Strikeouts are killing baseball

My oldest son, who is 12, loves playing basketball and baseball and is decent at both. But if I try to get him to watch a game or even go to one he refuses. He told me one time, why would I want to watch other people play? The only issue with that is he watches other people play video games on YouTube and I have no idea why anyone would want to do that, but his statement sort of falls in line with your thought. If a lot of younger people feel that way, even those who actually play the games, then watching sports is definitely something that's changing.

 

Lowering the mound has promise ... until we remember that runs are up, so we aren't really out of balance between offense and defense. I don't see how either of the other two would reduce the strikeout rate -- those would just let pitchers get even more aggressive with less fear of a mistake.

I'd be in favor of finally right-sizing the strike zone to eliminate those "strikes" that are off the plate, but that's about as far as I think we can go.

 

Don't think it helps, with 90% of the kids it hurts. On another thread, fossywriter said he umped girls softball where they were pitching at 6 years old. He said most could throw strikes, which is impressive and hard to believe. My town coaches pitched until 9 and 10-year old league. Could see letting 8 year olds pitch, but have coaches come in if the kids can't throw strikes. Teaching the game definitely should be the most important with younger kids.

 

The theory is that if you make home runs harder to hit, then contact will be more valued and pursued.

 

When the kids walk, the coach comes in and pitch. In the 6-7 year old league, coaches pitch. But by age 6, they've graduated from T-ball. It's insane. Kids can't throw strikes. Kids can't hit, except for two or three kids in each lineup.

 

Which will depress scoring, and throughout the 150-year history of pro baseball, scoring declines and attendance declines have had a very high correlation.

 

I definitely feel like an old man in that I don't get most of youtube. Will watch it to listen to music from concerts and sometimes the Howard Stern show. Was at sister's house on Mother's Day and went to turn on the Yankees game. On the tv, there were guys playing some kind of nerf gun war game. My sister said my nephew watches that for hours.

 

I'd be surprised if this proves to be true. It would be a great field for graduate study. My experience and observation has been that the dominating pitchers at 8 are just wearing their arms out and typically aren't pitchers by the time they reach high school.

 

That's what happened to our dominant kid. He could only play second base in high school. But I'm more talking about the hitters getting years of reps facing live pitching.

 

Yeah ... again I'd be surprised if that held. It's like a different sport once kids hit puberty and the mound goes back to 60 feet. I don't know how much those early reps matter.

From our league, I'd say it's 50-50 whether the 8-9-10 "all-stars" are even playing HS baseball.

 

Our rec league has T-ball for pre-K (4 and 5 years old), coach pitch for K but they get three swings and then have to hit off a tee, complete coach pitch for first grade, half player pitch and half coach pitch for second grade -- they alternate innings and if during the player inning a player walks three the coach comes in, then player pitch from third grade on. They don't play full baseball rules -- passed balls, steals, etc. -- until middle school. I can see it being an issue in some regard that early, but more for pitching than hitting. Our league also has an hour and 20 minute time limit or six innings. My fourth grader last night got five full innings in and it was a pretty well played game. I've seen six. But I've also seen two inning games with 1,000 walks. I've seen teams in coach pitch get so used to their coach's perfect pitches that they crush through the lineup every time no questions asked, so how does that help them either? They can soft toss in practice. I guess I kind of lean toward the advancement of skills all helps them learn.

 

Between soccer and lacrosse, baseball and softball are getting killed at the youth participation levels.

As far as how to fix MLB: maybe they should try moving the pitching slab back 2-3 feet.

That would "effectively" take 2-4 mph off of everybody's fastball.