What kind of MLB game would you prefer to see?

[RShack]

Pitching Duel = Balanced Game >>> Slugfest

Oh, and I'm 25.

This ^

and I'm 25 too.

I voted balanced, but a pitcher's duel is great. I'm not turning off the slugfest, but it is my least enjoyable view.

Me too. If the poll was worded so that we had to pick one kind of game to kick off the island and keep the other two, then slugfests would be in the rowboat offshore... and it would be by a vote of something like 9 to 1 It's hard to get 90% of people around here to agree about anything, but JTrea managed to do it...

[Spoonless]

It's not really something you can make a poll like this about anyway. Maybe if you could rank them, 1-2-3, and allot points based on what position you have each in, with a 0 if you decide to not give one of them a vote. I wouldn't want to cut the occasional high-scoring game out altogether, and there's no clear definition of the terms used.

What I really want to see are competitive games.

[crowmst3k!]

I love pitching duels. One of the best times I have ever had was sitting in Yankee stadium last year watching Pettitte and David Hernandez duel it out. The O's lost on a walk off home run by Hideki Matsui off of a Jim Johnson pitch.

That was an amazing game, nonetheless.

I'm also 25, not sure how that matters.

[byrdz]

The average fan would probably prefer a slugfest and even I do when I'm watching the game in person. But there's nothing like a pitchers duel. My vote is for a balanced game so that you get the best of both worlds. But if I'm at a game I want to see some offense.

[Moose Milligan]

Stark on Mike and Mike talking about how the game is trending towards pitching.

Where are you Trea?

[JTrea81]

Verducci's article has a great comment in it which is why I think the game is going to trend back to offense shortly...

But if you are a major league owner, you might not be so enthralled with what this year portends. Outside of the rare phenom like Strasburg, pitching doesn't sell. Attendance is down three percent this year, and that's coming off a down year last year. Across general baseball history, spikes in attendance have dovetailed with planned spikes in offense (introduction of the live ball, the lowering of the mound, the DH, expansion, smaller ballpark boom, etc.).

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/06/15/year.pitcher/index.html?xid=FanHouse

I think MLB is going to have to take steps to increase offense to boost attendance.

It wouldn't surprise me to see the baseballs "juiced" up in the second half so they travel farther and faster when hit.

[RShack]

Verducci's article has a great comment in it which is why I think the game is going to trend back to offense shortly...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/06/15/year.pitcher/index.html?xid=FanHouse

I think MLB is going to have to take steps to increase offense to boost attendance.

It wouldn't surprise me to see the baseballs "juiced" up in the second half so they travel farther and faster when hit.

So, when there's 10-15% more dingers in August than in June, are you gonna interpret that as "evidence" that they're doing that? (even though it happens most every year....)

[DrungoHazewood]

Verducci's article has a great comment in it which is why I think the game is going to trend back to offense shortly...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/06/15/year.pitcher/index.html?xid=FanHouse

I think MLB is going to have to take steps to increase offense to boost attendance.

It wouldn't surprise me to see the baseballs "juiced" up in the second half so they travel farther and faster when hit.

There's always been a conflict between several things that keep runs in check:

1) Casual fans like high scoring.

2) Die hard fans tend to like good baseball, including pitching.

3) Lots of runs put stresses and pressures on pitching staffs, necessitating ridiculous things like 13-man staffs.

4) High-scoring games are longer than low-scoring games.

5) There are limits on both the high and low side of what the majority of baseball fans will accept as historically legitimate. Fans would look at commonplace 1.50 ERAs as crazy, just as they'd see a return to the 1890s style of seven/eight runs/team/game as crazy.

Scoring this year is barely down compared to April/May of other years. In fact it's higher than just a few years ago. And historically we're still above-average. So nothing will be done. As Shack said, hot weather drives up runs just a tick, and that's more than sufficient.

[Spoonless]

It wouldn't surprise me to see the baseballs "juiced" up in the second half so they travel farther and faster when hit.

If they were going to alter the game to produce more offense, I doubt they would do it in the middle of a season.

[Moose Milligan]

Aaaaaaand he ignores the poll results.

Classic.

[waroriole]

Verducci's article has a great comment in it which is why I think the game is going to trend back to offense shortly...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/06/15/year.pitcher/index.html?xid=FanHouse

I think MLB is going to have to take steps to increase offense to boost attendance.

It wouldn't surprise me to see the baseballs "juiced" up in the second half so they travel farther and faster when hit.

Typical Trea. I guess attendance couldn't be down b/c of the economy. Nope it's b/c casual baseball fan knows that run scoring is down slightly this year. Also, shame on Verducci for insinuating that this is why attendance is down.

[DrungoHazewood]

Typical Trea. I guess attendance couldn't be down b/c of the economy. Nope it's b/c casual baseball fan knows that run scoring is down slightly this year. Also, shame on Verducci for insinuating that this is why attendance is down.

I know Bill James wrote about the link between attendance and offense 20-some years ago, but never did any kind of serious study on the issue.

I think it's probably a factor, but may be well behind the economy as a causal factor. It's probably a coincidence that many high-scoring eras happened at the same time the economy surged, and vice versa. In the 1920s offense surged, and so did attendance. But the economy hummed in the 20s, too. In the 30s offense was still high, but attendance tanked along with the economy. In the 1890s offense was at all-time highs, but attendance struggled along with the economy, and in 1899 the NL contracted four teams. And of course in the 1990s there was a huge increase in attendance and huge offense, but also an economy riding the dot com bubble.

[Don Quixote]

I don't think high-scoring affairs are that exciting unless it's something pretty historic, such as the Phillies-Cubs slugfest in '79 (in which most of the scoring actually came over the first six innings). They drive me crazy. I prefer a great pitchers' duel to a pseudo-slugfest, most definitely. They incite more strategy, are shorter, and feature rarer talent commodities. The one down side I see to them is how one mistake often makes the game. As such, I suppose I most prefer the "balanced game," though I enjoy any game in which the team I support is winning, or at the very least playing competitively.