“Let’s Shrink the Strike Zone” is the Baseball Equivalent to an Auto or Bank Bailout!

Automobile manufacturers allowed their economics get out of hand and sought a freebie outside of fair market practices.  Later, banks became greedy, made risky decisions and suffered major losses.  So, how were these situations “fixed”?—we citizens picked up the tab for their mistakes in the form of bailouts.

“Too  Big  to  Fail”  Is  a  Bad  Practice  Anywhere

Now that Big Bucks have overtaken baseball , we have unrealistic and excessively high player and cable television contracts.¹  (Unless, of course, you think guys like Zack Cozart, Brian Matusz and Hector Santiago deserve more than Babe Ruth in real terms.)

Major League Baseball should allow the marketplace to reach a natural level by permitting the pseudo-baseball fan to depart for the gladiator-style NFL and other violent activities masquerading as “sport.”  However, human nature likes to hang on to extravagant situations, so instead, management and players are considering a hitters bailout:  shrinking the strike zone.²

How  Did  We  Arrive  at  The  Point?

Ever since the power-surge of the 1977 and 1987 seasons, players have been seeking to make names for themselves with more home runs while discarding the strategies which made baseball our national pastime for so many years.  (This is not a request to return to the pre-1920 Dead Ball Era.)  MLB played along with this by intentionally ignoring the Steroid Era for years in order to artificially repair a public image damaged by the strike/lockout of 1994 which canceled the World Series for that year.

Baseball reluctantly began to curb the use of performance enhancing drugs (PED).  To compensate for the reduced power of natural physiques, hitters have continued to whale away with ever-decreasing discipline at the plate.  Consequently, we have a game with more K’s than ever, but with fewer homers, stolen bases and runs scored.  The concern is that the game will lose too many fans to sustain the overly-inflated salaries and advertising expenses.

Smaller  Strike  Zone  Doesn’t  Address  the  Root  Problem

Now MLB is contemplating a “fix” to our game to make it more action-packed, perhaps like video games which may be stealing some of its audience?  It is considering shrinking the strike zone in order to create more hitters’ counts such as “2 and 1” instead of “1 and 2” as was mentioned on the Hot Stove show on the MLB channel today.  It certainly won’t affect the value of the dollar, but it will devalue the sport because  pitchers are not succeeding as a result of an unfair advantage, but because the art of hitting is being neglected.

Ignore  History,  Pay  the  Price

Baseball has a history superior to other professional sports.  And just like the average citizen with regard to our nation’s heritage, many baseball fans have forgotten the game’s basic history and what has made it successful.  When this happens, poor decisions are made.  When MLB was universally accepted as our “national pastime”, it had more efficient offenses despite a strike zone larger than the one we had last season which is being blamed as a cause of the game’s “problems.”  Something doesn’t make sense here.

“But  People  Change”

Very true.  However, the consequences never do.  The universe, economics and baseball included, has a strange way of balancing an unnatural interference by producing negative consequences whenever we try to “have our cake and it eat, too.”  The bailouts have aggravated an already spiraling national debt, threaten a devalued currency and make business people less accountable.

Baseball may accomplish the sports equivalent if it invites a scene of  batting practice during the game.  It will discourage the development of complete players and devalue the game’s records in the same way the Selfish Era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, et al did.

Mr. Manfred, baseball is inherently a great game.  Don’t try to create Arena Baseball!

 

¹ — https://sportuoso.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/big-are-a-huge-factor-in-longer-baseball-games/

² – a history of the strike zone can be found at http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/strike_zone_rules_history.shtml.  While proponents of a new strike zone can rightfully argue that the low end of the strike zone was lowered in 1996, they do so while forgetting the “high strike” has been gone since the 1960’s.