The All-Star break is a good time to talk about stuff we normally don't have time to discuss because things like ballgames and transactions and stuff get in the way. Things like this, which is an article advocating for a return to the pre-1968 pitchers' mound:
If Major League Baseball is serious about trying to find ways to escape the fallout of the steroid era, raising the pitching mound would seem to be a no-brainer . . . It's time to take another look. It's time to realize Gibson's 1.12 was an exceptional year by an exceptional pitcher. Those tiny ERAs? Evidence suggests they were more a mirage than a trend -- and hitters have been having far too much fun. It's time to give the pitchers a break. It's time to restore at least part of the real estate missing from the middle of baseball diamonds everywhere. It's time to Bring Back The Hill. Now.
I don't believe that outrageous offense is as big a problem now as it was a few years ago, but it strikes me that this could be a good idea regardless of its direct effects on offense. I could totally see a higher mound leading to fewer pitchers' injuries as hurlers will be able to generate a bit more velocity via gravity as opposed to muscle, and could theoretically lower their arm slots a bit -- thus reducing shoulder strain -- and still get a good angle of attack at a batter.
Just spitballin' here.
Hey, that gives me another idea . . .
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If raising the pitcher's mound would decrease the amount of hits and runs in each game, that might also speed the game up, which I think is really baseball's biggest problem. I love baseball, but those 11-9 games with 8 pitching changes really get boring. I wonder if there could be a limit to pitching changes per inning as well? I think that might be too extreme a solution, but the game really bogs down when the manager makes three pitching changes in the same inning.
Why not return to the old parameters of the strike zone? Now there are 6 inning pitchers, not 9 inning pitchers. Vastly different game than that I grew up watching.Today closers are more valuable than starters.
If speeding up games is the goal, a better approach would be to tweak the rules governing pitching changes. Few things deaden interest in baseball more than a 45 minute half inning featuring 3-4 different pitchers and only 1 run scored. That's an abuse of the rules, which is exactly what rule changes are for.
Why not require every relief pitcher to face at least 3 batters or end the inning?
Reduction of rosters from 25 to, say, 22 would also improve the game, but that's a CBA issue that will never happen.
I don't think speeding up the games is an issue. They are already under three hours; I don't think a two and a half hour game is going to increase fan share significantly. And taking the game out of the manager's hand by dictating how a relief pitcher should be used is absurd. Besides, I don't see how keeping a struggling relief pitcher for the rest of the inning is going to speed up the game.
I would like to see a higher pitcher's mound. Baseball is, at its root, a pitcher's game, and the beauty of the game is most evident by watching how a pitcher and hitter interact with each other. Having hitters spray the ball all over the park seemingly at will detracts from the strategic and aesthetic qualities of the game. But that's just my opinion.
That being said, the game of baseball is more popular now than it has been for quite a while, even with the steroid mess. So while my vote would be an emphatic yes, I think the most pragmatic thinking would be not to tinker.
Actually, at it's root - I'm going WAAAY back to the 1860s era, here - base ball was anything but a pitcher's game. The hurler's job at that time was to deliver the ball where the striker asked for it (yes, he would verbally request his desired pitch location) so that striker could put the ball in play. That's generally when the action began - when the fielders had to try to corral the sphere with their bare hands.
I doubt that's where you were going with your comments, Gene, but it was an opening to discuss vintage base ball - currently played all around the country by over 200 teams - so I couldn't pass it up.
Craig, you should check out the Ohip Cup in Columbus over Labor Day weekend at the Ohio Historic Village.
Are you guys all serious? Raise the pitcher's mound to decrease the amount of offense in baseball? Really?
If baseball has a problem, it's that there is still too little offense. Maybe not compared to various commentators' here Platonic view of how the game of baseball is meant to be played, but compared to other sports (which are closer to its actual competitors). Baseball is exciting when there are people on base and the next pitch has the game hanging in the balance. Pitching is only exciting when a pitcher is dominant enough that he is threatening to strike out the side—and then, that is only for the fans of that team.
And I know, football (the most popular American sport) is not high-scoring either, once you takeaway the fact that each score is worth 7 or 3; and that soccer (the world's most popular sport) is even more low-scoring than baseball. But soccer is like basketball, there is a constant ebb and flow of action; and each football play is frenetic. Baseball, on the other hand, is a game of routine (at least at the major league level, where players are expected to make most plays). You want as much offense as possible to keep that routine from becoming dull to those who do not appreciate the Zen-like magnificence of the Platonic form of fielding a groundball.
Finally, long delays due to late-inning pitching changes can slow the game down to a crawl. But they add a strategic element to the game that leads to a lot of fun second-guessing amongst fans. There's a saying that there are three things every guy thinks he can do better than any other guy: build a fire, run a hotel, and manage a baseball team. There is no sense in taking that element away in the name of... what, forcing ineffective relievers to get three outs?
This is an interesting idea. I'm intrigued by the notion that it could relieve some of the stress on pitcher's arms. If that is true, what other aspects of the pre-70s game might find a renaissance. More complete games? The four man rotation?
It's not so much a matter of the way the game is meant to be played. It's more about thinking through the implications of a rule change. There have been plenty of different eras in baseball. In the 60s the racial expansion of the sport finally took hold, but this broader talent base was largely offset by the franchise expansion from from 16 to 24 teams. According to Nate Silver in his article "What Do Statistics Tell Us About Steroids?", offense in the 60s varied wildly from year to year.
Runs and home runs per game actually didn't hit their lowest post-WWII average until what Silver calls the Dynasty Era of the early 70s. So lowering the mound didn't open the offensive floodgates. What seems to have had more impact was the DH, implemented by the AL in 1973. In the Balanced Era, 1976-1986, runs and homeruns per game dropped slightly in the NL but rose significantly in the AL ( from 4.03 to 4.44 runs/game and from 0.73 to 0.85 HRs/game). HRs/game in the NL did not surpass the 1960s level of 0.81 HR/game until the Juiced Era (1994-2004) when it averaged 1.04 HRs/game.
So I'm not so sure that raising the pitcher's mound would depress offense, but I am interested in the notion that it might relieve some stress on the pitcher's arm. I have nothing to show that it would indeed do that. What height is the pitching mound in Japan? That might be a place to start.
Here's a link to the Nate Silver article I mentioned above...
Hmmm. Newsvine deleted the above link, so I've repasted it without the initial characters of the address. You'll need to add http(colon)(slashslash) before it in order to visit the page. Lets see what happens this time when I re-post it.
Give the Pitchers a break-- why not improve the strike zone and then require the umps to call them. Lets say from the letters to the knees. Or is this the rule and it is not called. Raising the mound might work but would need to be used in the minors to see if it woks. Speeding up the game is always given as a reason for people not attending games. Some said make rules about the number of pitchers per game, etc. How about the batter who after every pitch needs to fix their gloves, helment, shirt, bra, shorts, scratch their balls and butt. Make the batter more responsible.
OK, to carry forward the thinking a bit, there is a research study that suggests pitching from a mound causes more strain on the arm than pitching on flat ground. The study was conducted by the Brewers' head team physician, Dr. William Rasch:
The study claims that it did not contain enough data to be exhaustively conclude mounds are bad, but it does suggest that pitchers might be better off practicing on flat ground.
How about you just get rid of the terrible umpires, and find some who will actually calls strikes to the letter of the rulebook? Pitchers have high ERA's because they throw pitch a at the guys belt, and it's called a ball. Isn't the zone from the letter's to the knees?
But then the next pitch is thrown in the other batter's box, only to be called strike 3.
Get a real strike zone, maybe K-Zone from ESPN to call balls and strikes, or something like that, It has to be far more accurate than these jokers that MLB has behind the plate. It would make the strike zone uniform, and save pitchers and hitters the guesswork of wondering what the ump considers a strike this afternoon.