Time for Baseball to Make a Radical Change: Blow Up the Ninth Inning and Let the Stars Shine
Baseball is a game of individual accomplishments, though it pretends to be a team sport. Basketball, world football (soccer), hockey, and American football all depend on teamwork and chemistry to a greater extent than baseball does. In baseball, the only real synergy needed is the pitcher-catcher relationship, along with fielders having good enough communication that they don’t crash into each other or throw the ball away. Beyond those things, players largely play their own games within the context of a team sport.
And yet, Major League Baseball in the United States has lost ground in today’s entertainment climate. It has fallen not only because one game can take four hours and seem deadly boring when compared with other entertainment options. It has failed because it is not doing the one thing these other sports do best: market the individuals. People around the world know Cristiano Ronaldo and they know LeBron James, but most baseball players are only known within their local markets.
How many Major League Baseball athletes appeared in ESPN’s 2017 ranking of the world’s 100 most popular athletes? Zero.
The world’s 100 most popular athletes of 2017, according to ESPN, factoring in compensation, social media following, and other measures. Cristiano Ronaldo was # 1 and is not pictured, but these are the rest of the Top 25. Also not pictured because they did not make the 100 list: any baseball players. Source: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/worldfame100/espn-world-fame-100-top-ranking-athletes
Where are the Stars? Sitting on the Bench
Today’s entertainment is built for stars. It’s built for those individual accomplishments that baseball produces so well. People want to see their stars go out and win a game. It’s those highlights and those personalities that sell a sport. Today, each one is packaged and sold as an entertainment option.
Baseball is mortgaging its future because the stars people love are sitting on the bench near the end of most games. That is not true in other comparable sports. In soccer/football, your star striker has a chance to put the ball in the goal, evening the score or moving ahead in the final minutes. In American football, game winning drives are orchestrated and executed by the quarterback and wide receivers, typically the sport’s best known stars. In basketball, when you need a score to even the game or pull ahead in the 4th quarter, you are you going to call? You’ll put the ball in the hands of your best shooter, who is the team’s brightest star.
Would Texas fans really want Gallo and Beltre in the dugout rather than the batter’s box when there’s a chance to tie and win the game? Source: MLB.TV screenshot
But that’s not often true in baseball. Each team has nine players on the field and must progress through its lineup from start to finish each time. When the game is on the line in the ninth inning and one player has a chance to be a hero or succumb to the final out, baseball teams cannot bring in their best players because the lineup order is fixed. They are stuck running through the whole batting lineup in sequence (though they may substitute pinch hitters for some of the original players).
Using nine different hitters means that there is a greater than 88% chance that your best player will not be coming to bat when your team needs him the most (that percentage drops if there are fewer than two outs). The batter who comes up with a chance to tie or win the game in a clutch situation could easily be your team’s eighth or ninth place hitter, typically the worst hitters on your team. That doesn’t make sense in today’s entertainment market.
What if baseball changed the rules to allow the manager of the team that’s behind in the score to reset the lineup for the ninth inning (the last regular inning) of every game?
Major League Baseball’s Competition Committee (which recommends rule changes) has considered such a proposal. To be honest, it’s probably a fringe proposal they barely even considered, but this proposal has the power to bring the game to life in new ways. They should take a close look.
Resetting the lineup so that Cody Bellinger could hit in the 9th inning against a top closer? I'd tune in. Creative Commons via Flickr by Minda Haas Kuhlman.
Positive Impacts of the Proposed Change
Yankee fans, picture this. Instead of going into the ninth inning having to rely on Ronald Torreyes and Danny Espinosa (who?), you could be looking at a “must watch” event. Imagine if the Yankees’ manager had the power to reset the lineup and send up hitters like Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Greg Bird in the same inning. If any of them got on base (without hitting the ball over the fence and ending the game), then Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius would get their shots. Or maybe the manager would play the hot hand or start with a high on-base-percentage guy who could get a walk and steal a base to prepare for the big boppers.
Who wouldn’t want to see that? I’d be watching it every night and I’d pay for channels I’ve never seen the point of ordering before.
Who wouldn’t want to see J.D. Martinez come up in the 9th inning with a chance to tie the game with one swing?
Relief pitchers would need to be absolutely dominant. Closers would become an even more valuable commodity. And best of all, those daily confrontations would become the stuff of legend. A 50 home run hitter faces off against a stopper throwing 100 mile per hour gas. The best in the game, on display for all to see.
Best of all, baseball would have something (and someone) to sell. The ninth inning would become like American football’s red zone. People would tune in just to see what happens. And they would see their marketable stars being given a chance to become heroes. The only names in baseball that any fan can remember today would have a chance to trend on social media, dominate the highlights, and become the bankable faces that baseball lacks.
Negative Impacts of the Proposed Change
Tradition. The poetry of baseball is firmly rooted in tradition. The green grass, the smell of peanuts, the crack of the bat. As a true fan, I love every bit of that tradition. But tradition is the reason that the game has evolved at a glacial pace and now stands out of step with modern entertainment.
Major League Baseball’s average fan is 57 years old. The National Football League’s is 50. With more younger people to bring down the average, the National Basketball Association’s average viewer age is 42. Major League Soccer’s is 40.
Tradition needs to evolve, as it did when the American League (one of the two leagues in Major League Baseball) introduced the designated hitter to hit in place of the pitcher. That improves offense and it made the game more interesting for a lot of viewers. Personally, I am a longtime baseball fan and I love tradition. I love the way the game is now. I love the chess matches in the National League that involve using the pitcher’s spot in the batting order. But 95% of fans these days have no patience for that anymore.
If Jose Altuve has three hits in a game, it would be magic to bring him up in the 9th inning with a chance to get a fourth hit + steal his way into scoring position.
Tradition evolved again in 1997 with the introduction of interleague play, something that should have happened decades earlier. Tradition evolved again when the wild card team was introduced to the playoffs and a second wild card team was added in 2012. Traditionalists screamed in opposition that their sport was being ruined. But ask anyone today and they’ll tell you those changes have been tremendously popular. They probably saved baseball from having an 80 year old average fan.
The other downside is that average players will not get the chance to step up and deliver in clutch situations. I will miss that. But it is a small price to pay for giving fans the stars they deserve. And that makes for better entertainment. Letting players wear retro uniforms one day and limiting the number of coaching visits to the pitching mound might be good ideas, but they won’t get people excited enough to save baseball.
Time to Get Radical
Baseball today has become a local and regional sport in the United States. It’s no longer a national one. And only 7% of Major League Baseball’s audience is below the age of 18. The team owners are making money today from local TV deals, but what about tomorrow? With an average fan age of 57, baseball will be gone tomorrow if the league does not make major changes. And if one change had the power to make this sport “must watch” on the national and even global stage, this is it.
Baseball should adopt the proposal to allow the team behind in the score to reset its lineup order for the ninth inning. It would change everything and reinvigorate the sport.
Sources:
Proposal to change the 9th inning batting order: https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2018/02/21/mlb-exec-ninth-inning-batting-rule
Average age of fans: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-sports-with-the-oldest-and-youngest-tv-audiences-2017-06-30
Top photo: PNC Park, Pittsburgh. Public domain from Pixabay.
You have made such an elegant analysis of baseball game...I couldn't dare to disagree...I always thought that I hated baseball cause I am an south asian and we south asians love cricket...But you did gave solid reasons about baseball's demise as a game.
Cricket and baseball are step brothers....
I would love to have your thoughts about Cricket...I believe the cricket is progressing very well despite being almost same as baseball...
Perhaps the introduction of 20/20 format is doing the trick for cricket...Any thoughts by you about cricket...???
Cricket seems like a wonderful sport. It's good for patient fans, just like baseball's. Making changes is difficult, but sometimes it's the way to move the game forward.
Everytime I watch a baseball game I fall asleep. This article should be forwarded to MLB head office I'm Twitter spamming this one.
5 day cricket was killing the game, so they introduced 1 day formate and now realizing the need for change they introduced 20/20 format...
So you are right progressive changes are always necessary!!!
Time will tell if 20/20 is the progressive change cricket needed. At the moment it is the flashy new toy and attracting a lot of attention. I would still like to see the 5 day tests continue at a high standard but the 2 formats are not complimentary at all!
Sake of justice it is worth noting, that “relatives” cricket and paws there are around the world. In America it's baseball in Finland is pesapallo, Germany - slugball in Romania - Oina, Cuba - pilot, and certainly isn't everything. All these games share similarities in the rules and the main attributes: the bat and the ball.
Yeh perhaps a shorter 20/20 style version of Baseball would help it to regain appeal!
Experimenting isn't that bad afterall!
wow, we both are thinking about the sports. I haven't played baseball in my life but I have come to know about it from my friend who is visiting USA right now.
In Pakistan, we are having our Cricket Super leauge and everyone could be seen sitting in the front of TV screens and excited.
One thing I certainly know is that baseball has been in the shadow of most popular sport, because a lot of things isn't just right about the organization of the sport first, the sport needs re-branding, they need repacking of their system of operation, nobody wants to sit four hours for something not even more thrilling.
It's a make or Mar situation and things had gotta change for baseball to be something people want to reckon with
One of the things that I think could help baseball be more competitive would be to have a hard salary cap again. Yes, they have some form of luxury tax, but if they had a hard cap like the NFL, one team wouldn't be able to stack the deck by having a disproportionate number of star players. Then any team would be more likely to have a shot at winning or reaching the playoffs. Having superteams like the Red Sox and Yankees is bad for the sport in the long-run. If the same teams win over and over, they get the international fans, but you don't have the local support for the other teams. People are not as interested because "the Yankees are going to win again, so who cares!"
Just my thoughts. :)
Remember Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Ken Griffey Jr, etc.? We need competitions and stars like these back in the game. Back in the day the Cubes could be 10 runs down but if Sosa hit a homer in the 9th inning it was a good day. I don’t know how to capture that energy but I’d love to see it come back to the game.
Maybe due to instant entertainment, Netflix and cell phones it’ll never happen but maybe we could tweak the game and bring back that energy.
I'm guessing you didn't happen to catch the Astros last season. They did exactly what you are talking about time and time again. It was one of the most amazing baseball seasons I've ever followed as a diehard fan of the sport for over 35 years.
Yes, last season was awesome. The Astros' rebuild was worth the wait. And every minute of the playoffs was worth watching with some great teams involved. But the point is to get people to watch it.
I didn’t. Sadly I’ve been too busy to sit down and watch a game, plus I don’t have cable or an antenna.
That's a problem for Major League Baseball, which is struggling to attract younger fans. Not only that Baseball should adopt the proposal to allow the team behind in the score to reset its lineup order for the ninth inning, the league also recently announced another rule changes for the 2018 season intended to increase the speed of play and shorten games. I am hopeful that the changes they make will eventually get them into a spot where they would be comfortable with pace of play and the length of the game.
All of that will help, but do you really think making games 6 minutes faster will attract a younger audience? They need some bigger changes.
Yes, I would definately add some rewards for fans, somehow involve blockchain technology. Fans being rewarded for watching, just like steemiens being rewarded for coments.
Ha ha ha, @rothberg! The fielders have to live-post articles on Steemit while they're playing. They get Steem based on how well they play. Heck, convert their salaries to Steem and see what they do. :)
You've provided a very interesting analysis on this hot-button topic. While it is very interesting from a hypothetical perspective, I don't believe the rule change will happen for two main reasons: 1. Despite the argument to the contrary, baseball is doing just fine, especially financially. Giancarlo Stanton, perhaps the games best young player, signed the richest contract in baseball history at 13years and $325 million. Yes 325 Million. No one in American Football or the NBA has a contract any where near that close. It's about profit, just like anything else, and MLB has plenty of it. I think it is certainly fair to say that MLB has dropped off below the NFL and NBA in popularity. The point you make about the popularity of baseball players in the world market is a very good one. I will admit I'm a bit surprised by that. But the point is, from a financial perspective, baseball is doing just fine. Take the Yankees for instance, their payroll is going to be somewhere around $157 million for this upcoming season. The Dallas Cowboys of the NFL at $169 million. The Golden State Warriors of the NBA - $137 million. All very healthy payrolls. The difference? Baseball plays such a long, tedious schedule that professional baseball teams get 81 home games throughout a season. Compare that to the NBA - 41 home games and the NFL 8 home games. While you can argue the popularity is dwindling, the revenue is not.
According to a Forbes report from Nov 22 of this past year, Major League baseball set a record revenue for industry revenues for the 15th consecutive year, passing $10 Billion for the first time. Both the NBA and NFL were around the $7 Billion mark. The money is still there, and as long as the owners are continuing to generate record amounts of income, they are not going to make a drastic change that will change the game fundamentally. Which brings me to my second reason this change won't happen. 2. Traditionalists/Strategy : Baseball has built into its very fabric an intricate strategy to it. Think of all the "situational" happenings of a single game. Left-handed pitcher vs left-handed batter? Leadoff hitter draws a walk in the 7th. He's the best base-runner, do you try to steal second? Bunt him over to second? Hit and run? If you start playing with this rule change, all of the strategy goes out the window. Anyone can be a manager of a team when you get the option of sending out your three best hitters to start the 9th inning. But what happens if the opposing pitcher has a no-hitter going or a perfect-game? The hardest accomplishment of any in all of the professional sports and now they effectively get penalized. It's not going to "fix" the game. Most people's argument against the current state of baseball is how long it takes. Using teams' best hitters in the 9th inning won't speed up a 4-hour long game, if anything, it's going to make it longer because of the possibilities of more batters reaching base in the 9th inning.
If baseball makes such a drastic change like this, it may attract new fans, and more youth to the game, but it would be a HUGE risk of alienating all of the die-hard "traditionalists". If you lose that large following, it doesn't matter how many new viewers you bring in. That is your bread and butter. Baseball has issues, I agree, but I don't think this will be the answer. Would more people tune in for the 9th-inning of games? Sure they would. But that doesn't guarantee that they are going to tune in for the previous 8-innings.
I do agree that the lack of youthful interest is a problem going forward. But if anything, baseball's problem is the lack of a salary cap. If you look at the popularity spikes of the NBA and NFL a lot of it can contributed to the implementing of the salary cap. In baseball, the teams with the largest and richest markets always have the highest payrolls. New York, Boston, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs are always right at the top in salary. Baseball is a constant cycle of "big" market clubs spending lavishly, and "small" market clubs having to home-grow their talent and then carefully trade them for other young prospects at the fear of losing them for nothing in free agency to one of the "big" market teams. A change in the salary cap, would level the playing field, and help invigorate new enthusiasm and hope into a large portion of the franchises. If your an Oakland A's fan whose team is sitting with a payroll of $30 million, while your division rival the Angels has a payroll of $140 million, how excited are you for the prospects of the coming season? I would start with the salary cap first. The salary cap has done wonders for the NFL especially, and I believe it could do the same for baseball.
Thank you for your article, it was well thought-out and researched and I appreciate the fresh perspective. I love the sport, I appreciate a fresh analysis. Sorry for the long response lol.
Upvoted and resteemed thanks again for the insightful article!
You've written a full post here. Thanks for the analysis! It's doing well regionally, but the future does not bode well without some changes.
I know right lol, very long-winded. You're welcome! I do agree that regionally it is doing well, but the future well-being of the sport does need some changes.
Very well said and this post is amazing and hits the main issues, yes baseball is loosing its audience and popularity that it used to had,even in the US. Football ayers,basketball players and cricketers are know all around the world now and many of new comers are rising to popularity and stardom but i have never heard about baseball players,you have listed every issue and possible solutions that can be taken from it. In US NFL basketball are dominating more than anything and baseball loosing it’s place,yes things needs to change and they need to find ways to do it. I saw baseball few times and it does tends to get more boring.love your post and thanks for posting.
i am a girl and i am not interested in sports but i have always heard about famous players like leonel messi,ronaldo,michael jordan,sachin tendulkar,etc which are not related to baseball and i have never heard about baseball players.in america too football seems to be gaining more popularity than baseball.people are crazy about basketball where baseball has lost it previously owned popularity and stardom.its about time things needs to change and everything you have mentioned on this post is agreeable and thanks for sharing .upvoted
The high cost of American sports stands in stadiums, equipment and equipment, preventing them from spreading in countries with a medium and weak economic level.
As well as complex laws incomprehensible, the game of baseball is difficult to understand what it is and how to play on the non-American citizen, which was not to digest in turn if he had received the teachings over the years of his studies.
Historical Roots Baseball, American football and ice hockey are a part of the historical culture of the American people, like bullfights in Spain and cricket in Britain, so these sports have maintained their popularity there, unlike in other countries where sports have no historical roots .
Media and money: In addition to basketball, American sports and sports are unmatched by other rich American media, unlike most European countries and the world, where sports do not have much weight in comparison to football. Where there is media, there are funds and wealth and huge revenues, which contribute to support and promote those games to maintain their popularity and spread.
That's a very good analysis. But most of these games can be played in some form on the street or in any neighborhood pitch that's dirt or grass. Obviously, ice hockey is not one of them, but in northern countries, that began on frozen lakes and rivers.
@donkeypong, You were nicely describe about baseball game using extra ordinary historical things. Very interesting to read blog and watch video clip. As my country in Sri Lanka play baseball school league and club league. But not improving national level. Baseball is a game played with a bat, ball and glove. The fundamentals of the game involve throwing the ball, hitting the ball, and catching the ball. I have only few like to baseball game and most of like Cricket.
Sri Lanka had shown international level through cricket sport. We won world cup. I can play cricket very well. Can you play Cricket? Currently with 20/20 cricket format have been very speedy and stronger game like as soccer and rugby football. However you shared brilliant baseball introduction.