BUYING A TITLE

 

               I was born and raised in Chicago, which the great Bob Verdi (with an assist from Carl Sandburg) called “the city of broad shoulders and narrow trophy cabinets,” so I’m acquainted with sports scarcity. That’s one reason I fit in nicely with the area around Phoenix, Arizona, my home for the last 25 years.

               Phoenix has representatives in all four of the major American team sports, but has little to show for itself in the prize department. The basketball Suns, football Cardinals, baseball Diamondbacks and hockey Coyotes have put in a total of 139 seasons in what we call the Valley of the Sun but have produced exactly one championship, that of the 2001 D’backs. If that ain’t a record for futility, it has to be close.

               During the last few weeks, though, folks hereabouts have been downright giddy over the prospects of the Suns. That stems not so much over the team’s won-lost record (37-32 as of yesterday, fourth best in the NBA West) as its outlook after the addition of Kevin Durant, one of the hoops sport’s certified superstars. The costs of the move were great (details below), but the upside is considerable. The local consensus is that the Suns have bought themselves an NBA crown.

               If they succeed they will join the crowd—that’s the way it’s aways been done and, probably, always will be.  The teams with the biggest payrolls don’t necessarily rule their leagues, but the teams with the smallest never do. The rule is that if you want to get into the post you’d better ante.

               Indeed, that’s how Phoenix got its only title. The D’backs entered Major League Baseball in 1998 in typical expansion-team fashion, with a low-payroll roster of rejects and rookies and a won-lost record to match—65-97 and last place in the National League West. The team packed ‘em in that first season, but solely on the basis of novelty. Its managing owner, Jerry Colangelo, also had owned the Suns and knew that Phoenicians were an easily distracted lot that wouldn’t long back a loser, so he almost tripled the team’s $29 million first-year payroll over the next couple of years in search of some instant success and history.

 Mostly, he paid up big for two proven pitchers—future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, who’d be in the Hall if he’d kept his mouth shut. The result was the 2001 World Series victory in only the team’s fourth season, the quickest that’s been done. Subsequent D’backs’ owners reverted to bottom-third payroll status, with predictable on-field and gate results.

Baseball is the sport with the highest correlation between spending and winning. That’s because it’s the only one without a salary cap. The game’s money gap between top and bottom is huge—an eight-times difference going into this season between the No. 1 New York Mets (at $336 million) and the No. 30 Oakland A’s ($42 m). That discrepancy dates from the game’s distant days, when the New York Yankees could pay Babe Ruth $80,000 a year (in 1930) when $10,000 was a good annual big-league paycheck.

 Low-payroll baseball teams can make title runs with canny management that builds rosters that feature young and relatively low-paid players, but only one (the 2015 Kansas City Royals, with a No. 17-ranked payroll) has won the biggest prize of late. In the NFL and NBA, the difference between the biggest and smallest spenders is about 2x, and a team like the Kansas City Chiefs can realize championship dreams at No. 24 on the salary list, but it won’t stay there long as its ring-wearers look to get paid. In this season’s NBA, the top half-dozen title contenders (the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia Warriors and Suns) all rank among the league’s top 10 salarywise.

 Basketball is a five-players-at-a-time game, where a single player can make a big difference, so the Durant acquisition seems to tilt the floor in the Suns’ direction.  A near-seven-footer with an unblockable shot, he’s one of the game’s half-dozen best players, and his 27.3 points per game scoring average is tops among active performers. He was the league MVP in 2014, owner of two championship rings (2017 and ’18) and a 13-time all-star in a 15-season career. The Suns’ incumbent aces—Devin Booker, Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton—reached the league’s championship finals without him in 2021, so the trip to the top seems short.

But, but, but Durant comes with caveats. He’s 34 years old, and while his skills seem undiminished when he plays he hasn’t played much of late. He missed the entire 2019-20 season with injury, sat out 50 games the next year and 27 the next. He’s already missed more than 20 in this one, and in warmups before the fourth game of his Suns’ tenure sprained an ankle and might miss the next two or three weeks, it’s said.

               Further, new Suns’ owner Mat Ishbia’s new trinket is mind-bogglingly expensive even by modern-sports standards, with Durant pulling down $43 million this year and about $150 million more over the next three of the four-year deal he reached last season with the Brooklyn Nets. The Suns are on the hook for only about a quarter of his current-season haul, but his contract added a reported $35 million to the team’s “luxury tax” bill. Even the new billionaire on the block must have swallowed hard over that one.

               Finally, it would be no exaggeration to say the Suns mortgaged their future to get Durant. The deal sent to the Nets four of the team’s No. 1 draft choices—in 2023, ’25, ’27 and ’29—plus two very good young players-- Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson.  Bridges was a first-team All-NBA Defensive Team choice last season, and as a Net he’s blossomed into a big-time scorer as well, averaging a Durant-like 26 points a game in his first 13 games in Brooklyn.  At age 26, he promises to be going strong after Durant has been pensioned.

               And as for the all-in Suns’ title prospects this season, maybe yes and maybe no. Other teams also have some great players, and they get the ball, too. As the racetrack announcers say post-race, “Hold all tickets.”

              

TICK, TICK, TICK

 

               Baseball always has been the game without a clock, but no more. Starting this season there will be lots of clocks- in centerfield, around home plate, on the second-tier facades. They’ll be measuring the maximum time between pitches the rules specify (15 seconds with the bases empty, 20 when runners are on base), the time between innings (two minutes, 15 seconds) and the time batters have to be in the box and ready to hit (with eight seconds remaining on the pitch count). Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

               That’s just a few of the changes the lords of the game have decreed to take effect in spring training, and in the new campaign. Another will be a requirement that each pitch begin with two infielders on each side of second base with their feet on the dirt. That’ll eliminate the radical shifts that have helped prune batting averages in recent seasons. Still another will be an increase in the size of the base bags to 18 inches square from 15 inches. That’s aimed at reducing injuries and making it a bit easier to steal, the stolen base being another casualty of game trends. Retained from last season—surprisingly to me because it’s so unbaseballlike—is the practice of beginning extra innings with a runner on second base and no outs. Fewer extras has been the goal there.

               To all of those I say “Hurray!”  I’m old, and thus a baseball traditionalist in most things, but times change and so should the National Pastime. Baseball’s stately pace and low-octane offenses have been  detriments in this quick-thrill era, with declines in just about every measure of public interest.

               I’m a bit of an expert on the above changes because they’ve been previewed during the last two Arizona Fall League seasons, which I’ve attended extensively. I’ve no stats to back my judgement but I think the anti-shift measure will have the most noticeable effect. How can it not, opening as it does bigger holes for pull hitters to hit through? The likes of Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo must be celebrating.

               By cutting the base paths by a few inches (4.5, actually) the bigger bases should result in a few more “safe” signs, but a bigger boon to would-be thieves could be a new rule to limit to two the number of times a pitcher can throw to a base to hold a runner on. The main aim of that wrinkle, though is brevity, not larceny.

               Ever heard the term “Five O’clock Lightning”? It referred to the late-inning run barrages produced by the 1927 New York Yankees, a gang still revered for its offensive power. Baseball games back then—all day games—began at 3:30 p.m. and, thus, were in their late stages around 5. Game times ran about two hours-- so the fans could be home for dinner, one supposes.  

               Baseball has gotten fussier since, and game times are longer, exceeding three hours in recent decades. Last season’s average was three hours, 11 minutes. That’s too long for current tastes, thus the advent of the clocks. Will they work? Sure they will, and the effects should be relatively seamless.  I didn’t hold a watch to the Fall League games I attended last year and the year before, but I can’t recall one lasting more than three hours. The penalty for a pitcher exceeding the clock is an automatic ball, with an automatic strike for an unready batter. Such calls were made only once or twice a game here, with little dispute. Commentators can be counted upon to obsess about them early on, but complaints should quickly fade.

               Fall League games were contested by kids in their early 20s, though, and they do everything faster than their elders, so the net effect on game times in the Bigs is uncertain. The game’s rulers should heed the self-help plans, which note that there are things one can control and things one can’t. In the latter category is the one that, by me, has affected baseball most over the current century. That would be the improvements in pitching. Big-league pitchers these days are monsters—big guys who can throw strawberries through battleships. Ninety-five-miles-an-hour fastballs used to be rare, now they’re commonplace. So are the drop-off-the-table breaking balls that make the heaters look hotter, a product of the coaching pitchers receive from an early age.

 Breaking balls are tougher on young arms than fastballs, but now there’s Tommy John surgery for injured wings. Strikeouts are up--way, way up—by about 25% in the last 20 years, to over 40,000 a season since 2017, and the trend seems inexorable. There have been more strikeouts than hits in the Majors the last few years! More strikeouts mean more pitches, whatever the time between them.

 The way pitchers are deployed has contributed further to blunting offenses, sending the game-wide batting average last year to .243, the lowest since 1968. Time was when starting pitchers were expected to finish, or at least last well into games. Now they’re deployed in relays, the better to keep batters off balance. In the 1960-1980 period, teams utilized an average of about 2.5 pitchers a game. Last year’s average was 4.67. That movement also seems here to stay.

               Nothing turns off TV sets like a mid-inning pitching change, and little has been done of late to speed that.  One typically begins with a stroll by the manager to the mound, where he takes the ball from, says a few words to, and pats the fanny of the outing hurler. The reliefer saunters in from the distant bullpen and another discussion takes place. Then he fusses around a bit and throws up to eight warmup pitches. Eight?! What was he doing in the bullpen, for heaven’s sake? Tick, tick, tick.

               If baseball is serious about moving things along, the whole “warmup” issue—one that it can control-- should be addressed. It’s the only sport that allows players to practice on the field while a game is (supposedly) in progress.

               Enough warming up. Enough playing catch. Play ball, already.