
The Simple Technology That Accidentally Ruined Baseball - rfugger
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/baseball-is-boring-and-this-camera/379443/?single_page=true
======
codva
A well played 1-0 baseball game that takes 2 hours to complete is an absolute
joy to watch. A 1-0 game that lasts 3:30, not so much.

It's not the score or HRs or or the hits, it is the length of the game that is
ruining baseball. Get the games back to 2 - 2.5 hours and it will be fine.

~~~
adestefan
A classic take on the situation can be found at
[http://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134960461/its-time-for-
basebal...](http://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134960461/its-time-for-baseball-to-
stop-wasting-fans-time)

~~~
joezydeco
From a related article:

 _" According to MLB.com, the average time for a nine inning game in the 1970s
was around two hours and 30 minutes."_

 _" In 2010, games lasted on average about two hours and 55 minutes, according
to Baseball Prospectus. The average game has increased steadily in length
every season since, and contests in 2014 have averaged about 3:08."_

[http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/baseball-games-length-
pitche...](http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/baseball-games-length-pitchers-
pace-mlb-rules)

And lots more delays here:

[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1271178-major-league-
base...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1271178-major-league-baseball-why-
games-need-to-be-shortened-and-how-it-can-be-done)

------
thaumasiotes
> Both home runs-per-game and runs-per-game are down about 20 percent from
> their early-2000s highs. Strikeouts are up about a fifth.

There's an english style guideline that says if you need to use a concept more
than once, you should use a different word every time, lest you seem like the
sort of clod who only knows one word. But doing it with numbers feels like a
purposeful attempt to mislead the reader.

~~~
msherry
Not sure I understand what you're saying -- is it that runs-per-game and
homeruns-per-game are the same thing? Because they're not.

~~~
CJefferson
No, it's (I think) that 20 percent and a fifth are the same thing.

------
richardwigley
Interesting - in cricket there is a similar problem - the umpire has to judge
if the ball was going to hit the wicket (similar problem to going 'over the
plate'). They brought in a computer review system in and it also increased how
often you were out LBW (similar to 'struck out').

"[ the review system ] has increased the bowler’s potential target area by a
remarkable 70 per cent" [1]

However, it has improved things because it forced the player to do something
rather than block the ball and hope they wouldn't be given out. So, technology
helped in this case.

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/engla...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9166307/Decision-
Review-System-made-wicket-70-per-cent-bigger.html)

~~~
lennel
Interesting article. DRS has revamped the motto "When in doubt not out"
considerably. I also think it has helped reverse swing bowlers (Steyn, Harris)
more than pure swing bowlers (Anderson) through the length of the innings.
Test cricket I do think has resulted more because of drs, but also because
teams have become more aggressive (a change made by the great aussie team
under steve waugh).

~~~
wycx
It started under Mark Taylor

------
prof_hobart
Assuming that this is all true, and that MLB wants to do something about it,
isn't there a simple solution? Simply raise the actual strike zone to put it
in line with where umpires used to judge it.

------
idlewords
This article reinforces my theory that baseball is just a beard for people who
love statistics, but don't want the stigma of being called a math nerd.

It's the only explanation for how a sport this dull could survive outside the
British Empire.

~~~
hvs
You seem willing to assume that there are millions of more math nerds in the
U.S. than I am.

~~~
NotAtWork
Given the way that many of my friends who are in to sports talk, I'm inclined
to say it's statistics for the math phobic and fantasy sports is DnD for the
geek phobic.

------
chrisblackwell
It's not JUST about the strike zone being enforced so heavily. The number of
pitchers a batter sees per game is higher than it has ever been. Many teams
are opting for a shorter bench and deeper bullpen. Toronto this year carried
an 8-man bullpen for most of the season.

------
shpx
The whole point of sports is not about perfectly enforcing the rules. I
remember an article a while back on here about speed walking, and how a
staggering majority of speed walkers actually violate the main rule of speed
walking (you can't have both feet off the ground), and while that rule could
easily be enforced with cameras it isn't because it would just ruin the sport.

It seems to me like the easiest thing to do would be change the rules,
bringing the strike zone back to what it was. It'll most likely cause outrage,
but ironically you'd be going back to the way things were before. It all comes
back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly follow some
set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining.

~~~
jacquesm
> It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly
> follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining.

The participants or the audience?

I'm trying hard to imagine a world where the rules of chess are changed to
turn it into a more spectator friendly sport.

~~~
maxerickson
I imagine time limits on moves are partly because of spectators.

~~~
jacquesm
I think those are mostly to make sure a game will actually progress rather
than that one party can force a losing game to a standstill.

------
bronbron
I think they should follow through on reducing to 7 innings per game (with all
the rules about extra innings still applicable).

Sure, it would more-or-less destroy relief pitching as a profession, but
relief pitchers are basically the placekickers of MLB anyway (people know the
really good ones, the rest no one cares unless they mess up royally).

It would shorten the game enough to be enjoyable, and people would get to
watch their favorite pitchers play entire games, similar to football and
basketball (with obvious exceptions for one-sided games).

~~~
peeters
I expect relief pitching would quickly re-enter the picture. Starting pitchers
pace themselves to go 7-8 innings (100 pitches is the unwritten rule, as much
as I hate it). They might be able to deliver a higher quality start if they
are targeting 80 pitches (or 5-6 innings) instead.

------
InclinedPlane
This sort of thing is a fundamental problem of professional sports, and one of
the major reasons why I'm sort of agnostic about the very idea of pro sports
in general.

Sports are supposed to be a game, they are supposed to be non-serious, but
also competitive. Therein lies the fundamental conflict at the heart of all
sports, especially at a professional level. It can quickly become difficult to
find the right balance between utter seriousness and playfulness when it comes
to sports. This gets even worse when millions of fans and billions of dollars
play a role. They tip the scale from the playful side to the serious/business
side. Sport stops being play and becomes more and more a job. A thing to be
executed to the utmost at all cost.

That's why you get massive steroid and other drug use, which has been a
problem in all sports for perhaps half a century, if not longer, though not
widely known. That's where you get fans whose emotional well-being are tied to
whether their favorite team has won or lost recently (domestic violence is
heavily affected by sports outcomes, for example). Then you have sports riots,
and so on. It's quite a mess all around, but it's not exactly an easy problem
to fix.

~~~
maxerickson
I went and watched a sports riot once. The majority of the people around were
like me, there to watch.

It was a small minority that were setting police cars on fire.

I don't think the sports allegiance caused the riots, they just happened to be
the thing that the riot coalesced around. There was certainly a feeling in the
air that there was going to be some riots in that city (friends and I drove in
from ~1 hour away), and I think many of the actors went there to take
advantage of the (so to speak) opportunity, not because they were upset about
the loss.

------
Pxtl
Sounds like they need to change the rules, not the cameras. If the strike zone
is too big for entertaining play, shrink it.

------
timdellinger
The solution is to lower the pitcher's mound... this is a variable that has
been tweaked a number of times in baseball already! It has been shown that a
higher pitcher's mound favors the pitcher. A lower mound would shift the
balance a bit to the batter, leading to more hits, and thus a more exciting
game.

------
jazzyb
If you enjoyed this article and find the unintended side-effects of new
technology fascinating, I would encourage you to read anything by the author
Neil Postman -- particularly his works _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ and
_Technopoly_.

------
jimhefferon
Equating runs scored with game interest is mistaken.

~~~
fredleblanc
Agreed. This article does a lot of comparing to 2006, in which _a lot_ of
technology has happened — not just on the field but off. From what I've seen,
many people "watching" games these days aren't doing just that, they're
multitasking with three or four other things: checking feeds, timelines,
stats, other game scores, fantasy updates, etc.

To me, in-game changes seem to be only a minor contributor. More so, I'd like
to hear more about how people are so easily distracted these days.
Notifications for this and that, work emails checked all night, game on in the
background while surfing reddit or ESPN or whatever. It's becoming extremely
easy to forget you're watching baseball at all.

------
jonifico
I'd rather watch golf. OK, that was a bit over the top, but seriously, I don't
have all that passion in the sport in order to wait for 30 minutes or so for
someone to bat the ball... and see it's an out.

------
cbr
Why not just shrink the strike zone a little?

~~~
peeters
It's possible, but it's also difficult. The strike zone is not a static box;
it's relative to the batter. Thus, the umpire needs to be able to compare the
location of the pitch to the batter himself, and so the zone should be defined
relative to points on the batter.

Currently, the points of reference on the batter are the knees for the bottom
and the team letters on the jersey for the top (though technically it's the
midpoint between belt and shoulders). These are convenient reference points.
Shrinking the strikezone a bit would yield something like "two inches above
the knees to 1/3rd the distance from the belt to the shoulder", which would
require more explicit rather than subconscious analysis from the ump.

~~~
NotAtWork
Why not just fully use computers, then?

If the problem is that an incomplete switch to technology left us in a
chimeric state where we have the worst of both worlds, why not remove one of
the two? If we remove the cameras, old umpire error will move the box up; if
we remove the umpires from pitch calling, the new computers will have no
trouble doing a bunch of math and moving the box up.

This seems more like an incomplete implementation of an idea, rather than a
fundamental flaw.

~~~
peeters
> Why not just fully use computers, then?

Because that will kill interest in watching the game much more thoroughly than
a more accurate strike zone. Viewers like the subtle things, like that
moment's pause that leaves viewers on the edge of their seat before the ump
rings the batter up on a called third strike.

Plus, imperfection causes water cooler buzz much more than perfection (people
LOVE complaining about missed calls).

