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In the early days of baseball, it was considered cheating for a pitcher to try to deceive a batter. His job was to serve a pitch, underhanded, to start the run of play. Overhand pitches and curveballs? Heresy!<\/p>\n
But the game is always in motion, constantly evolving. At one point in the recent past, the idea of a pitch clock might have led to your forced removal from a ballpark. Yet, we will see a pitch clock next season. MLB is changing a bunch of rules. Pitch clocks, bigger bases, banned shifts.<\/p>\n
How far is too far? What might the future hold? What unpopular opinion today might someday become common in baseball?<\/p>\n
With the evolution of baseball in mind, here are some ideas to tweak the game, some from the past and some with an eye toward the future. Some of these are dumb. Others may just win us a Nobel Prize. What do you think? And what changes would you make? Let\u2019s dig in.<\/p>\n
How absurd is this idea?<\/strong> Depends on who you ask. Levi actually made former player\/GM\/TV analyst Tom Grieve angry by asking him this question, so for baseball lifers, it\u2019s borderline offensive. But we maintain that it\u2019s logical!<\/p>\n Would MLB ever do it?<\/strong> It\u2019s technically legal, so MLB has already allowed for it. But would managers ever do it? Joe Maddon isn\u2019t currently employed, so \u2026 probably not.<\/p>\n This will sound antithetical to the entire point of competitive sports, but hear me out: teams should quit more.<\/p>\n We\u2019re not talking about \u201cEh, it\u2019s 7-4 in the fourth inning, and I am le tired \u2026\u201d This also isn\u2019t referring to blowouts where a manager has a long reliever who hasn\u2019t pitched in a week and needs to get some work to keep his arm stretched out.<\/p>\n But what about this scenario: It\u2019s 15-2 in the sixth inning. You\u2019re a manager whose middle- and long-relief guys are already a bit over-taxed from a rough stretch, and all you have left is your set-up guys and closer, and a position player or two. Is there really any benefit in burning your good arms in a game that has long since been decided? Do you love the idea of trotting position players out to do something their arms aren\u2019t really conditioned for? Are you going to keep your defense on their feet for another hour wasting energy just to prove a point that you\u2019re not a quitter?<\/p>\n Or should you \u2014 in the barely-intelligible words of the great Farmer Fran of \u201cWaterboy\u201d fame \u2014 \u201clive to play another day\u201d?<\/p>\n There hasn\u2019t been a forfeit in baseball since 1995, and only one MLB team has ever done it deliberately (the 1977 Orioles). But think of the benefits: you keep your back-end relievers fresh for tomorrow\u2019s game, which you currently have a realistic chance to win, unlike today. And at a time when we\u2019re all trying to figure out the best way to keep arms healthy, you\u2019re not putting your tired arms at any risk of injury. You give your position players a bit of a break and<\/em> you boost your run differential; instead of losing by 13 runs, you lose 9-0 (as per the official rules).<\/p>\n The best argument against this isn\u2019t based on grit or machismo. It\u2019s based on pure economics. Forfeits are an early end to the day at the ballpark, so teams would theoretically sell fewer concessions, and fans would be upset. So for \u201cfinancial reasons,\u201d it\u2019s not \u201cfeasible.\u201d But look: if it\u2019s 15-2 in the sixth inning, fans saw what they came to see. Nobody is sitting on the edge of their seat to see how this turns out. They\u2019ve already hit the concessions stand out of pure disinterest and boredom. A 15-2 game is not short, so they\u2019ve gotten their money\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n Wave the flag \u2014 not as a quitter, but as a tactical genius.<\/p>\n How absurd is this idea?<\/strong> It\u2019s not that absurd!<\/p>\n Would MLB ever do it?<\/strong> They should!<\/p>\n Per Section 5.05 of MLB\u2019s official rules, a batter becomes a runner when he hits a fair ball. Off any pitch, period. But if a pitch touches the ground and bounces through the strike zone, it is necessarily considered a \u201cball.\u201d So, a batter can take advantage of a bounced pitch but not a pitcher? This is bogus.<\/p>\n In the Dominican Republic, kids play a game called La Plaquita. It translates as \u201clittle plate\u201d because they use a crimped license plate (or the like) standing on an edge behind the batter. If the pitcher can knock over la plaquita, then the batter is out. Pitches routinely bounce off the street, kinda like cricket. Vladimir Guerrero Sr. learned his aggressive approach as a hitter playing the game as a kid.<\/p>\n Corey Dickerson has hit three (!) doubles (!) on bounced pitches in his career. It\u2019s a skill. Why not extend that skill both ways? Let the pitcher use the ground, too.<\/p>\nBounced strikes<\/h2>\n