Biggest sports annoyances

[LIuconn]

Fans who say 'we'

 

[superjohn]

I don’t know, maybe cut down from 162 freaking regular season games? Or do anything to get the game down to under 2.5 hours? Cut the game to 7 innings? Cut down the time in between half innings? Have a little more wiggle room for performing enhancing drugs?

Wiggle room? There's a reason baseball players and football players almost never get popped on PED's and it certainly isn't that they aren't taking them.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

I don’t know, maybe cut down from 162 freaking regular season games? Or do anything to get the game down to under 2.5 hours? Cut the game to 7 innings? Cut down the time in between half innings? Have a little more wiggle room for performing enhancing drugs?

They'll never change the amount of innings, but I think going back to the 154 game season wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

MLB did already cut the time in between innings this season. They've limited mound visits and eventually we'll see a pitch clock in MLB and not just the minors. In addition they started the Sunday night national games an hour earlier.

Why would you want more PEDs? At this point every single guy in MLB is hitting 30 HRs.

Baseball is a slow game and its never going to be everyone's favorite. As a baseball guy though, I feel like people who don't like baseball also like to tear it down a bit too. Maybe I'm off base?

 

[the Q]

They'll never change the amount of innings, but I think going back to the 154 game season wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

MLB did already cut the time in between innings this season. They've limited mound visits and eventually we'll see a pitch clock in MLB and not just the minors. In addition they started the Sunday night national games an hour earlier.

Why would you want more PEDs? At this point every single guy in MLB is hitting 30 HRs.

Baseball is a slow game and its never going to be everyone's favorite. As a baseball guy though, I feel like people who don't like baseball also like to tear it down a bit too. Maybe I'm off base?

I think 7 innings is more financially feasible. Sure you lose the shorter commercial break, but ideally it would result in less pitching changes and less roster turnover with 7 innings.

You need to be able to fill that content programming already allotted and paid for. This could do that.

 

[whaler11]

The entire sport is built on the historical context of the statistics. If you start playing 7 inning games it ceases to exist.

 

[navery12]

Good luck convincing the MLBPA to make a change that eliminates jobs for half their players

 

[the Q]

Good luck convincing the MLBPA to make a change that eliminates jobs for half their players

Yeah, the DH would actually probably add more jobs.

There’s no way bey agree to go the other way.

 

[Deepster]

Fans who say 'we'

i.e. - Every single Patriots fan.

 

[storrsroars]

Yeah, the DH would actually probably add more jobs.

There’s no way bey agree to go the other way.

I don't know how you figure a DH in NL would add jobs. Rosters are going from 25 to 26 in 2020. It's a fixed number. Only thing that would happen is payroll will go up as the DH (in AL, at least) is the highest paid player on avg.

 

[the Q]

I don't know how you figure a DH in NL would add jobs. Rosters are going from 25 to 26 in 2020. It's a fixed number. Only thing that would happen is payroll will go up as the DH (in AL, at least) is the highest paid player on avg.

More full time jobs I’d say.

Less bringing up RPs for 3 days at a time.

 

[Husker Husky]

I don't know how you figure a DH in NL would add jobs. Rosters are going from 25 to 26 in 2020. It's a fixed number. Only thing that would happen is payroll will go up as the DH (in AL, at least) is the highest paid player on avg.

More accurately, it wouldn't add a roster spot, but it would add a much higher paid roster spot (higher union dues:). The DH would command millions, while the mop up guy out of the pen is a league minimum guy.

 

[storrsroars]

They'll never change the amount of innings, but I think going back to the 154 game season wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

MLB did already cut the time in between innings this season. They've limited mound visits and eventually we'll see a pitch clock in MLB and not just the minors. In addition they started the Sunday night national games an hour earlier.

Why would you want more PEDs? At this point every single guy in MLB is hitting 30 HRs.

Baseball is a slow game and its never going to be everyone's favorite. As a baseball guy though, I feel like people who don't like baseball also like to tear it down a bit too. Maybe I'm off base?

I had nothing to do this morning so I ran some numbers using data on B-R and FG. Take this for what it's worth.

Since B-R has been tracking # pitches per inning (from 1999), the # of pitches per batter faced has gone from a low of 3.73 (2001) to 3.93 (2019). That averages out to 15.2 extra pitches over the course of a 9 inning game, or essentially the time for an additional half inning.

Time for a 9 inning game during that period has ranged from a low of 2:42 in 2005 to 3:05 (2017 & 2019).

Time to complete an inning has ranged from a low of 18:57 (2003) to 21:18 (2019).

Time for a single plate appearance has ranged from 2:11 (2003) to 2:28 (2014, 2017, 2019).

What this appears to be from just looking at the #s is not about TV ads or mound visits. It appears to be the effect of the "three true outcome" philosophy that advanced analytics suggests. K/9 is way up (6.4 in 2003 to 8.82 this year) resulting in more pitches thrown per PA, thus more per inning and more per game.

The "three true outcome" effect also makes the game more boring. More HRs at the expense of more Ks means less situational hitting, less "moving the line" and as a result, less overall action.

You could say that advanced analytics is basically killing the game's aesthetic appeal.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

You could say that advanced analytics is basically killing the game's aesthetic appeal.

I'm a big Yankees fan and a proponent of the DH, so I think we may not see eye to eye on what prefer for the aesthetics of the game.

That said, the three true outcome style of play, along with more reliever usage is definitely pushing the upper bounds of an acceptable length of play.

Good findings though and definitely pretty eye opening.