DrungoHazewood

The Chris Davis game lasted 6:07, or about 21.6 minutes per inning.

I'm sure there have been with pitchers, but pitchers have no normal progression. For example, first pitcher I pull up is Edison Volquez. In 2013, by bb-ref, he was -2.4 WAR. 5.71 ERA, led the NL in runs allowed in only 170 innings. In 2014 he was 13-7, 3.04 for the Pirates. And as Can_of_corn says, injuries are usually a component. Even if that's not the public story. I'm not sure anyone came up with an injury for George Scott in '68 when he had a .478 OPS the year after a .839 and two years prior to an .821. Lou Piniella had a 3.5-win 1972, a -3.1-win 1973, a 3.4-win 1974, a -1.7 win 1975, and a 1.2 win 1976. Then a 3.7-win 1978. From 2010 through mid-2012 Nate McLouth was 2.9 wins below replacement. Then in a season-and-a-half with the O's he was at +2.8. In 2010 Carlos Lee was -2.2 wins, then in 2011 he was +3.9, although some of that was weird defensive numbers. From 1988-93 Mike Kingery OPS'd .594 in over 600 PAs. At ages 31-32 he spent almost the entire time in AAA. In 1994 he hit .349 with a .933 OPS. Of course that was with the Rockies, in Mile High Stadium, before the humidor. In 1984 John Shelby hit .209/.248/.313 in 128 games. Over the next four years he had a .712 OPS. Then in ''89 he had a .466 in 108 games. Jermaine Dye had two separate pairs of extreme years. In '98 he OPS'd .606, in '99 he OPS'd .880. In 2003 he OPS'd .514, and in '04 he OPS'd .793. In 1979, at the age of 27, Alan Ashby OPS'd .538 in 108 games. He would go on to play 10 more years in the majors including OPSes of .800+ twice.

Kind of a tangent, but the famous Oeschger-Cadore 26 inning tie was finished in 3:50. Called because of darkness. At 3 hours per nine innings today that would have taken almost nine hours to play.

I think that's engangled with baseball's culture. To many of the core baby boomer fanbase having players with strong, marketable personalities is counter to how they "should" be acting. Much of the fanbase (and we certainly see it here) expects the stars to be Cal Ripken, stoic and inoffensive to a fault. Adam Jones is loved, but even he took flak from some quarters for the occasional mildly controversial comment. Baseball players aren't supposed to be some punk football/basketball player who won't keep his head down, be quiet, and play baseball. It's hard to market Ward Cleaver to 20-year-olds in 2019.

Tom Tango often argues against long extra inning games because everyone leaves. By the 15th inning there are 3,000 people in the stands. The fans vote with their feet. Virginia Tech will have games every year where they play Akron or somebody. It's a full house, or almost. It's 33-0 at the half, and most of the the student section leaves before the 4th quarter. By final whistle there are more Marching Virginians than fans in the east stands. And yes, the ref in the red uniform is still standing out on the field for the full four minutes of commercials every three minutes halfway into the 4th quarter. I guess nobody cares if the game is over in 20 minutes in just so long as the fans show up at the start.

I keep hearing this, but then I don't hear many recommendations for recruiting the next generation of fans to baseball. The average age of a MLB television viewer is 57, or at least that's what the first result said when I Googled it. The average NBA viewer is 15 years younger. I'd bet American soccer and hockey fans are, on average, a lot younger than 57. Baseball is whistling past the graveyard. Revenues are at record levels. But the baby boomers aren't going to be here forever. Gen Xers are in their 40s and 50s. If you're not willing to entertain even incremental changes to appeal to younger people, you're eventually going to have to deal with MLB being a very niche product with lower revenues and a smaller fanbase. Attendance is down 10,000,000 since the peak in 2007. Not that much, I guess. I'm sure it's just a blip, it'll come back. No need to worry, right? Eventually the kids will come around to pastoral beauty of three hour games with three homers, 18 strikeouts, 12 pitching changes and 15 hits.

Shorten commercial breaks, charge more for each commercial. Aggressively enforce no stepping out of the box. Limiting in-inning pitching changes. My preference would be none, unless the pitcher has been charged with 3+ runs. Each throw by a pitcher to a base that doesn't pick off the runner counts as a ball to the batter. No mound visits... or you get 2-3 30 second timeouts per game for all of your arguing, mound visits, umpire rule clarifications, whatever. Penalty for violation of the 30 seconds is a) if your team is at bat the batter is out. b) if you're in the field the opponent's batter gets first base via automatic walk. All reviews are done in the pressbox in near realtime. No challenges. If the ump in the box sees something on replay that needs fixing before the next batter steps in, he calls down and fixes it. If the replay result is not clear within the timing of natural flow of the game the call on the field stands. If in-inning pitching changes are still allowed, the pitcher has one minute from the time the manager signals for the change to be ready to pitch. The umpire actually, really calls a ball if the pitcher violates the (already existing) rule 5.07(c) to throw a pitch within 12 seconds. Umpires are instructed to not grant timeout to the batter unless he clearly has an injury. If Nomar comes back and plays with his batting gloves 23 times between each pitch he's banned from all MLB parks for life.

Here's a list of average game times over time. In 1990 games were about 15 minutes shorter. In 1970 they were 35 minutes shorter. From 1950-80 2:30 was standard. Prior to WWII the average was under 2:00.

If you implement a number of five minute fixes you can get to 2:30 games. If you throw up your hands and accept 3+ hour games you get nowhere, and the times will continue to increase. Nobody cries about the NFL because the NFL plays once a week, usually in the afternoon. You can devote as much time to the Orioles in the first two and a half weeks of April as you do to the Ravens all season. Baseball used to be less boring. The action to standing around ratio was larger. Two, two-and-a-half hour games were standard. There were no fixed commercial break times, there were few pitching changes, and there were three or four strikeouts per team per game. The game moved along because there were no lights and most games couldn't be completed if you let it go on 3-4 hours. It's not like this is some made-up world, this was how baseball was played for 100 years. Today there are many incentives for drawing out games. Pitchers slow down as a strategy, to throw off batters and baserunners. Batters step out to disrupt pitchers. More pitchers in short stints are more effective. Mound visits have advantages for the pitching team. But there are few/no incentives to speed up. So, like the ever increasing strikeouts, there is no natural bound on game time, there are asymmetrical pressures. I think we will eventually see 3:30 games, maybe 4:00, because there is no pressure to not do that, and plenty of advantages. In 1990 I would have never thought we'd be over a strikeout a team an inning without major rules changes, but with asymmetrical pressures and no natural bounds, here we are. The only thing that will stop any of this is someone stepping in and trying to change things for the better.

Soccer does have a problem with faking injuries. It's hard to deal with because it's difficult to tell what's real and what's fake, especially in real time, and there are incentives for successfully faking (free kicks leading to scoring opportunities). You do see the occasional caution for faking. In baseball it's relatively easy to deal with pitchers faking injuries to get around the three batter rule. You make a rule that says if you come out due to injury prior to three batters you can't pitch for five days.

It exacerbates the issue of lack of balls in play. You basically turn any at bat with X foul balls into a strikeout.

No, but giving up and setting no limits or even goals for pace and duration of game leaves us where we are today with 3+ hour average games and no endpoint in sight. Then we look up, it's 2030, those darned millenials are the core of the population base, and nobody watches four hour baseball games any more. I'd rather baseball fight for more fans rather than fade away, clinging to the idea that baseball takes as long as baseball takes .

I thought about this, but the foul balls aren't intentional. Nobody today wants to hit a foul ball. Instead of punishing batters for not being able to square up on a 93mph pitch with movement, maybe you move the mound back and mandate thicker bats. Or you just make any pitch over 94 mph a ball. I'm sure that would be popular...

I think the risk could work out for generic relievers, but then you lose the reliever for the day unless you plan on pitching him in the 2nd inning. No decent starter is ever going to play RF so that he can be designated a two-way player and essentially be a 14th pitcher. We're talking tiny fractions of wins here. An average pitcher is probably a -30 LFer, or worse. The starter is going to lose it the first time Darren O'Day spins around three times, falls down, and turns a routine fly ball into a triple. There may be odd cases where you have a really athletic pitcher and Maddon is the manager... but this is going to be like the part of the balk rule about not facing the batter when he pitches. It'll be on the books and essentially forgotten for decades.

I'm guessing someone remembers the Earl Weaver rule for DHs. Steve Stone started 12 games at DH the year he won 25, but had zero PAs. Earl would just pinch hit whomever he thought would be the best DH when that spot came up in the order. That way he could be 100% sure he had the platoon advantage. I like the idea, but no amount of modern analysis could tease out the tiny fraction of a win that bought the Orioles. And baseball being baseball that was too weird so they changed the rules so your starting DH had to bat at least once. Agreed. They should just ban mid-inning pitching changes or limit the roster to nine pitchers.

I'd like this to be a wedge, or a starting point. 13 max pitchers in 2020. 12 in 2021. 11 in 2022. 10 in 2023. Ohtani will be the only one. Brooks Kieschnick never started more than seven games in the field or DH in a season once he returned to pitching. Ruth would have only qualified in '18 and '19. Rick Ankiel never pitched and played another position in the same season. Smoky Joe Wood only pitched two games after converting to the field. Bob Smith would have qualified in 1925, with 93 innings on the mound and 36 games at 2B/SS. Bucky Walters played a few games in the field from '35-37 but never enough to qualify under this rule. Nixie Callahan was in in 1897 and '02. It's really Otani and nobody else in over 90 years.

There already is one, at $555k x 25 or $13.875M. I think the owners would be okay with a higher one in exchange for something else.

I think the MLBPA will propose a cap in conjunction with a fixed percentage of revenues somewhere north of where it is today. Something like 45% of revenues go to player salaries in exchange for a $200M cap. Both mild enough to be acceptable.

I think so, but I thought that was a few years ago. Maybe he decided it wasn't worth it to continue as a pitcher afterwards, because he's back playing winter ball.

Unfortunately that's due to extreme roster pressures because of the perceived need to have 13 or 14 pitchers. Not because we have a bunch of players who are Major League caliber at both hitting and pitching. With a small handful of exceptions (Otani, Newcombe, Wes Ferrell, Ruth, maybe a few others) Increased quality of play did away with that 100+ years ago.

In the 1890-1905 era foul balls became a big problem. In the beginning none of them were strikes. Then in 1894 they made foul bunts strikes, because there were a lot of hitters who would just bunt foul any strike they didn't want to swing at. But there were still guys like Keeler and Roy Thomas (mentioned in the article - look at his bb-ref page, there's nobody remotely like that anymore) who'd swing and foul off pitches forever. So in 1903 (AL) and 1904 (NL) they made all foul balls (except with two strikes) a strike (there are varying online dates for the year the foul strike rule was implemented in each league, but '03 and '04 are when you clearly see spikes in the strikeout rates). Anyway... they saw a problem, and they implemented a fix. I have less faith that the powers-that-be will do that today. Although today it's not quite so simple because the foul balls aren't mostly on purpose like 120 years ago. You can't mandate bigger foul territory. I think moving the mound back would help somewhat. I guess we'll see what happens in the Atlantic League this year - if their record-keeping is good enough to give us foul ball data.

I like the end of (most) September call-ups and the unified July 31st trading deadline. It's comical that you can have one team for 4-5 months, then change a bunch of things and play with added stars and a bunch of extra pinch hitters/runners/defensive replacements the last month or two. While the bad teams are fielding lineups with six guys who spent the year in Walla Walla and Kalamazoo. I don't know of any other sport that allows radical roster reconstruction in the most important parts of the season.

That's pretty radical. We might see a handful of games, at least before September, with as few as five or six pitchers.

Last year Santander hit the same as Chris Davis in the majors, and at Bowie he was no match for Ademar Rifaela and Aderlin Rodriguez and Anderson Feliz and Martin Cervenka. Although he did manage to out-play D'Arby Myers and Mike Yastrzemski.

For years my simple contract evaluator did just fine despite not having an input for age. A guy coming off a 1-win season at 34 following several 3-win years was judged to be worth exactly the same as a 27-year-old with that resume. And it worked pretty well, despite the fact that made no logical sense. Not any more. I've had to come up with a more complicated v2.0 that sees players in their 30s fall off rapidly and their expected contracts do the same. I think if 2015 Nelson Cruz were a free agent today he'd get 2/20.