Friday, July 09, 2004

Baseball blasphemies

What changes would I like to see to baseball?
  • Trade Nomar to the Giants, for the good of the game. Nomar is great, and I'd love to see him continue to play for Boston, but there's someone who needs him more: Barry Bonds. The world wants to see Bonds hit, and all his intentional walks are denying the world that privilege. The Giants need a high batting average slugging threat behind Bonds in the line-up, so that opposing teams will pitch to Bonds more. To maintain parity, the Yankees should send Alex Rodriguez over, too. Maybe the Giants can give us Jason Schmidt back in exchange.
  • Eliminate the home run. (Yeah, I know these blasphemies are incompatible with each other.) With the horrid specter of steroid use hanging over the game, we can lesson the effect of steriods by not rewarding power hitting. Any ball that goes over the far fence is just like any other fence: foul.
  • Replace the pitcher with a pitching machine. The outcome of the game depends too heavily on the pitcher's performance. All that repetitive motion gets them injured in sad ways. Replace him with a pitching machine that always throws strikes. The strategic component is choosing the right pitch on every occasion. Put a cap of (say) 85 mph on the pitch, but allow curves of every possible axis, angle, orientation, and rate of rotation. Where the seams are relative to the axis of rotation matters.
  • Each league's All-Star lineup should have a defensive squad and an offensive squad. The defensive squad does nothing but field each inning, and the offensive squad does nothing but hit. Of course, a player may be selected to play on both defensive and offensive squads (e.g., Ichiro). Offense matters much more than good fielding, so too often we see sloppy defense in the All-Star game. We all like to see web gems, too.
  • Open a franchise in Havana.

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