BETTER BASEBALL

 

               Necessity, it’s said, is the mother of invention, and 2020 having been one motha of a baseball season it followed that it included a lot of inventions. Circumventing the virus took some doing, as did stuffing a regular-season race into a 60-game box. The game’s decades-long struggle to make itself faster and sleeker continued to hover, as did the trends toward more strikeouts and fewer base hits.  Attention had to be paid.

               Attend the MLB’s leaders did, and pretty well, too. The no-fans regime was the biggest change ever for the National Pastime, and while the vast stretches of empty seats were jarring they were ameliorated by the fan cutouts and piped-in crowd noises that, on TV at least, almost substituted for the real thing.  The game’s dugouts-and-sidelines covid protocols were widely ignored but the players surprised many (including me) by their admirable adherence to monastic rules outside the ballparks in no-bubble settings. This permitted the makeshift schedule to play out about as planned, with only two teams (the Miami Marlins and St Louis Cardinals) committing major breaches. Interestingly, both of them rallied to make the playoffs.

               There also were changes aplenty in the game on the field—more than in any season in memory for the change-averse sport.  MLB expanded the playoffs to 16 teams from  12; forced the designed-hitter rule on the National League; increased rosters to an initial 30 players (from 25 last season) and 28 for the playoffs; made double-header games seven-inning affairs; required relief pitchers to face at least three batters or stay until an inning’s end; and began extra innings with a “free” runner on second base.

None of those changes are sure to carry over to future seasons, but some might.  I heretofore have fancied myself a baseball “purist” but you know somethin’? I liked them all. Taking them one at a time, here are my takes:

EXPANDED PLAYOFFS— A good idea, and overdue, although it was spurred by the immediate need for more TV revenue to compensate for the lack of gate monies. This season’s 16 qualifiers in a 30-team mix was a bit much, so until MLB expands to 32 teams 14 would be a nice compromise, and I read it probably will happen. No more one-and-done wildcard rounds was good, too.

THE DH FOR THE NL—The designated hitter has been the rule in the American League since 1973, and while the AL-NL split on the matter has been an ever-present bone for baseball fans to chew, it has tasted like cardboard for a long time. The votes are in and they are nearly unanimous, the DH having been adopted in just about every level of organized baseball—the schools, colleges, amateurs, minor leagues and international play. The only two entities still holding out against it are the U.S. National League and Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League, one of two such circuits in that land.

The DH promotes offense, something that’s needed especially now, and prolongs careers.  Few things in baseball are sadder than a pitcher with a bat in his hands; some act like they don’t know which end to hold. Most can’t even bunt, for heaven’s sake. The NL came within a whit of adding it in 1980 when, in a confused and confusing action, the 12 league owners voted four for and five against, with three abstentions, to uphold the status quo. I once enjoyed the tactical differences the AL-NL split created, but they’re just tiresome now. It’s about time the NL joined the party.

INCREASED ROSTER SIZES— Rosters were scheduled to be upped to 26 players from 25 this season but the disruptions caused by the virus threat supersized that—to 30 at the start of the 60-game schedule and 28 for the playoffs. The original plan of 26 is supposed to be reinstated for 2021, but I think it falls a man short. With 27 players—one more pitcher and one position player—teams could spread around playing time in a way that makes sense over the game’s long, long season. The players’ union, which can act on all such changes, would go along happily, and the probable cost—one more minimum-wage player—shouldn’t be too large for the owners to swallow.

SEVEN-INNING GAMES FOR DOUBLEHEADERS—This was pretty much of a one-off change because two-for-the-price-of-one doubleheaders in the majors are relics of bygone eras, for 40 or so years and counting. This season was an exception because of the narrow scheduling window and the log jams created by the multiple positive-test cancellations of the Marlins and Cardinals. The odd doubleheader these days comes about because of the need to make up weather-caused cancellations, and if players and managers could vote they’d adopt the seven-inning rule. That’s already the way things are done in the minor leagues and colleges, where doubleheaders are more frequent.

A THREE-BATTER RULE FOR RELIEVERS—I’m for just about anything that moves games along, and nothing slows them like mid-inning pitching changes. This is a good rule, but the rub is that with the end-of-inning exception it rarely applies. More helpful would be to mandate that relievers be driven to the mound quickly by cart and limited to two or three warmup pitches instead of the present six. What have they been doing in the bullpen, anyway?

A MAN-ON-SECOND-BASE START TO EXTRA INNINGS—This is the most unbaseballlike of the 2020 rule changes but I liked it a lot, just as I did when it was used in last year’s Fall League. Before when games went into extras I’d say “Oh, nuts” or something similar. This season I found myself saying “Oh, goodie!”

Giving teams a “free” runner is a wrench, and scoring it put some Figure Filberts’ noses out of joint, but so what?  The freebie is scored as an error even though none is charged to the team or any player; if the run scores it’s unearned to the pitcher. The situation sets up an interesting tactical question for the first-up team: bunt the guy over or swing away? In keeping with the ethos of the times, most teams this season chose option two, but with a strong pitcher of its own on the mound option one could be preferrable.  

A complaint about the rule is that it puts a sort of clock on the game-without-a-clock, but that ain’t necessarily so. If teams match each other run for run games could run indefinitely. They don’t figure to for long, though, which suits me fine.