As Royals’ COVID-altered season winds down, let’s talk about how it went for baseball

No sport likes to play up its tradition quite as much as baseball, but when it came to getting back on the field in 2020, no sport was more willing to throw tradition out the window.

All leagues have had to make concessions to the coronavirus crisis this year in order to play their games, but baseball was willing to change the game itself.

So how have those 2020 changes affected the games we watch?

Let’s start off with something big.

Runner on second in extra innings

Any time a game goes into extra innings, it’s amost guaranteed that someone will say “free baseball” — which sounds great unless you’ve already played 127 games that summer.

After nine innings of baseball, the people who have to be at the park every day are probably ready to go home ... and that includes most of the players. They usually show up not too long after lunchtime for a game that starts at 7:05 p.m. and ends three hours later. That’s a long day at the office.

But wanting to go home early can be problematic.

In extra innings, a lot of hitters go to the plate trying to end the game with one swing. They don’t have the patience to get a runner on, move him into scoring position and then figure out a way to get him in. As the late, great former umpire Steve Palermo once said to me: “Everybody’s trying to end it, nobody wants to start it.”

Pitchers and catchers — at least the smart ones — know that, so they’ll pitch batters on the outside part of the plate and let those batters try to pull the ball for a homer. If a batter puts an outside pitch in play to the pull-side of the field, most of the time that results in a weak swing and a poorly hit ball.

Everybody trying to pull the ball no matter where it’s located can result in a lot of routine grounders, fly balls and strikeouts — which extend extra-inning games.

Baseball has tried to shorten those extra-inning marathons this year by starting a runner on second base, which in theory — and get used to that phrase — would encourage more teams to play for a single run and more batters to concentrate on getting the ball in play, moving runners and settling for singles.

In reality, it hasn’t always worked that way.

Bunting is becoming a lost. And even if teams give up an out to move the runner from second to third base, too many hitters strike out and fail to get the ball in play. Even with a runner a single away from scoring, lots of guys are still swinging for the fences.

Everybody uses the DH

Without pitchers going to the plate, it’s no surprise that there were fewer sacrifice bunts than ever this summer.

Not having a pitcher in the lineup also changes the role of the 8-hole hitter. In the past, 8-hole hitters might’ve been expected to swing at a borderline pitch because they had a better chance with a borderline pitch than the pitcher did with a good one.

Now the 8-hole hitter is probably the 9-hole guy, with the leadoff hitter behind him. In that scenario, the bottom-of-the-order hitter is probably seeing better pitches and doing more damage. If a National League pitcher’s ERA took a jump this season, that’s part of the explanation.

Think about it for two seconds and none of that’s surprising … but this next element might be.

Time of 9-inning games

Baseball is well aware it has a problem: Games are getting longer and fewer fans are showing up to watch. This season, MLB tried to shorten games by allowing seven-inning doubleheaders.

But the average length of nine-inning games is actually up from last year.

There are a whole bunch of reasons this is happening, but let’s pick on just one: More pitchers are being used per game than ever before. The figure, on average, is currently 4.44 pitchers per game; back in 1989, the last year the average number of pitchers used per game was under three, it was 2.88.

And since we didn’t have to watch all those trips to the mound and all those extra pitchers warm up, nine-inning games in 1989 were about 22 minutes shorter than they are now.

Seven-inning games

This season baseball tried to cram as many games as possible into a limited number of days. One of their ideas for doing that was playing seven-inning games during doubleheaders.

Huge difference, and it changes the balance of power when it comes to bullpens.

This season the Royals are averaging about 4 2/3 innings out of their starting pitchers. (Put an asterisk next to that number because manager Mike Matheny has on occasion used an “opener” — a reliever who starts a game and only goes an inning or two.) For comparison’s sake, last year Royals starters averaged about 5 1/3 innings per start.

To keep the math easy, and because it doesn’t change the point, let’s split the difference and say the Royals’ legit starters give the team five innings per start on average.

If doubleheader games were nine innings, that means the bullpen would — on average — have to cover about four innings per game. Make those doubleheader games seven innings and the Royals’ bullpen only has to cover two innings per game, and four innings to complete a doubleheader.

If you’re thinking the rules are the same for both teams so what’s the difference, stop thinking that. If I’ve got the deeper bullpen, I want to play those extra two innings because you’re going to run out of quality relievers before I do.

All this is pretty obvious, but when they made the change I don’t recall MLB saying they were going to tilt the playing field in favor of teams with mediocre bullpens.

World Series at a neutral site

The NBA is holding its 2020 playoffs in a neutral site, but the height of the basket and length of the court hasn’t changed. One of the things that makes baseball unique is all the ballparks’ dimensions are different.

Imagine how the NBA would change if each team got to decide how high the basket would be. Imagine how different the NFL would be if each team got to decide how long the field would be. (And after watching Patrick Mahomes Sunday, I’d say 120 yards seems about right.)

The fact that each baseball park is unique allows teams to acquire players best suited to that park. The teams that do the best job of building an appropriate roster have an advantage in their home games.

For instance: The Royals have a huge outfield, so they can acquire players who run well and cover lots of territory. They have an inherent advantage when an opposing team decides to value offense over defense and puts bad defenders in that huge outfield. At home, the Royals were 10-13 as of earlier this week — not great, but away from The K, they were 11-19.

Holding the 2020 World Series at a neutral site — the Texas Rangers’ new park — takes home-field advantage out of the equation unless the Rangers make it to the Series. And since they’re currently last in the AL West, that seems unlikely.

Like just about every other baseball fan in America, I’m glad they got back on the field, but we shouldn’t forget how much they had to change the game just to play the game this season.

This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 10:25 AM.