[rvshchwl]

Heard a segment on this on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN yesterday. I agree with their argument that it's not a bad thing because we are in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting. We want more home runs, and more scorings, and if lighter baseballs means that we get them, then it's just a normal progression.

[chongli]

in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting

There's a problem with this, though. Home runs are only exciting when they're relatively uncommon. If the home run trend continues, we will effectively see the disappearance of everything else that makes up the game of baseball. Players will either hit a home run, a flyout, or a strikeout. Risky plays (small ball) such as hit-and-runs, sacrifice bunts, and stolen bases will see a continued decline. This will sap all of the strategy and nuance out of the game, turning it into pure spectacle.

Not what I want. Not what a lot of baseball fans want.

[paulcole]

>Risky plays (small ball) such as hit-and-runs, sacrifice bunts, and stolen bases will see a continued decline. This will sap all of the strategy and nuance out of the game, turning it into pure spectacle.

I thought it was pretty well established that bunts, stealing, hit and run are all bad strategy. Entertaining but not anywhere near optimal play.

[currymj]

right, which is bad because it results in an extremely dull game. it’s not inherent to the rules of baseball, though. the easier it is to hit for power the more this is true.

imagine if we averaged 0.5 home runs per game instead of the current 1.8. suddenly you’d need a lot more small ball type strategy to have any hope of scoring runs.

[tyfon]

> we are in a time of sports where games need to be more exciting

Not just games, but everything from the US (I live in Europe) seems to need to create spectacles where there are none with as much flashbang as possible. Just look at the difference in BBC documentaries vs ones coming from the US.

This trend kicked into high gear around 2000 and I had to stop watching channels like Discovery as they no longer aired documentaries but entertainment shows.

In the end, I stopped watching TV altogether as a result of this and we haven't had a TV subscription of any kind since around 2005. My wife uses Netflix once or twice a month though when my sister visits.

[PakG1]

If we accept lighter baseballs as a way to get more home runs, what's wrong with corked bats or any other mechanical mechanisms that could be used to juice home runs? Sammy Sosa was suspended 8 games for using a corked bat, which was claimed was supposed to only be for practice and was used accidentally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corked_bat#History_of_use_in_M...

I suppose like any other sport, baseball is picky and arbitrary about what's OK and what's not OK when it comes to changing equipment and standards.

[milesvp]

I once read an article about the 'sport' of speedwalking that drove this point home to me. This is a sport, where pretty much the only rule is that one foot must always be touching the ground at all times. But in the age of video, it's pretty clear that this one rule is violated by every speedwalker every race. But the ruling body of the sport didn't care about any of the video evidence, and doubled down on using judges with a set of criterium to determine if walkers had both feet in the air.

My other takeaway was that if your sport can't enforce it's only major rule, because physics, they'll find ways to lie to themselves to maintain the status quo. It's probably a profound lesson in politics if I really think about it.

[trgv]

The difference is that - in theory anyway - all of the balls are the same.