Baseball is great, but it can be better. While earlier versions of this piece had an overwrought and overly long intro on the delicate balance between the intimacy of the pitcher-batter matchup and the frenzied multi-actor action across beautiful acres of wondrous expanse resulting from a ball put in play, let’s just get to my suggestions to improve the play on the field.

Shrink the Strike Zone

One of the unfortunate side effects of the balls-in-play discussion is that strikeouts and walks tend to get lumped together. In reality, walks are a pretty static feature through baseball history, while strikeouts have fluctuated. Here’s a graph showing walk and strikeout rates over the last 50 years.

Over the last 50 years, the average walk rate has been 8.6%, which is the same as it has been the last five years, and over the last 10 seasons, it is 8.2. Whatever hitters and pitchers are doing in recent history, it hasn’t caused more walks. Strikeouts, though, have soared, and on average, there are about 26 fewer free passes per year over the last decade as opposed to the previous 40 years, compared to an additional 352 whiffs per team per year over the same time frame. While you can argue that the increase is due to changes in hitting philosophy, the average fastball has gone from 89 mph in 2002 to 93 mph last season, while pitchers throw more and more offspeed pitches and fewer pitches in the strike zone. It’s not batter philosophy causing the rise in strikeouts; it’s the pitching just getting better and also being better aided by an increase in the size of the strike zone of about 10%. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, as part of the negotiations over a new Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA) with Minor League Baseball, Major League Baseball introduced a proposal that would dramatically reimagine the minor leagues. The proposal included plans to shift the timing of the amateur draft and realign some parent-club affiliations, league geographies, and club levels. Most importantly, it proposed stripping more than 40 clubs of their affiliated status, though it also suggested that some of the newly unaffiliated teams would assume other formats, either as so-called professional partner leagues, or as amateur summer wood bat leagues. The plan got us thinking about how access to in-person baseball across the United States would change. We were interested in how many people would lose their ability to watch affiliated baseball in person, or would see that access shift from the relatively affordable confines of the minor leagues to more expensive major league parks.

Those studies relied on a New York Times list of teams reportedly slated for contraction, as well as Baseball America’s excellent reporting. Thirteen months, a pandemic, and one extremely contentious negotiation later, MLB has informed minor league teams of their proposed fates, with 120 franchises “invited” to be part of the new, MLB-developed minor league system. Many are still reviewing the terms of their “invitations”; several find themselves occupying a new rung on the minor league ladder, or with a different parent club than before.

Meanwhile, 25 clubs find themselves ticketed either for summer wood bat leagues, including the newly formed MLB Draft League, or for pro partner leagues for undrafted players and released minor leaguers. Eighteen teams face futures that are, as of this writing, uncertain, though as Baseball America’s JJ Cooper notes, “Major League Baseball has indicated that it will pay entry fees for these teams that were left out of affiliated baseball to join new leagues. MLB will pay their way in, but as a condition those teams are expected to waive a right to sue.” The complete list of the 43 franchises slated to lose their affiliated status can be found below. Of the 43, 11 are full-season clubs:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, when the Marlins announced they had hired Kim Ng as their new general manager, they set off a tidal wave of celebratory reactions from people both inside and outside baseball. That’s to be expected when a glass ceiling is broken. Her success was a triumph for women who have always had to fight for their place in the sport.

As soon as the news of Ng’s hiring went public, a question quickly gained prominence: How do you pronounce Ng? Media outlets reporting her hiring revealed a checkered understanding of the answer. The worst offender went with the extremely phonetic interpretation of “N-G.” Most got close, and those familiar with her work in baseball got it right. (To be clear, she pronounces it “ang,” which differs from the pronunciation of some Chinese Americans, who might pronounce it “ing.”

The widespread confusion about something as basic as Ng’s name is an extension of a few all too common questions most Asian Americans are familiar with: What are you? Where are you from? These reductive questions flow from the perpetual perception of foreignness that colors the experience of many Asian people in America. And it shows why Ng’s ascent to the top position in the Marlins organization is so important for Asian Americans, too.

Ng is the second Asian person to hold the position of general manager in major league baseball, and the first Asian American as well as the first Chinese American to rise to the top. Farhan Zaidi, who is of Pakistani descent, is Canadian-born and became the first Asian person to hold the title of general manager when he reached that position with the Dodgers in 2014. Ng also became just the second Asian American to become the GM in any of the major men’s North American professional sports — Rich Cho was the first when he was named GM of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2010. This dearth of Asian people in leadership positions extends to the field as well. There have been just two field managers of Asian descent in baseball, and there are just a handful of others across the other major men’s sports. Read the rest of this entry »

I submit that we are never more keenly aware of our own physical state than when we are embarrassed. Other emotions make themselves felt in the body, of course; the soft, spreading warmth of love, the acute pops and pains of joints as fear inspires flight. To be chased by a tiger is to be gripped by terror and also remember that bad knee of yours. Embarrassment works a little differently; it makes our person its accomplice. Embarrassment is an ampersand, tacking on an emphatic “and like so” to your flubbed expense report. I’m embarrassed and rain-soaked. I’m embarrassed and without pants! Perhaps because I’m without pants, but most definitely embarrassed and without them. Many of our embarrassments these days are private, hidden behind so many masks and closed front doors. But some of us are not so lucky. Some of us are made fools at work, even now, and with everyone watching.

For instance, sometimes you’re a member of the Atlanta Braves. You’re a member of the Atlanta Braves and you’re on the mound, down a run. That’s ok! It’s just a run, and there are two outs. You’ve only thrown nine pitches. And you’re you, Kyle Wright, and your seven strikeouts and six innings of scoreless NLDS baseball are on the mound with you.

Only now it’s two runs…

… and then 17 pitches. And also, you’ve walked Cody Bellinger.

Read the rest of this entry »

For pitchers on the fringes of the major leagues, 2020 has been a strange year. The dense schedule means teams are cycling through bullpen pieces faster than ever in an attempt to keep fresh arms available. There are no minor league games for the players who aren’t on the active roster, merely alternate sites and live batting practice. It’s a strange, peripheral experience.

For Cardinals pitchers on the fringes of the major leagues, it’s been stranger still, because their schedule has been even more compressed. A string of double headers means pitchers who would normally be relief arms are making spot starts, which calls for more relievers to back them up. Twenty-one players have made relief appearances for St. Louis this year, all the way from Roel Ramirez up to Giovanny Gallegos.

Shuffling relievers means shuffling relief roles. That’s how Ryan Helsley, a hard-throwing righty who split time between Triple-A Memphis and St. Louis last year, ended up taking the mound for the Cardinals with a chance to record his first career save on Friday evening. Gallegos, the team’s nominal closer, is on the Injured List. Génesis Cabrera, the reliever who has thrown the most innings for them this year, had already pitched in the game. Alex Reyes, the most dynamic arm in the ‘pen, was gassed; he’d thrown 39 pitches already. Hence Helsley, who needed only two outs against the woeful Pirates to add “big league closer” to his resume. Read the rest of this entry »

The 1960s didn’t create many new Red Sox fans. Carl Yastrzemski debuted in 1961 and ascended to superstar status two years later, but outside of Yaz’s origin story, the franchise didn’t have much going for it. Starting with Ted Williams‘ penultimate season in 1959, Boston finished below .500 in eight consecutive campaigns, being spared last place thanks only to the piles of sadness that were the Athletics and the brand-new Senators in those years. As the Red Sox started assembling the early cast of a team that would, starting in 1967, finish with a winning record for 16 straight seasons, few stars shone as brightly as Tony Conigliaro. Until, that is, one errant Jack Hamilton fastball dimmed that star.

It took Yastrzemski a few years to really get going, but as a hitter, Conigliaro arrived in the majors nearly fully formed, much in the manner of Bryce Harper. Conigliaro’s signing was back in the pre-draft days, when amateurs had more of an ability to determine their franchise, and 14 teams pursued him before he signed with Boston. Assigned to the Wellsville Red Sox of the New York-Penn League in 1963, Conigliaro led the circuit in batting average, slugged .730 (the next-best mark was .575), and finished fifth in home runs only because he missed the first six weeks with a broken thumb after getting in a fight back home.

Boston added Conigliaro to the roster in 1964, and he started in center field on Opening Day at the age of 19. He eventually moved to left field in his rookie season — he was stretched in center — but he quickly became a fixture in the lineup and was batting second by the time summer started. He made a great first impression after hitting a home run in his first Fenway at-bat, a shot over the Green Monster off White Sox pitcher Joe Horlen. Only 23 players in baseball history have tallied 400 plate appearances in a campaign before their age-20 season, and only Mel Ott had higher a wRC+ (Juan Soto passed them both in 2018). Read the rest of this entry »

For the last 15 years, Yusmeiro Petit has cast a spell over opposing hitters. He’s never thrown hard — his highest average fastball velocity was 89.6 mph in 2017, more than a decade into his career. He’s never been an All-Star, never received award votes. He’s been sketchy at times — his rookie season for the Florida (!) Marlins produced a 9.57 ERA. He didn’t pitch in the majors in 2010 or 2011. Through it all, however, he’s kept going, showed up and provided competent innings. He’s almost 36, and it feels like he might pitch until he’s 80.

That consistency is merely an illusion, however. When Petit first made the majors, he was pretty bad against lefties. Most righties get a little bit worse against left-handed batters; they strike out roughly two percentage points fewer opponents and walk roughly two percentage points more. Petit, on the other hand, turned into a pumpkin:

That split is through the end of 2017. I’m now going to do something that I strongly urge you not to do in your investigations of platoon splits — chop them up into smaller pieces. Since the beginning of the 2018 season, Petit’s platoon splits look different:

It’s a small sample, but I’m inclined to believe it. From 2008 (the beginning of pitch tracking data) to 2017, Petit threw his changeup to lefties 22.1% of the time. Since the beginning of 2018, he’s more or less doubled it, to 41.3%. Changeups are a righty’s best friend against lefties, so the improvement makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m biased, but I think summer in Vancouver can be one of the most beautiful seasons anywhere in the world. The rainforest, having spent the autumn, winter, and spring growing lush under the cover of clouds and rain, shines rich green under the sun, illuminated by the light coming off the ocean. It’s hot, but not overwhelmingly so. On some days, you can look out over the water and see the spout of a humpback whale or the dark, swift-moving fins of a transient orca pod. And at sunset, the bright place where the sky and the ocean meet seem to go on forever.

In the summer of 2017, fires engulfed the Pacific Northwest. There was record heat; record time passed between rainfalls. I spent that summer working in a basement shop, bitter and sad, and when I emerged from the top of the staircase at the end of every day, I would often see a sky choked thick with ash and smoke, the sun swollen and red. Everything that was normally so vibrant was cast over with a dull haze. It was sometimes difficult to breathe. I thought, at the time, that it seemed apocalyptic: the reality of climate change clearly visible above me, around me, hanging in the air itself.

That was the summer Nate Pearson came to town.

***

The Vancouver Canadians are the Blue Jays’ short-season affiliate, playing in the Northwest League. Baseball has a long, diverse history in Vancouver, though the city isn’t exactly baseball-crazy. Back when the Canadians were a Triple-A franchise, affiliated most recently with the A’s, there were some pretty lean years in terms of attendance and interest. But a renovation of their ballpark, the 68-year-old Nat Bailey Stadium, and affiliation with the recently-successful Blue Jays has made the franchise one of the healthiest and most well-attended in the minor leagues. The banners around the stadium show some of the Canadians alumni who are currently successful major leaguers — Kevin Pillar, Marcus Stroman, and Noah Syndergaard, to name a few.

They show, too, the legends who visited and played in Vancouver in days long gone: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who came north on barnstorming trips. Though thoroughly renovated for the demands of a 21st-century baseball team, the Nat is deliberate in making you feel its history. A little museum is tucked into the concourse under the grandstand; the tall wooden scoreboard is a replica of the original, salvaged from the remains of Sick’s Stadium in Seattle. Read the rest of this entry »

After everything that led to the start of its truncated 60-game season, Major League Baseball tried its hardest to fill Opening Day with all the excitement it could. The defending World Series champion Nationals faced this offseason’s most sought-after free agent pitcher, making his debut for the league’s most storied franchise. After that, the Dodgers took the field, joined for the first time by the newest face of their franchise, to host their longtime rivals. Leading immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci — the face of the United States’ fight against the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the suspension of sports seasons all over the world — threw out the first pitch of the season, a not-so-subtle signal to the American public that things are fine, or fine enough.

But the moment had already been soured. Hours before the first game of their season, Nationals wunderkind Juan Soto was announced to have tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing him to miss the season-opener and enter self-isolation. In addition to being scary news for Soto — who is asymptomatic — it also served as one more reminder of the dangers MLB faces as it attempts to play a season in the middle of a pandemic, and the complicated moral quandaries fans of the sport will struggle with as long as that season goes on.

Wednesday — Works out at Nationals Park

Thursday — Receives positive test result for Tuesday test

That is four full days between giving a saliva sample that tested negative and receiving a positive result.

— Jesse Dougherty (@dougherty_jesse) July 23, 2020

Not that we needed the reminder in the first place. For four months, we’ve been absorbing as much information as possible about the virus, its potentially deadly effects, and its insidious spread through asymptomatic carriers; about the difficult ethical debates it created; about the lost jobs and the likely permanent damage dealt to already vulnerable industries and communities; about the potentially devastating hurdles and pitfalls that lurk within the return plans of various leagues; and, of course, since this is pro sports, about whether all of this might be rendered moot by the greed of ownership. After all of that, there was hope MLB’s return would be the escape we’ve all anxiously waited for. Instead, it has become its own source of anxiety — a profoundly risky gamble with thousands of lives in the balance, in which we root less for teams and players and more for the simple wish that nothing terrible happens. Read the rest of this entry »

“But I didn’t love baseball. Because baseball would never love me back.”

– Bill White, in Uppity: My Hidden Story of the Games People Play

***

Of all the major sports in North American culture, baseball has to be the one most concerned with love. Fans often talk about why they love the game, to share stories of team loyalties passed down over generations, memories made and cherished. Players talk about why they love the game, too, are asked about it like clockwork every Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Opening Day. Players are obligated, even, to love the game to a degree deemed adequate; they must be enthusiastic enough, passionate enough (in a respectful way, of course; to “disrespect the game” is not love, but something else entirely).

Love of the game is invoked every time a team pitches a massive taxpayer contribution to fund a new stadium, or every time some “Save America’s Pastime”-esque legislation is floated before governing bodies. To love the game is the cardinal virtue of cardinal virtues, the greatest of these, encompassing everything good and diminishing anything that may be bad. Because love of the game, of course, is never just love of the game: it is love of a values system, of a country, of a certain team, of a certain aesthetic, a certain style of play, a crystalline idea held in the hands — look how it glitters; look how we treasure it, how, when the light hits it just so, you can think of nothing else other than its beauty. What exactly those values, this country, this team really is — to what end, exactly, that love is directed — well, as long as you have love in your heart, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?

***

I have been thinking about this, the love of baseball, because of the sickly back-and-forth lurching of negotiations between MLB and the MLBPA over the past few months, because of the discussions that lurching has caused, and because I have been reading Bill White’s autobiography. Bill White was a longtime major leaguer, was the voice of the Yankees along with Phil Rizzuto for two decades after that, and was the president of the National League during the early-90s expansion and labor crisis. Bill White had about as diverse and lengthy a career in baseball as one could possibly have. In 1961, his willingness to speak out about the segregation Black players experienced during spring training in St. Petersburg spurred a boycott of Cardinals owners Anheuser-Busch, eventually leading Busch to purchase property on which white and Black players could stay together. He was the first Black play-by-play announcer for a major league team, and the duo of him and Rizzuto as the voices of the Yankees became legendary. And he was the first Black president of the National League.

White, before he became a professional baseball player, was in school to become a doctor. He initially took the contract from the Giants’ Leo Durocher because it would pay his tuition. It was never White’s dream to become a baseball player, or a baseball broadcaster, or the president of a league. His view of these always came from a place of ambivalence — the viewpoint of an outsider, someone who had not bought the myth and would not be sold one. He credits this ambivalence for his willingness to speak bluntly and honestly about the injustices he and his teammates faced as players; to negotiate contracts openly; to publicly name racism within the ranks of MLB’s executive class, despite being painted as “bitter” and “angry”; to tell owners, umpires, and Commissioners alike when he thought they were losing the plot. And when it became clear that the position of Commissioner was to become an arm of the owners’ interests, White simply walked away from baseball. “And I’ve never regretted it,” he writes.

It is rare, in the thousands of pages of baseball auto/biography that I’ve read, to encounter someone inside the game so willing to say that they did not love the game of baseball, that they had “no respect” for the business of it. In newspaper archives, back to the first decade of the 20th century and all the way up to profiles of high school teams in 2017, the narrative of love of the game as virtue, love of the game as essential to baseball’s character, is ubiquitous. To see an overt rebuttal of it is jarring.

For White, though, the idea that all — or even most — players loved the game, that they were living the dream, that they would even play for free — it was “pure nonsense.” White believed that for most players, “love of the game” had nothing to do with it. It was just something they had to say, something they had to try to make themselves believe — to make sure the myth continued to be true. The front office and owners certainly didn’t believe it:

“They would keep you on as long as you were useful, but the minute you weren’t, you’d be gone — and it wouldn’t matter what you had done in the past, or if you had a sick child at home, or if you were broke and had nowhere to go. Baseball was business, and while baseball owners may have loved owning baseball teams, most of them didn’t love baseball players.”

And yet, the myth spun on. When Bud Selig’s 20-year marriage fell apart in 1976, one newspaper report attributed it to “love of baseball.”

***

One might have thought that baseball’s shift toward a more analytically-inclined ethos would have done away with all of this. Sabermetricians seek answers that are founded in fact; they ask questions that challenge slippery narratives. Perhaps that is indeed the case more in communities like these, wherein an analytical mindset is encouraged and celebrated.

But that narrative of love-of-game as virtue still holds a particular power over the public. It is still part of the myth-building of Major League Baseball, of baseball as a North American institution. And it still permeates the discourse surrounding baseball, bending and morphing to fit the shape of whatever the issue of the era is. When people decry the problems they see with the game, whatever problems those might be — wanting a universal DH, or not wanting it; greedy owners, and/or greedy players; being overly regressive, or overly progressive — these problems are often contrasted with the ideal love of the game. The people who are causing problems, it is theorized, do not love the game enough, or not in the way that they should, not the true way. No wonder MLB Network chooses to promote their Griffey doc with this quote:

“I didn’t do it because of the money. I didn’t do it for the fame. I did it because I love baseball.”#Junior on MLB Network starts NOW! pic.twitter.com/5EIMkOAdRX

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) June 22, 2020

No wonder, because it feels good to love things. People love to love things almost as much as they love to hate things. No wonder, too, because many people do love the game. It is wonderful that people can find so much beauty in baseball, that they can feel so passionate about it. A love of baseball improved my life in bizarre and unpredictable ways. It has done the same for many others with all kinds of different relationships to the sport.

All the worse, then, that the concept of loving the game is used in the way that it so often is: a cudgel wielded by the powerful, to manipulate, exonerate, excuse, evade, hammering narratives into shape. You will accept this, because you love it. If you don’t love it, well, why are you even here?

***

Over the coming month leading up to the planned Re-Opening Day, there will doubtless be many more debates surrounding the state of the game — warranted debates, critical ones. We are entering uncharted territory, attempting to restart the sport in the midst of a pandemic that has killed over a hundred thousand people in this country alone. In the midst of an international reckoning with institutional violence against Black people that the sport has made largely ineffectual gestures toward acknowledging.

There will be — as there has been — an effort to use love of the game to distract, appealing to emotion, the soft glow of happy memory. And, for many people, there will be dissonance. Loving the game, but not loving it. Loving the game, but worrying. Not loving the game — wanting to, not being able to. Never having loved it at all, and being frustrated by the spinning of wheels, so much ado when so many more important things are happening.

I keep thinking about a scene in Bill White’s book. He writes about going to visit an ailing Phil Rizzuto in a nursing home:

Once I came in and found Phil, wearing a nice sweater, sitting by the window, looking outside. It was his favorite spot, a place to catch the morning sun. I sat down in a chair next to him, and Phil tried to turn and say something, but by this time it was hard for him to talk. Instead he held up his hand, and I took it in mine.

For the next forty-five minutes we sat there, holding hands and saying nothing. I wondered if maybe having me next to him reminded him of the broadcast booths in which we had sat together so many times.

Two old men, two baseball players, old friends, holding hands in a sunbeam. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry — but I’m pretty sure Phil would have wanted me to laugh.

Bill White never loved the game, a game that didn’t love him. That didn’t matter, in the end. He could see what was important — illuminated, sharp in a sunbeam.