Friday, July 23, 2021
Roots and Blues
Who are the faces of baseball today? Put the current injured lists to one side. Barring unforeseen complications or corollary issues, one and all on those lists now will be back either this season or next. Barring, too, one player of extraterrestrial achievement — you should spot the one most likely to produce it the rest of the year, too — it shouldn't really be a singular face.
They should be players like Ronald Acuna, Jr., Pete Alonso, Mookie Betts, Shane Bieber, Kris Bryant, Nick Castellanos, Jacob deGrom, Rafael Devers, Freddie Freeman, Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Clayton Kershaw, Trey Mancini, Shohei Ohtani, Max Scherzer, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis, Jr., Mike Trout, Brandon Woodruff.
Instead, the face of the game, singular, seems to be its ten-thumbed, two-left-feet, too-lawyerly-for-his-own good commissioner, a man who seems almost never to let pass a chance to let the stars shine in baseball's sky without sending up a homemade cloud.
On Home Run Derby Night, the Coors Field audience and baseball nation transfixed upon Ohtani (the prohibitive favorite), Soto, Mancini (the sentimental favorite), Guerrero, and Alonso (the eventual winner), among others. During the All-Star Game — which the American League won, 5-2 — Ohtani and company were at least as watchable and discussable as those missing in action due to health concerns might have been.
So, perhaps naturally, Rob Manfred stepped all over himself yet again. Asked whom he thought the face of baseball is today, Castellanos named Manfred. Informed of that designation, Manfred said no. Then, he dropped a few matters to indicate his lips said no-no but there was yes-yes in his eyes.
He told a Baseball Writers Association of America meeting the day of the All-Star Game, "I think anything that distracts from the attention being on what goes on in the field is a bad thing." Unfortunately, Commissioner Nero — who's spent too much of his commissionership fiddling while baseball seems to burn — went on to do just that.
Manfred could well enough have waited until after the All-Star Game, confined his remarks to the BBWAA to just his thought on "distraction" from the All-Star field, then said he'd talk a little more the day after if they were willing to listen. (And who wouldn't have been?)
I've already discussed his thought that the doubleheader of seven-inning games might disappear after this season. (And, why I think keeping the idea is sound as a nut.) Manfred also spoke of disappearing the free cookie on second base (known to wags as "Manfred Man") to open each extra half-inning, a disappearance devoutly to be wished. As would be the three-batter minimum for relief pitchers. (Unless they enter during a jam and get rid of the side before batters two, three, or both appear.)
Unfortunately, Manfred didn't address that third part, so far as I know. He must have been asleep at the switch the night Bryce Harper and Didi Grigorius got hit back-to-back by a fresh Cardinal reliever whose control took the night off but whose manager couldn't relieve him legally until he faced his third batter.
The law of unintended consequences too often escapes Manfred's lawyerly ways.
He also suggested he'd like to ban defensive over-shifting, formally, as part of what he says is part and parcel of returning baseball "to its roots." He suggests the owners are all in on that return, though long experience tells you that with most owners changes or restorations have less to do with the game itself and more to do with whether something means making money for it, which usually means for themselves.
Never mind that the shifts could and would be neutralized if teams start instructing their batters to take advantage of all that free real estate. Screw the unwritten rules. Just hit the ball onto it. Take first base on the house before the shifters can scramble for the ball. Even if the other guys have a no-hitter going to the final outs. I'll say it again: you hand me that free territory with a no-hitter going, let your pitcher hold you to account when I show up on first on the house.
I'll say it again: that, or an infield you know to be full of butchers enabling such base hits, should be the only time you want to see a widespread return of bunting. In all other situations, a bunt is a wasted out. Outs to work with are precious. Why waste a third of your inning's resources and do the other guys such a favor?
You guessed it: I'm all in if Manfred really does bring the universal designated hitter back to stay in 2022. Guess which defensive position sports the Show's worst slash line this year? (.109/.149/.142.) The worst OPS? (.291.) The most wasted outs? (No other positions show more than the catchers' 40; these guys show 221.) A real batting average (RBA: total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by plate appearances) of .167?
Hint: Since the final decade of the dead ball era, they've hit a collective .166. Tell me how long a catcher, an infielder, or an outfielder would survive in the Show — if he was lucky enough to get to it at all — with that kind of hitting. Even if he was the defensive second coming (based on runs saved above their leagues' averages at their positions) of Ivan Rodriguez, Keith Hernandez, Bill Mazeroski, Ozzie Smith, Brooks Robinson, Barry Bonds, Andruw Jones, or Roberto Clemente.
Manfred should consider the Pirates owner of 1891 who first proposed what we know now as the DH. About whose proposal a journal of the time, The Sporting Life, said in concurrence:
"Every patron of the game is conversant with the utter worthlessness of the average pitcher when he goes up to try and hit the ball. It is most invariably a trial, and an unsuccessful one at that. If fortune does favor him with a base hit it is ten to one that he is so winded in getting to first or second base on it that when he goes into the box it is a matter of very little difficulty to pound him all over creation."
It wasn't an invention of that nefarious American League. And if it hadn't been for Chris (I am der boss pressident of der Prowns!) von der Ahe, reneging on a previous commitment to support William Chase Temple, when the idea came up at the next National League rules meeting, the NL would have had the honor of introducing what Pirates catcher-turned-Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack tried, but failed to introduce to the AL 15 years later.
If you want to see a little more leveling out between pitching and hitting, be advised that when the DH is used this year (by AL teams, and by NL teams playing interleague in the AL Park) the DHs have the best OPS (.767) in Show at this writing. If you want more "strategy" — and you won't throw things at me when I remind you that 95 percent of all "strategy" is plotted before the game begins — you should prefer that number-nine batting order slot go to either a second cleanup type or an extra leadoff type.
"Returning baseball to its roots" can be tricky. Even if it suggests Manfred might finally be willing to quit trying to prove that the birth child of that backstreet affair between Rube Golberg and the Mad Hatter should be a baseball executive.
It depends on the roots to which you want to return. How about eliminating regular-season interleague play? How about eliminating the wild card system that's produced the thrills and chills of teams fighting to the last breath to finish ... in second place?
How about a best-of-three division series with each league's best first-place finisher having a bye while the other two winners slug it out? How about returning the League Championship Series to the best-of-five of its birth and childhood? How about thus eliminating October saturation and restoring the World Series to its proper primacy?
Unfortunately, those beg one further question right now: Since Manfred can't seem to find the right way to make serviceable, field-leveling baseballs (easier to look into an acceptable stickum for pitcher grips, as he's also doing), how far above his pay grade would those and other reasonable moves really prove?
Back to baseball's roots? Be gone, hideous 2021 all-star uniform! The threads (especially the American League's "road" blue) made the horrific 1970s single-color pajamas of some teams resemble something from Pierre Cardin. If players wearing their own uniforms, representing their teams, is good enough for the Home Run Derby, it's still good enough for the All-Star Game.
Where have you gone, Bart Giamattio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.