BASEBALL 2024, or: FOUR LEAGUES & THREE BASES (1 of 2)

For years now, folks have crossed to the other side of the street (and some have even run down alleys á la Dr. Richard Kimble in a claiming race vs. the insane Lt. Gerard...) whenever the subject of my 190-foot rule would rear its ugly head. The ultimate denial of the idea that is destined to save baseball in spite of itself is manifested in a conspiracy of silence that even those who still nod at me as I take a wild-eyed morning walk with two desperately straining dachshunds (yes, even they are trying to escape my infernal penumbra...) are desperate to cling to as they swallow hard and quicken their pace. (One fellow even flagged down an Uber without using his phone... a sign of serious desperation.)

So apparently the 190-foot rule actually applies to me--and not, as I'd been mistakenly believing for all these years, to a nifty innovation that can both heal all wounds and wound all heels as we try to at least make something work the way it should in this cockeyed caravan we call America. (Why baseball? Why not?) I would claim to be bloodied but unbowed, but such a cliché is particularly meaningless since folks are running away before they can even take a swing at me...now that's respect!

Of course, at this moment in time, as COVID rates are rising even faster than the HR/G averages (no mean feat, by the way...) a 190-foot rule is only good sense, but perhaps as you read this third graf of bemused complaint you are wondering just what the hell I am babbling about. Basically, it's all about triples and how to get more of them.

Which was why, as I wrote up a blueprint for baseball in 2024, I was startled when Bill James, who has morphed into a fearsomely formidable Twitterer over the past several years, finally got around to a burning question that touches upon the need for triples (a need that is fully as desperate as the need for folks to flee my presence--mostly on land, but I did see a guy positively wracked with fear racing away from me in a power boat the other day...)

Ahem...yes, the need for triples. You've all known it, but there's been a conspiracy of silence about that, too. Bill (who is 74.47% worse at keeping his big yap shut than I am, which actually strains all but the most sensitive measurement systems) finally decided to poll his Twitter tribe about triples. You can see his question over at the left. The results might surprise you, but more likely it will resonate with you. 

So...given this blog's extravagant, intransigent proselytizing for the three-base hit and how to save them from the slow extinction that the post-neo age of quant quackery is slowly imposing, it's now apparent that more than two-thirds of you have actually been running toward me--even if you were doing it by way of asynchronous orbit. As with most complicated relationships (Kimble and Gerard, Keynes and Hayek, Kim Kardashian and her brassiere collection), you just didn't know that the person you were shunning and defiling was actually your soulmate. After all, remember what William Carlos Williams said. (You say you can't remember? Remind me to remind you...)

So...you want triples. (Say this with a Yiddish accent to get into the proper mood.) We got 'em...guaranteed. It's simple, even though it's yours truly at his most cheekily convoluted (or, as he so often says: is that vice-versa?). March down the left field foul line (we've had enough of right field to last a lifetime, thank you...) until you are 190 feet away from home plate. Draw a looping line across the field until you reach the other foul line. This is the line that sets up the way we triple the number of triples in the game.

Before the game begins, the managers and umps exchange lineups and pleasantries. In our newfangled game that brings back a forgotten old favorite (the folks in the 1890s took triples for granted...) they also decide which half-inning each team will have to take the field with their centerfielder tucked inside that 190-foot line without benefit of any other outfield shifting. 

What does that do? It creates a great deal of additional open space for balls in play to land safely in regions where they will make it much more likely that the batter will get three bases on a long hit than only two. 

Of course you also have to either deaden the ball or erect screens in front of the bleachers from the foul poles to the power alleys to cut down on the obscene number of home runs, because the current shape of extra-base hits per game (1.54 2B-0.12 3B-1.38 HR) is an abomination only slightly less catastrophic than climate change. I'm figuring that such a rule, even applied to each team for just one half-inning, in conjunction with HR-retarding outfield screens, will alter the shape of extra-bases per game to something like 1.76 2B-0.44 3B-0.88 HR.

You might notice something in that projected shape...note that there would be twice as many HRs as triples, and twice as many doubles as HRs. That is the "golden ratio" that the "statistical social engineers" of baseball should attempt to impose upon the game's "extra-base shape." 

Why can't we just fix the ball, you ask? Because we will have a death valley for offense when a deadened ball reduces HRs. It's clear that the ball was juiced after pitcher adjustments in 2013-14 brought run scoring levels in the league back toward 1960s levels. That, along with "launch angle" and a singularly unimaginative emphasis on relief pitchers with meagre repertoires, has given us the two-dimensional game that fans are starting to run away from as if the game--well, if the game had transformed into your favorite social pariah...

What about larger ballparks? A non-starter...look at the parks that have been built. Like much in post-postmodern America, they have less than the bare minimum of flexibility built into their workings. There is simply no way to alter the ballparks to achieve larger outfields.

But you can shrink the number of outfielders to create a different path to the same thing (which, come to think of it, could be the motto for America). You don't have to do it in every inning, of course--that would be too much of a good thing (and you know what that can lead to...) 

A "190-foot" rule just might put Owen "Chief"
Wilson's triples record (36) within reach...

To finish with how the rule is implemented: after those lineups and pleasantries, the head ump pulls out a six-sided die, similar to the ones that send you home from Vegas with a seriously thin wallet. It has some combination of these four numerals on it: 3, 4, 5, 6. He hands it to the visiting manager or his factotum, who rolls it. Let's say a "5" comes up. That means that the visitors will have to conform to the 190-foot rule and move their centerfielder into "short field" position in the bottom of the fifth. Remember, in this inning they cannot move an infielder into the outfield.

Then the home team rolls the die again. Let's say they roll a "4." That means that they will have to conform to the 190-foot rule in the top of the fourth, when they are in the field. 

Probabilities suggest that, via this rule, there will be an additional triple hit by one of the teams in every other ballgame. That will roughly "triple the number of triples" that are hit. 

And the innings in which the rule is in force will produce a kind of anticipation in the ballpark that is as palpable as it unique. These half-innings will have a completely different dynamic: a new randomness and variability will be generated that will keep both the teams and the fans on their toes. 

Remember, 68% of those who responded to James' Twitter poll said they'd rather see a triple than a home run. Clearly this number has risen significantly in recent times--one doubts that such a poll would be tilted in such a way during a period in baseball history that wasn't so egregiously saturated with homers. But it signals that my idea is not quite so outlandish or out of touch as all of you folks still crossing the street to avoid me might first think. I don't care if I remain a social pariah just so long as I save baseball from its own torpor. 

Oh, yes--there's something in the title of this post about "four leagues," isn't there? We'll get back to that. But if you think this is crazy, just wait--all of you will be flagging down Ubers without a phone.