Now I love baseball as much as the next person and I still enjoy the game immensely even with all of the facts above. The playoffs and World Series showed us what is so right about the game. But after attending the Arizona Fall League last week I realized that there is a better brand of baseball right in front of us.
In fact, I will say that the sport being played in the Arizona Fall League was more enjoyable to watch from a fan's perspective than anything we saw during last season and I wasn't quite sure why. From the first game I went to there were hard hit balls, towering home runs and great defensive plays everywhere. There were very few walks, a few strikeouts, and again several very hard hit balls. With the ball in play so often, there was a lot to watch in those games.
When all of the speakers went out to eat on Saturday night, I brought my perception up for discussion with some grizzled old baseball veterans and asked if they felt the same way. Did they think that the AFL games were more enjoyable and more like the baseball we used to watch? Almost to a man they said yes. So I asked the obvious question: Why?
One person involved with Major League Baseball explained it perfectly to me: He said that the strike zone is different in the majors than it is in the minors and the strike zone they are using in the AFL is the minor league strike zone. In the majors, they allow the strike zone to be extended lower than in the minors and every umpire knows that Pitchf/x data awaits them right after the game to show how they called that strike zone. If MLB wants a low strike, they have to call it. And they are calling it.
Here's a great column of what I'm talking about that I found on Hardball Times:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-strike ... f-control/
From this article: "The average strike zone size increased by 16 square inches in 2014 over 2013, growing the zone to a robust 40 square inches larger than just five seasons prior."
This is part of the reason why we have so many strikeouts in Major League Baseball and fewer balls in play. In the minors, there is a smaller strike zone and thus when the pitch is delivered in that zone at 95 mph it can also be hit more fiercely in that zone. And that's what you saw in the AFL: Impressive fastballs followed by hard hits somewhere. As one guy said, the goal of the game was to have the pitcher offer the ball and have the hitter hit it. That's not being done in Major League Baseball and thus the high amount of walks and strikeouts.
As for scoring, the 4.07 runs per game last year per team was the lowest since 1976 when MLB teams scored 3.99 runs per game. Teams averaged 4.61 runs per game in 2009 and 4.86 runs per game in 2006, even after the Steroid Era, so scoring isn't down just because of PEDs. The strike zone and now the defensive shifts are playing major roles in the lack of scoring.
Anyway, I figured the headline would get folks to take a look, so it was done for sensational reasons!!
But I think there's a better game out there than what we're seeing in Major League Baseball and for fantasy purposes we'd like to see more Runs, more Home Runs, more RBIs rather than this steady increase in Strikeouts and a decrease in ERA. There's nothing wrong with that, but the changing of the strike zone is having more of an effect there than the lack of offensive talent or the increased velocity by pitchers. There have always been pitchers who threw hard and were hit hard, but now that 96 mph fastball below the knees is not only unhittable, it's being called Strike 3. And that's not good for the game and it won't attract new fans to the game. We want balls in play.Do you agree or disagree?
