Strikeouts are killing baseball

Seems like that's what the White Sox were trying to do with Chris Sale last year. Now he's back to firing bullets again.

 

Well, with the rise of sabermetrics in the 80s and 90s, they figured out that SBs didn't help you at all if your success rate was under about 70%, and even above that the gain was only incremental.

(That's why we have a lot of guys with 80 percent steal rates stealing 15 bases a season.)

Plus factor in the injury chances for big heavy-muscled guys (whether those muscles are natural or not) and teams don't want that high priced talent diving into bases.

 

Another factor here: Tommy John surgery is basically seen as routine, guys often come back stronger from it, and teams increasingly view it as part of the development process rather than a catastrophic setback.

 

Technology and data analysis help make sports teams more efficient, but it feels like the homogenization of strategy is sucking the fun out of a lot of them. And it isn't just baseball abandoning the stolen base and putting everything on the homer. It's NBA teams addicted to corner 3s and allergic to midrange jumpers. It's NFL teams running copycat offenses and de-emphasizing the running game (thinking of this after reading the story I posted on the offseason thread.)

I'm no Luddite and I certainly don't expect teams to deliberately adopt suboptimal strategies just for the sake of variety. But it feels like we've lost some magic that we can't get back.

 

IMO this is one reason (maybe a smaller one) the A's have always been in such bad shape with fans even while successful. They suck to watch.

 

That's not true at all. The game has just changed. It's the same reason teams rarely bunt anymore.

 

Plus it's one ugly-ass stadium.

 

It's a combination of all that stuff.

One thing is the current generation of players/GMs came of baseball age in the 1980s, when stolen bases were on a surge, and were brought up with the importance of shutting down the big-time base stealers, so since then shutting off the running game has become a big deal:

1) the virtual elimination of the big-windup high-kick delivery -- everybody throws from the stretch now;

2) More effective pickoff moves for pitchers;

3) more emphasis on developing big-arm catchers.

All working to reduce the incentive for offensive teams to run a lot.

 

FWIW, the entire Kansas City organization, from Rookie to the majors, values and rewards speed. It's a major emphasis in their development program. Although the differences are perhaps smaller than they were, organizational philosophies still vary at least a little.

 

The disappearance of turf from the game probably has a bit to do with it too.

 

And cold!

 

But even they aren't/weren't stealing a ton of bases other than Dyson and Gore. It manifests itself a lot more in things like defense and taking the extra base - think Lorenzo Cain scoring from first on a single a couple of times during the 2015 playoffs. (Apologies if that's a raw wound for a Jays fan.) I think it's those factors and the perception of speed as an indicator of pure athletic ability.