• Increase the weight of the baseball. That should make it more difficult to throw hard, right?Maybe you scientist readers of this blog can discuss whether making the ball heavier and/or bigger would put the ball into play more and what kind of unintended consequences would occur. Baseball. It's a specific ball, isn't it? You can't change it. The other suggestions are probably more ridiculous, but I got sidetracked onto the proposition of the unchangeability of the ball.
• Make the ball slightly…bigger. And therefore presumably easier to make contact with.
I know there was a time called the "dead ball era," so the unchangeability — if there is such a principle — would have kicked in later. Let's read "The Evolution of the Baseball From the Dead-Ball Era Through Today."
We don't know much about what baseballs were like in the early days, but we generally know that no two baseballs were identical.Oh!
According to a 1975 article from The New York Times, pitchers just used to make their own balls.
Knowing that, it's not the least bit surprising that Baseball-Reference.com tells tales of baseballs that varied in size and weight and were much softer than modern balls.Much more at the link.
The National League was founded in 1876. That year, a pitcher for the Chicago White Stockings named A.G. Spalding pitched a design that the league chose to adopt as its standard. That's also how Spalding's sporting goods business came to power....
However, things changed during the 1910 World Series... the league introduced a new ball that had a center of cork rather than rubber....
Changes were made to the ball on the eve of the '20s, and that's when the Dead-Ball Era turned into the Live-Ball Era...
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51 comments:
I was a baseball fan once, but now I don't care.
Get better hitters.
This is the perfect opportunity to empower women...that's right, another one.
Require all pitchers to be females. Real ones. And impose height restrictions on them, say the size of Madonna. And allow sexual distraction of the batter moves.
Now that's a modern idea that could recharge Baseball as the National Pastime again.
The strikeout problem was solving itself, performance enhancing drugs.
Ask Ichiro. Unfortunately Ted Williams is unavailable for comment right now. But be patient on that one.
Lower the mound.
The Chicago White Stockings were the predecessor franchise of the Cubs, not the White Sox.
The Cubs played their first game in 1876, which was the same year as Custer's Last Stand.
Baseball fans want to see home runs. The game was restructured in the teens and 20s to favor more home runs. Attendance boomed and owners raked in the dough.
Swinging for the fences produces strikeouts. The legendary home run hitters were also legendary strikeout artists.
Check out the all time strikeout leaders. They're mostly home run hitters. Reggie Jackson was the champ.
Why would baseball want to reduce strikeouts? The unintended consequence would be to reduce home runs, which would reduce fan interest and attendance.
The ball has gone through subtle changes over the years...very dead in the late 60's. There's a reason Denny McClain won 31 games and Bob Gibson set the ERA record in 1968 (1.12). SDead ball.
""So, if we wanted to do something to decrease the number of strikeouts in a game, what could we do?""
Disband the Cubs.
You could alter the stitching on the baseball and thus change the Magnus Effect (making it harder to throw breaking balls.) Or you could make the ball's laces a color that is easier for the batter to pick up the spin. You could drop the pircher's mound a few inches. Or preferably you could just leave it alone.
4 strikes and yer out
In the Dead Ball Era, pitchers didn't throw as hard as they do now. They knew that hitters could only hit these baseballs so far, and, unlike today, they would only use a small number of them per game. By the later innings these hammered spheres weren't going to go anywhere! Walter Johnson was probably the first guy to regularly, repeatedly throw hard.
Move the mound back; that increases the time the batter has to 'understand' the path of the baseball. It would also make pitching safer; line drives hit back at their heads are an occupational hazard.
The low hitting in the 1960's was correct by lowering the mound. I don't think it had anything to do with a "dead ball." It probably was pitchers becoming bigger, stronger, better, but I'm not sure about that.
Swinging for the fences produces strikeouts. The legendary home run hitters were also legendary strikeout artists.
There are two styles of hitting. One a weight shift and the other a rotational form. The rotational form is the "power hitters" form and didn't take off until the live ball era and guys like Babe Ruth.
In the dead ball era, weight shift (slap) hitting was the norm, as it was a "smarter" batting style; you can hit far more pitches and put the ball into play using more of the field, but you won't hit for power. Ty Cobb was a slap hitter.
You get far more strike-outs with the rotational style because there is much less of a contact zone than with weight shift or slap hitting. There are also hitters that combine both styles in some fashion.
Lowering the mound would increase hits, thus decreasing strike-outs.
"Kansas City said...
The low hitting in the 1960's was correct by lowering the mound. I don't think it had anything to do with a "dead ball." It probably was pitchers becoming bigger, stronger, better, but I'm not sure about that."
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/second_deadball_era
The Second deadball era was a period of time, from roughly 1964 to 1972, when batting averages were unusually low in major league baseball. Some observers would extend the time period as far as 1963-76.
Kansas City- A great read on whether or not bigger, stronger, faster players change the game is "Full House- The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin" by the late great Stephen Jay Gould.
If you wanted to decrease strikeouts, all you'd need to do is have the umpires call the strikes and balls as the rulebook says. The way it is now, and has been for many, many, years, each umpire has his "own" strike zone.
Some pitchers, notably, Maddeux and Glavin, even had their own strikes - six inches to a foot off the outside edge of the plate.
Electronic strike zones would end all that kind of stuff, and the arguments and whining over balls and strikes. And maybe there would be some actual swinging.
Yep -- Lowering the mound would cut strikeouts because it would take 1-2 mph off the force of pitchers' fastballs from being able to push off the mound and get their legs into the force of a pitch (which is also the reason pitchers tend to be the biggest players on a baseball team, because teams want the additional size to be able to push harder off the mound and get more velocity into their throws. The sub 6-foot star pitcher in MLB is far more the exception than the rule).
Determine how many are due to called strikes (not just 3rd), and then assess whether making the strike zone smaller would have any effect. Adjust size of zone each season to keep strikeouts about where you want them. Infuriate and baffle pitchers, hitters, umps, and fans.
Increase the weight of the baseball. That should make it more difficult to throw hard, right?
In the physics battles, a heavier ball gains a bit against wind resistance but loses a bit against gravity. If you concede pitchers couldn't throw it as hard, you still likely end up with a pitch with more movement, or at least movement down, and very little decrease in plate speed. Does that sound like something easier to hit?
Put that pitcher on second base.
Or.
Let em use steroids. They've already ruined all of the records in the record book.
lowering the mound would work too
Don't really care, but give the batter up to 10 strikes out to frustrate and to tire out the pitcher.
Hehehehe...
Or Gibson was jsut that good
Give out diversity strikes:
White Straight Male - 2 strikes
Black/Latino Straight Male - 3 strikes
White Gay Male - 3 strikes
Black/Latino Gay Male - 4 strikes
Just like affirmative action.
I'd say moving the mound back is the easiest, least disruptive idea. And it has the extra advantage of increasing reaction time for the pitcher on a ball batted back his way. Of course, this would probabaly just increase the number of ground outs.
Moving the mound back is the easiest, least disruptive option. Plus it gives the pitcher more time to react to a ball batted back at him. Of course this will probabaly just increase the number of ground outs.
Make all pitchers throw like girls, Obama style. Offensive bonanza!
I played some semi-pro ball back when. Emphasis on the "semi" as it was 10 bucks a game stuff. The coaches (and one scout) said I was at least a AA-level second baseman, but I never could figure out curve balls, and that's as far as my "career" ever went.
What's been happening is that many pitchers are getting quite good and mixing up speed, break, and location. If their control is on they're gonna get a lot of strikeouts, regardless of what you do to the ball or the mound.
Consider this: given the normal gravitational drop, the difference between 94 mph and 91 mph is just about the diameter of the baseball. That's without adding any spin or break. Hitting a baseball is just plain difficult, even when you know roughly what's coming.
You can tell right away whether you're dealing with a pitch in the fastball family or the curveball family, but what's hard to determine is exact speed and/or break. Location's a bit easier except from the 3/4 or sidearm guys, but it still depends on the pitcher's control and the ump's personal strike-zone that day.
Pitchers will adapt, and long-term statistics will prevail. If you use long-term average OBP (on-base-percentage) going back to 1876 when complete statistics began the numbers would predict exactly 22.7 perfect games. There have been 23.
Attempting to decrease strike-outs will cause pitchers to adapt. Maybe more ground-outs or pop-ups, but an out is an out.
"RecChief said...
Or Gibson was jsut that good"
He was great, a HOF, but he never came close to 1.12 era before or after.
Cavell on why the rules are the way they are in baseball.
Continues onto next page.
Certain ranges of difficulty must be achieved, certain recurrant crises must happen, in a way that can be followed lucidly.
Makes you appreciate the ball players of years past--when the mound was higher and pitchers owned the inside part of the plate. In 8 of his 13 seasons, Joe DiMaggio had fewer strikeouts than home runs. In '41, he struck out just 13 times in over 600 plate appearances. Yogi did it 5 times. Mays hit 51 homers in 55 and struck out 60 times. Pujols has come close. In '06 he hit 49 homers and had 50 Ks.
Joe Sewell (HOF) had only 114 strikeouts in 7132 at bats...
The mound has been raised and lowered before. It could be again, like someone already said. I'd do that before I'd mess with the mass or shape of the ball.
I'd rather not decrease strike outs. Juicing the offense in baseball is pandering to the short attention spans of low information fans.
"Changes were made to the ball on the eve of the '20s, and that's when the Dead-Ball Era turned into the Live-Ball Era..."
Cleveland SS Ray Chapman died after being hit in the head with a pitch by the Yankees' Carl Mays in August, 1920. Prior to that incident, a ball could be - and was - dirtied up by the pitcher and the infielders and was not required to be removed from play. The Chapman beaning led MLB to institute a rule requiring umpires to take a ball out of play once it became dirty, and was also at least partially responsible for the spitball ban that was enacted after the 1920 season.
It's no real surprise that a ball that is both easier to see and doesn't move as much would result in fewer strikeouts. Additionally, a ball that is "fresher" is likely to travel farther and faster off the bat.
Chapman is still the only player to die from an injury received during a game.
You could decrease strike outs by making Yadier Molina play DH on a junior league team....
More hits? Limit the number of pitching substitutions in a game.
Fewer strikouts? Mandate the DH for the National League.
What jdallen said at 9:43.
Make the strike zone the strike zone.
Lowering the mound would make a difference.
Moving the mound back would just result in more movement.
Back in the traditional days of baseball, which I remember, a pitcher went 8 innings and then a closer. He would pitch 9 innings many times during a season, and he would have more starts during the season than today. Gone are the 30 game winners, and there are fewer 20 game winners now.
Now you expect at least 3 and often 4 pitchers in a game.
For me the two biggest things wrong with baseball are PEDs and lousy, arrogant and inconsistent umpiring.
Why do we need less strikeouts?
Making the ball bigger would decrease a pitcher's ability to make the ball break, but it would also give a much greater advantage to pitchers with very large hands. Japanese pitcher's who come to MLB have to deal with this now, as the ball in Japanese professional leagues is smaller that in MLB.
The best solution in my mind is enforcing the strike zone as described in the rulebook. If you make pitchers throw actual strikes to get strike-outs there will be fewer of them. All this of course assumes that it is desirable to have fewer strikeouts.
* Lower the mound
* Enforce the strike-zone the way the rule book calls it
* Allow sharpened spikes on the shoes
* Resurrect Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Grover Alexander and Joe Jackson
Move pitcher's mound closer to plate; pitcher seeing batter is only human just like himself would make pitcher be more compassionate towards hitter & encourage him to throw not as hard. Of course hitter might feel same and thus less likely to want to hit the ball. That's where keeping hitters housed in concentration camps run by pitchers (not same ones as in in majors) comes into play!
The easy answer is to allow four strikes. But that probably slows the game down rather than speeding it up, which I take it is the idea to begin with. Electronic B&S calls might work if the problem is umpires feeling more in the game if they call a lot of strikes.
I read in one baseball book (I think it was Leo Durocher's) about a ball player who suggested this: "They should move back first base a step to eliminate all those close plays."
We could call strikeouts something else, and then there would be none.
There is no reason why a machine could not call balls and strikes. Just get rid of the ump behind the plate. When there is a play at the plate one of the infield umpires could cover it. Also, eliminate the DH. Pitchers who know they are coming to bat will be less likely to intimidate the batter.
All of the above, plus make them throw underhand. Then the transformation is complete.
So, instead of getting pretty much a sure out, the pitcher will get hit and get on base. Except for Greinke last year, pitchers don't get hit; the best player on the club gets hit.
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