What do the players have to complain about?

[Sports Guy]

15 minutes ago, panick said:

While I agree that there should be a pitch clock, many times the pitchers are standing around because the batters keep stepping out of the batter's box to re-tighten their batting gloves, even after they have just taken a pitch. There was a rule put in one year about batters not being allowed to step out of the box after taking a pitch. The rule was obviously not enforced. If the penalties for the pitcher taking too long to throw a pitch was an automatic ball call, they would probably pitch in the required time. If the batters faced an automatic strike call, they wouldn't keep stepping out of the box.

No question.  Onus falls on the batter too.  Some falls on the umps too.  They need to enforce this stuff.

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, Yossarian said:

Perhaps expanding the strike zone to the actual limits, as defined in the rule book, would help move the game along.  We have low strike zone umpires and high strike zone umpires, but rearely do we have umpires that call the entire strike zone.  This may also solve the three true outcome at-bats by forcing players to shorten their swings and "slap" the ball more when it is on the edges of the strike zone.

Heavens forbid they would do what the rule book says.  
 

It’s one of the more annoying things in the sport.

[waroriole]

21 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Well quality of play is part of it.  The pitchers take forever and the hitters are 37 pitches per at bat.  It’s all part of it.  It all goes together.

That being said, I don’t think they can change the 3 outcome stuff.  

There are things that can be done. You can outlaw shifts or limit their use. Enforce the strike zone. Push the fences out. 

[Sports Guy]

20 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

I think Drungo has lots of ideas on that.

I know he has talked about moving fences back.  I can see some merit in that.  Bring back doubles and triples..make it harder to just hit homers. 
 

I don’t mind that idea.  
 

I know  moving the pitchers mound back has been discussed. I read an article on that and it made sense.  I’m ok with tweaks like that here and there.

[Sports Guy]

10 minutes ago, waroriole said:

There are things that can be done. You can outlaw shifts or limit their use. Enforce the strike zone. Push the fences out. 

Outlawing shifts should even be under consideration.  Are you also ok with telling OFers they can’t play closer to the lines or near the warning track late in games?  
 

What about playing a hitter to pull the ball in the OF?  Should that go away too?  

[waroriole]

3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Outlawing shifts should even be under consideration.  Are you also ok with telling OFers they can’t play closer to the lines or near the warning track late in games?  
 

What about playing a hitter to pull the ball in the OF?  Should that go away too?  

It would be mostly for infielders. Outlawing shifts is a poor choice of words on my part. Just put some limits on it. You could say 2 fielders on either side of 2nd base. 

[panick]

29 minutes ago, Yossarian said:

Are they stepping out to only adjust the batting gloves?  Or are they going over in their mind what they think the next pitch might be and where it will be located?  I always thought the adjusting of the batting gloves was just a time-wasting tic they have while they think about the next pitch.  You hardly ever see them look down at the third base coach any more.  It's all just a pitcher-batter chess match.

Whatever they are doing out of the box is not working. Overall batting averages are down and strikeouts are at all-time highs. They might as well just stay in the box and get the at-bat over with!

[Frobby]

47 minutes ago, waroriole said:

More important than pace of play is the quality of play. I think fans are sick of the all or nothing approach. The three true outcomes are at an all time high and reducing my enjoyment of the game, and I doubt I’m alone with that. 
 

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t care about the pace of play that much. They’ve made some changes to address it. 

I care about both.   I want shorter game times and more action during that time.  I don’t know that I’d describe it as “quality of play” exactly.   That suggests the players aren’t as good, or aren’t as well trained.  That’s far from true.   

[HowAboutThat]

58 minutes ago, waroriole said:

They’ve made some changes to address it. 

The changes they have made don’t address it and don’t accomplish anything. But spending a lot of time addressing this mythological “pace of play” demon takes time from the important issues, and the important issues is that nothing happens in the game. What’s the most exciting play you can think of?

Whatever it is it’s not the strike out, it’s not the walk, and it’s not the home run.

edit:

Well, it can be the home run, but the home run by itself isn’t much. The camera work of a home run shows how boring a home run is. We see crowd reaction, pitcher reaction, dugout reaction, and eventually we see a guy jogging around the bases. That’s not exciting. In all sports there is absolutely nothing more boring than the replay of a home run.

However, I have watched countless replays of countless double plays with undiminished joy. Leaping catches, tags at third base, or at home, those are the exciting parts of a baseball game.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

I want to see a balanced schedule, no divisions and no more inter league play…or, if you are going to continue to deal with the awfulness of IL play, make it so everyone plays each other one series a year.

BTW, this has nothing to do with thinking it’s unfair that we play in our division and play those teams so many times..it’s simply because it’s boring to watch the same teams so often.  I don’t think that’s good for the sport.

Agreed watching half the of the Orioles games against the other four AL East teams is tiresome. I want to see a healthy mix of all the AL teams. 

The main reason for the unbalanced schedule is television ratings. The networks want to broadcast Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants and Cardinals-Cubs as many times as possible. 

[Yossarian]

The division-heavy schedules also cut down on travel time and costs.

[HowAboutThat]

12 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I care about both.   I want shorter game times and more action during that time.  I don’t know that I’d describe it as “quality of play” exactly.   That suggests the players aren’t as good, or aren’t as well trained.  That’s far from true.   

I think that is obviously what is not intended quality of play doesn’t mean quality of player, it means the interest level of what’s going on. Baseball is not less interesting than basketball or football, it is more cerebral, end it involves a great deal of anticipation and buildup to a climax, but right now the climax is boring I want a more interesting climax. I want balls put in play, runners on base, I want 7-6 games With 15 singles and two doubles, and not three home runs.

[waroriole]

22 minutes ago, Philip said:

The changes they have made don’t address it and don’t accomplish anything. But spending a lot of time addressing this mythological “pace of play” demon takes time from the important issues, and the important issues is that nothing happens in the game. What’s the most exciting play you can think of?

Whatever it is it’s not the strike out, it’s not the walk, and it’s not the home run.

edit:

Well, it can be the home run, but the home run by itself isn’t much. The camera work of a home run shows how boring a home run is. We see crowd reaction, pitcher reaction, dugout reaction, and eventually we see a guy jogging around the bases. That’s not exciting. In all sports there is absolutely nothing more boring than the replay of a home run.

However, I have watched countless replays of countless double plays with undiminished joy. Leaping catches, tags at third base, or at home, those are the exciting parts of a baseball game.

What about robbing a home run? You have to increase the likelihood of a HR to have it be robbed. Hahaha

[HowAboutThat]

33 minutes ago, waroriole said:

What about robbing a home run? You have to increase the likelihood of a HR to have it be robbed. Hahaha

Your point is valid, but doesn’t change the larger point.

[OriolesMagic83]

5 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

I imagine most of the owners would like to see a hard cap with a level playing field. That field can include a minimum floor to make it more difficult to tank. BTW, it still woulD be possible since you can take on other teams bad players, eat contracts as part of trades etc.

Do the owners really want to equalize team's revenue?  Are the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox on board with sharing the majority of their revenue?