Ain’t broke, don’t ‘fix’ it: Major League Baseball is about to make the game worse

Major League Baseball has announced some rule changes that will be implemented in the independent Atlantic League. It’s not a huge leap of logic to assume that if things go OK there, we’ll see some of those same rules applied to big-league baseball.

MLB has a problem. In 2018, paid attendance went down for the sixth year in a row and the ratings for the World Series — baseball’s biggest showcase — were lousy. In terms of popularity, baseball is trending the wrong direction.

Pardon me for being cynical — at my age you’re either cynical or oblivious — but it seems to me that the people in charge of baseball don’t give the south end of a north-bound rat for the game’s traditions as long as the game makes money.

When players were using PEDs, blowing home run records out of the water and making a shambles of the Hall of Fame, the people in charge of baseball didn’t much care because those home runs put butts in the seats.

But cut down on paid attendance and the revenue it produces, and something has to be done.

And in this case the cure might be worse than the disease.

The problem

Since the introduction of analytics, baseball games have gotten longer, fewer balls have been put in play and there’s less action on the base paths.

Too many teams are using the sabermetrically-approved method of scoring runs: standing around waiting for the guy at the plate to walk or hit a home run.

Games lack action.

If you’re mainly interested in the numbers baseball produces, that’s OK; but if you actually like to watch baseball games, it’s a problem. One manager — a man not named Ned Yost — said the product MLB is currently putting on the field is “unwatchable,” and that’s straight from a guy being paid to watch it.

Baseball hasn’t helped itself by extending postseason commercial breaks and allowing ads to be shown on a split screen during innings. They’ve been cramming too many passengers on the Gravy Train.

The solution

Here are some of the ideas the people who run big-league baseball have come up with to solve the problems they’ve created:

Use a computer to call balls and strikes.

Taking the human element out of calling balls and strikes might seem like a good idea to some, but problems remain.

It’s already been pointed out that a pitcher could bounce a pitch five feet in front of the plate and if the ball then went through the strike zone the computer would think it was a strike. If that happens, umpires can overrule the computer system.

But we still have to take someone’s word that the system has been calibrated correctly. The guys in charge of technology sunk the Titanic, blew up a couple of space shuttles and recently crashed an airliner, but don’t worry — they’ll try extra hard when it comes to calling balls and strikes at a baseball game.

Even if the system works perfectly (a big assumption), the art of receiving a pitch will go out the window.

Watching a catcher receive a 97 mph fastball with his mitt and body angled so the pitch appears to catch the corner of the plate is a thing of beauty. Using a computer to call balls and strikes means it will no longer matter if a catcher is a Rembrandt with a catcher’s mitt — an Earl Scheib will get the same calls.

No mound visits unless the pitcher is injured or being pulled from the game.

Great pitching coaches are able to spot minor flaws in a pitcher’s delivery, visit the mound and with a minor adjustment get the pitcher back on track.

Without mound visits, a pitcher who’s getting shelled will have to take his beating or get pulled. If the manager doesn’t want to use another pitcher in a lost cause, how entertaining will it be to see a pitcher give up a six-run inning while waiting for three batters to hit laser beams at somebody?

Personally, I’d rather watch a pitching coach walk to the mound, tell the pitcher to shorten his stride and then get back to a competitive game.

No shifts.

The new rules say two infielders have to be on each side of second base. This one might seem to be on the players; if they’d learn to bunt or hit the ball to the opposite field, teams would stop shifting.

But if teams and their analytics departments are going to overvalue home runs and undervalue the ability to manipulate a bat, players will keep swinging for the fences. If teams paid for bunt singles, players would learn to bunt.

A three-batter minimum, unless the inning ends.

I have to watch a lot of baseball and get as irritated as anybody when Buck Showalter decides to show us what a great manager he is by changing pitchers with two outs in the ninth inning of 10-run blowout.

But there are times when a manager needs to use three pitchers to get three outs in a crucial situation.

Watching a good manager use his bullpen to navigate his way through a lineup while the manager in the opposing dugout counters those moves with pinch hitters is another form of baseball art that will be obliterated.

The pitching rubber moves back to 62 feet, six inches.

This is being done to help batters get the ball in play because it turns out watching batters strike out and trudge back to the dugout isn’t all that entertaining.

But batters can get 100 mph fastballs and nasty sliders in play — or at least lay off them — if they cut down on their swings. That means choking up on the bat and not swinging for the fences, but fewer and fewer hitters are willing to do that because home runs are valued and making contact is not.

It used to be cause for embarrassment to strike out 100 times in a season, but these days nobody seems to care if Giancarlo Stanton strikes out 211 times as long as he hits 38 home runs.

There are more rules changes afoot, but by now you should get the point: The people who run baseball have caused problems by overvaluing analytics, squeezing advertising into every momentary gap in action and slowing the game down while the umpires on the field consult with the Wizard of Oz in New York.

Some recent “improvements” to the game — no contact on plays at the plate or taking out the pivot man on a double play, for instance — have actually made the game worse.

Now they want to fix the problems they created by eliminating more of what makes baseball beautiful. So does that mean we have to accept moving the mound to centerfield or we’re stuck with three-and-a-half-hour ballgames?

Nope. There is a better way.

Root, root, root for the home team

Once someone has been successful, less-original people want to imitate that success. Without the Beatles, there would have been no Monkees.

Imitation is the sincerest form of thievery.

Once analytics pronounced OPS (on-base plus slugging) the Holy Grail of run scoring, almost every team wanted players who walked and hit home runs.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your baseball persuasion) that approach wasn’t going to work for your hometown Royals. The size of Kauffman Stadium limits home runs, and if pitchers aren’t afraid of the long ball, they tend to come right at hitters.

So the Royals had to pinpoint another route to the top of Everest, and they found it in speed, defense and great relievers. They played the kind of baseball — making contact, stealing bases, moving runners — that used to make the game exciting.

When the Royals made it to postseason in 2014, a former Royals coach — a guy the team had previously fired — called me and said the Royals were bringing baseball back. They were playing the game that coach grew up loving and proving it could still work.

The 2018 Royals appeared to get off-track with their free-agent signings. But now they appear to be getting back to the speed-and-defense mix that recently proved so successful.

So if you like exciting baseball, you should root, root, root for the home team to make that formula work ... otherwise, the people who screwed up baseball to begin with will make more misguided attempts to fix it.