In baseball there’s rarely a uniform opinion held between fans and the commissioner of the game but one common cause may be a desire to see defenders more involved in the game.
People generally want to see more balls in play; the collective has decided that the three true outcomes of baseball, a walk, a strikeout or a home run aren’t as entertaining as watching the ball going into play and wondering what might happen.
The excitement of wondering if the fielder is going to get to the ball, are they going to field it cleanly, will the ball make it there in time or if the hitter is going to beat the throw? All of this trumps the three true outcomes in possibility and wonder.
And so right now everyone is coming up with “smart” ideas on how to get more balls in play as the analytical style of play has pushed hitters to concentrate more on power and less on just contact.
But I’m here to tell you that people are looking at it wrong. What you need to do is to incentivise hitters to hit more grounders and you can only do that if they could expect a better outcome than the current one.
And how do we do that? I hear you say.
We make the defence worse.
To do that I’m proposing a minimum weight limit for the fielding nine.
Current MLB players are the fittest and most athletic group of players to have ever played this sport and they make so many plays look routine that we need to force teams to put worse fielders on the field. We can do that by saying you can’t have too many tiny boi shortstops or bean pole centre fielders, you need to have a bit more beef or chonk in that lineup which isn’t going to have as much coverage on the field. Basically, Jumbo Diaz at the renamed thot corner and an outfield or Fielders (sorry to Prince and Cecil).
This makes the defence worse, which brings up BABIP (batting average on balls in play) which in turn brings up the reward from contact hitting. Which in turn means that hitters will hit more grounders and we will get more balls in play until we find a new equilibrium where the amount of defensive play is to the liking of the fans.
This is also very easy to adjust season to season to find that right spot, just change the overall weight limit or introduce some positional minimums. And if we especially just care about infield BABIP you could just set a minimum for the infield.
But if that feels too simple for you I have an alternative. What if we do the same but add in a weight handicap system.
The first idea is a rather simple concept but I think I’d prefer a system in which players don’t have to just get heavier or that teams have to find the right balance between heavy set guys and matchstick men. I’m talking about a system where you could way less but you have put on any weight you are under the minimum.
That means you could roll out your team of Altuves if you want but they are each going to have to wear 10kg on their body somewhere to get the team weight up to the handicap.
This opens up a whole new world of analytics on which positions can take the weight and still perform well. Should players be adding weight to their legs, cores or arms? The whole world is their oyster to the front office.
There’s plenty of ways for smart teams to optimise this but it will make defence as a whole worse and give MLB players the incentive to hit the ball on the ground again.
It’s frankly so simple I don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought of it before. It’s almost no one wants to save MLB.
