Sheinin: Velocity is strangling baseball — and its grip keep tightening
From Dave Sheinin at the Washington Post on May 21, 2019:
A flame-throwing relief pitcher enters a game — mid-inning, runners on base, tie score — sending the telecast to another commercial break, dialing back the tension in the stadium and pushing the game into its fourth hour. As he faces his first batter, two more relievers are warming up in the bullpen.
He takes huge breaths and lengthy pauses between pitches, as he gears up for each neck-straining, 100-mph heater or sharp-breaking slider. The hitter, fully aware he has little chance of making contact, likewise gears up to swing for the fences, just in case he does. The defense, anticipating the full-throttle hack, shifts acutely to the hitter’s pull side.
Within this scenario are the ingredients many believe are strangling the game of baseball: long games with little action, the growing reliance on relief pitchers at the expense of starters, the all-or-nothing distillation of the essential pitcher/hitter matchup. Those are some of the problems Major League Baseball is contemplating, with newly installed and proposed rule changes. But they are merely the symptoms.
What is strangling the sport — the actual disease — is velocity, pitchers’ unprecedented capacity to throw fast. The question facing the stewards of the game is what, if anything, to do about it.
Read the full article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/05/21/velocity-is-strangling-baseball-its-grip-keeps-tightening/?noredirect=on
Originally published: May 21, 2019. Last Updated: May 21, 2019.