I had a lot of time to find an epiphany Thursday evening, when I watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees 6-3 in the eighth game of nine rounds this season to last at least three hours and 25 minutes.
Games like these are exactly the reason why Rob Manfred should shorten the regular season.
Like most people with a casual interest in baseball, I am generally not the type to think that Manfred has good ideas. And the idea of potentially shortening the season at 154 or 156 games, according to a story in athletics this week, may be born from its worst idea: to extend baseball to 32 teams after the next work stoppage (once again, why would someone want to join a club in which the 30 current owners all cry poverty?) And which would radically realize the high geographies.
But a season of 154 games would be a rare olive branch for traditionalists. The Major Baseball League went from a calendar of 154 games to a calendar of 162 games with the first wave of expansion in 1962. It would also continue the tradition of the Manfred era of the power brokers offering superficial and largely ineffective solutions to the problems they created.
The Red Sox and the Yankees combined to leave 24 runners on the basis Thursday evening while going 5 against 26 with runners in a score position. Unsurprisingly, their nine points in total were by far the least scored in a match lasting at least three hours and 25 minutes this season.
Such ineffectiveness of late August could be addressed, at least theoretically, by geographic realignment and six or eight additional days of leave per season.
Except that we are now in a third season in which the rules intended to increase the offensive have not really increased the offensive.
Remember how the pitch clock, the wider bases and the limited releases were going to bring the action back to a slowed game in search of three real results? Well, the games are faster. There were 314 nine -round games which lasted at least three hours and 25 minutes in 2022, the last year before the change of rule.
But an appearance on the plate ended with a home run, a walk or withdrawal to the withdrawal of 33.4% of the time between Friday, the same figure as in 2022. In a funny manner, it is down 34.5% in 2023. It will be almost certainly the eighth consecutive consecutive season in which between 33 and 35 percent of the appearances of the plaque will end with one of the three results.
The stolen base attempts are 0.92 per game entering on Friday, online with the last two seasons and up compared to the 0.68 attempts in 2022. But it is far from the figures of 1995 (1.04 attempts per match) and 1985 (1.08 attempts). The Jose Caballero of the Yankees is the only player with 40 stolen bases, which means that it is probably the fifth time in the last seven full seasons, no one has reached 50 flights.
So why would a slightly shorter calendar improve how the teams work with runners in a rating position? The difficulties of the Red Sox and Yankees on Thursday were an extreme example of the problem of the league. The teams entered on Friday by hitting .253 with runners in the rating position, which means that it is probably the fifth time since 2014, the average league scale in such situations is 0.253 or 0.252. Before 2014, the average of major leagues with runners in a score position was not 0.252 or less since 1972.
So go ahead, Rob. Shorten the calendar. As you have already proven, it is much easier to make cosmetic changes than to really count on your colleagues power brokers to change the way the game is played.
