SurhoffRules

That's an interesting take. The nfl does really market the league but since the vast majority of games take place on Sundays it's probably a bit easier to sell the idea of being a football fan compared to the spread out marathon that is baseball. I wonder what sort of league wide initiative could be effective.

I feel like viewing rule changes as "we have to do this because no one is watching our product anymore" can distract from the more inclusive question of "what are things this sport could do with/without to make it a better experience." I've no plans to stop watching baseball games regardless of the lack of rule tweaks, but I know there are things I could do without or wouldn't mind if they changed. If the sport picks up some more viewers in the process, hooray, but it doesn't need to be the primary goal of the endevour.

Loewen has actually done a reverse reverse! After coming up as pitcher from 2003-2008, he flipped to position player from 09-2015, and then jumped back to the mound! Since 2014 years he's pitched for Phily & AZ in the bigs and for them & Texas in AAA and AA!

Another take on what's slowing the game down: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/foul-balls-are-the-pace-of-play-problem-nobodys-talking-about/

I posted this elsewhere before but in 1991, the average length of a game was 2:54. Last year it was 3:04. In the last 25 years the average baseball game has been 3 hours, plus or minus about 8 minutes. From the 50s through the end of the 70s it was very similar, games were right on 2:30. The big jump in game length came from in the decade and a half from about '77 to '91. I'm all for shortening the game, I'd love something closer to 2:30, but this isn't a new "problem". Being in my 30s I literally can not recall watching a game that wasn't about 3 hours. If folks think the game is slow or boring now compared to 25 years ago, its probably from changes within the game rather than just the duration. Or maybe it was the rise of cable networks and the ability to watch literally every single game that's leading to burnout. I dunno.

The mound was lowered from 15 to 10 inches in 1968 and offense jumped from 6.84 to 8.14 runs per game. That being said they also shrunk the strike zone and decided to enforce more restrictions on doctored balls, so teasing out how much of the offense jump was due to the mound is tricky. I think the general consensus is a lower mound benefits the batter.

This is the last year of Nick's contract in ATL. I think it would be nice to see them go on a run deep into the post season. I was curious as to how his contract played out. Nick produced 5.7 fWAR is his 4 years on the Braves (almost half of that this year). He was paid ~$44.05 M and produced $46.1 M worth of value in that time. At the age of 34, I wonder what the market for his services will be this offseason.