NY Times: No Runs, No Hits, New Era: Baseball Ponders Legal Ways to Boost Offense

[CA-ORIOLE]

I hate to admit it, but MSK is probably on the right track with re-tinkering the strike zone if offense is a priority. Smaller strike zone equals more walks (more obp), more hittable pitches and more runs. Unfortunately it works against their efforts to speed up the game.

Seems like it was not that long ago I remember Palmer complaining that the strike zone was the size of a paper plate.

[DrungoHazewood]

That is an interesting idea.

Would certainly speed games up.

Yes, but with the downside of fielders becoming mostly irrelevant. And with that goes the relevancy of the O's current strategy. Now I'm all strangely curious about a game that averages 0.5 walks, 19 Ks, four homers, and six hits per team per game. I bet I could set up an OOTP league that works this way...

[DrungoHazewood]

I had to admit it, but MSK is probably on the right track with re-tinkering the strike zone if offense is a priority. Smaller strike zone equals more walks (more obp), more hittable pitches and more runs. Unfortunately it works against their efforts to speed up the game.

Seems like it was not that long ago I remember Palmer complaining that the strike zone was the size of a paper plate.

I've long been curious as to the effect of making bats thicker and heavier. Almost forces players to more of a contact game, and many few hitters have the ability to try to max effort swing for power on good fastballs. Phase in a rule that says by X date you have to have a bat that weighs at least 35 oz (or 38 or whatever). I think that over time that reverses the strikeout trend, and de-emphasizes max effort deliveries and 200k sluggers. Now... whether or not that increases offense is another question.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I've long been curious as to the effect of making bats thicker and heavier. Almost forces players to more of a contact game, and many few hitters have the ability to try to max effort swing for power on good fastballs. Phase in a rule that says by X date you have to have a bat that weighs at least 35 oz (or 38 or whatever). I think that over time that reverses the strikeout trend, and de-emphasizes max effort deliveries and 200k sluggers. Now... whether or not that increases offense is another question.

Yeah, bats is another possibility. They did change the bats after guys were getting gored out there. There might be some relation there.

[PA724_Oriole]

I think a good idea would be to move the mound back a foot or two. Obviously pitchers would have to adjust. Not only does it give batters an extra second to see the pitch but it also gives pitchers a little more time to react to those hot comebackers.

Could improve offense and should help the safety of pitchers without having to wearing funny liking hats.

[srock]

?That kind of epitomizes the question in our minds: Are these great players going to adjust in a way that we don?t have to do anything? That?s the preferred outcome, from our perspective.?

Do nothing. See what happens. Should be interesting.

[DrungoHazewood]

Do nothing. See what happens. Should be interesting.

That is baseball's (extremely strong) historical preference. They've changed about one important rule in the last 110 years. But in that time runs have varied from under three to over five. Ks have gone from 2/9 to 7+ per nine. HRs from 9 leading the league, to 60 not leading the league. Everybody knows what kind of baseball they like, but MLB won't do much of anything to make sure that happens.

Another problem with that is that you can't sim the season 1000 times and see if the results are cool. You might do nothing and look up and it's 2019 and there's 2 runs and 18 strikeouts a game. Might be interesting, but almost might kind of suck to actually watch a game with 20 balls in play in four hours.