To Save Baseball, MLB Needs to Stop the Things that Help Teams Win

Baseball has undergone a lot of changes recently, largely for the better. Many people, like myself, initially decried the new rules like pitch clocks, banning the shift and making it easier for runners to steal bases. Now I cannot remember the last time I watched a baseball game and even noticed the pitch clock, and yet the game is usually over in three hours or less, a marked improvement from the three to four-hour-plus slogs so much of baseball had become in the late 2010s.

The rule changes worked.

The reason those rules were necessary was in part because the strategies that teams pursued to win baseball games also made them bad entertainment products. Moneyball detailed how a new line of thinking around sabermetrics revolutionized the sport at the turn of the century, and it led us down a path to a very boring “three true outcomes” era (where the general goal is for every at bat to produce either a walk, a strikeout, or a home run).

“A walk is as good as a hit” is a line of thinking that took the league by storm (“no it’s not,” say the runners in scoring position), as the idea of playing small ball and trying to string hits together fell by the wayside in favor of singular moments where all the scoring came in bunches while MLB watched its attendance and viewership slip. After neutralizing this lethargic winning strategy to a degree by banning the shift and enabling teams to steal a lot more bases (although getting more balls in play is still a big problem), the league now has its eye on the pitcher’s mound for its next line of reforms.

Like with the three true outcomes, this is in direct response to a proven strategy to win baseball games.

Every pitcher ever, stretching from the nascent days of Walter Johnson to all the pitchers taking the mound today, is at their worst facing the batting order for the third time. Hitters simply just get better the third time around they see a pitcher, and modern strategy has completely centered around not allowing that to happen.

Which means pulling starting pitchers early. Gone are the days where you could turn a game on and see starters pitching into the 7th inning on a consistent basis, and now managers treat the top of the order the third time through like everyone is prime Barry Bonds. Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash provided one of the most vivid examples of how much this changed the game in the notorious Game 6 of the 2020 World Series.

Cash pulled star starter Blake Snell after 5 and 1/3 scoreless innings because the top of the order was “coming around the third time through.” The Rays were leading 1-0 at the time, and reliever Nick Anderson promptly gave up a double to leadoff hitter Mookie Betts and subsequently left the inning with the Rays trailing 2-1. The Los Angeles Dodgers would go on to win 3-1, clinching their first World Series championship since 1988.

The stage that brought us the legendary Jack Morris 10-inning Game 7 shutout masterpiece now has given way to managers ensuring that no one will ever see anything like that ever again.

If Cash would have tried to pull that nonsense in 1991, Morris would have beat him to within an inch of his life for even reaching out to try to take the ball from him. A central part of the appeal and lore of baseball is the legend of great starting pitchers going out and fighting a war against nine guys and fatigue, and the longer they lasted the larger their legend grew. Now you’re a legend if your manager lets you pitch into the 7th inning.

MLB wants to push back against this development, and the main idea they tossed out this week is an overreach to say the least, but the collective suite of rule changes proposed are a hopeful indicator that they are serious about reversing course on a path that I think is pretty clearly bad for pitchers who keep getting hurt, even if it is good for winning. Per ESPN:

“We are interested in increasing the amount of action in the game, restoring the prominence of the starting pitcher and reducing the prevalence of pitching injuries,” an MLB official told ESPN. “There are a whole host of options in addressing those issues.”

The league has discussed a limit to the size of pitching staffs and the double-hook DH, according to sources familiar with the discussion. There is some belief around the game, however, that one idea could be a panacea: requiring starting pitchers to go at least six innings every time they take the mound.

The six inning minimum is frankly, a batshit crazy idea that has no place in baseball. What if your starter gives up 10 runs in the first inning? You can’t pull them? What if they get hurt? What if they have to throw 200 pitches to get to six innings? This idea intrudes on the legitimacy of the game too much, which is why it surely won’t pass and is likely a trial balloon to gauge people’s feedback on this suite of proposals.

However, the double-hook Designated Hitter needs to be implemented yesterday (“get rid of the universal DH altogether!” I scream at a cloud every day). What the double-hook DH means is that the moment you pull your starter, you lose your designated hitter, and the rest of the game is subject to old National League rules where your pitcher now occupies your DH spot in the batting order. That would do a lot to incentivize teams to keep their starters in, especially the ones with cheap owners who won’t spend money to get veteran bench players and would be forced to play the cheap rookies not ready for consistent roles in the later innings every night.

Now instead of following the Tampa Bay Rays down the road to bullpen hell with a random new anonymous pitcher every few batters, teams would have to think twice about whether they really wanted to pull a starter at 80 pitches just because of the third-time through boogeyman in their heads. Shrinking pitching staffs (which means cutting jobs and is likely DOA with the player’s union) would also help, and if the MLBPA pushes back on reducing total roster spots, MLB could play around with the number of active pitchers allowed on gamedays to discourage teams from spilling their bullpen out there every day by choice. It would also incentivize teams to develop pitchers who can pace themselves over the course of six-plus innings, instead of the current trend of blowing up as many Ulnar Collateral Ligaments as possible in an effort to dominate the batting order the first two times through.

Over the last decade, baseball teams have been depriving us of some of the best things about baseball in their quest to win more games, like putting the ball in play and the final battle between a batter and pitcher who have seen everything from each other. As teams pursue ever more boring levels of hyper-efficiency to try to bring an inherently chaotic game under their control, only MLB can save us from the ruthless McKinsey-isation of this beautiful sport. Just please for the love of God leave the six-inning minimum in the trash where it belongs.