time -- would account for the longer game time. As it turned out, he did find an increase, but it wasn’t dramatic.

Instead, the culprit was the time between pitches, Brisbee found. He zeroed in on what he called "inaction pitches" -- balls, called strikes, or missed swinging strikes that didn’t result in the end of an at-bat or the advancement of a runner.

Brisbee found that 146 inaction pitches were thrown in the 1984 game, with 144 such pitches in the 2014 game -- an almost identical amount.

What wasn’t identical was the time those inaction pitches took up. In the 1984 game, inaction pitches accounted for 32 minutes and 47 seconds. In the 2014 game, they accounted for 57 minutes and 41 seconds. That’s nearly an 80 percent increase.

"Pitchers don’t get rid of the ball like they used to," he wrote. "Hitters aren’t expecting them to get rid of the ball like they used to. It adds a couple minutes to every half-inning, which adds close to a half-hour."

(Excerpted from this article)