Terry Mitchell

A Call for Laissez Faire Baseball



Posted: Thursday, November 03, 2011

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

There are no baseball managers anymore. They have all been replaced by baseball micromanagers. Baseball has been taken over by statistics-driven nerds who religiously monitor stuff like pitch counts. The enjoyment of watching a game has been ruined by constant pitching moves, often resulting in a team using six or more pitchers during a single game. Complete games by a pitcher are almost a thing of the past.

I would like to see baseball adopt a more laissez faire posture – one in which the players are allowed to play the game without a whole lot of interference. I believe this could be accomplished with one simply rule change. That rule would limit any team to two pitching changes per game, barring an injury to any pitcher that would force him out of the game. A manager would be allowed one extra pitching change per pitcher that had to leave due to an injury. Otherwise, a maximum of only three pitchers (the starter and up to two relievers) could be used per team, per game.

This would help maintain the flow and continuity of the game. It would also shorten the length of most games to under three hours. Today’s three-and-a-half-hour games are much too tiresome. In addition, it would make the game more about the players and less about the managers, and more of a delight for the fans. Isn’t that the way baseball was supposed to be?
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

This Article has been viewed 245 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)
» left by Christofer French
 194 days 11 hours ago.
74 fans.
I listen to these coaches, and some of them love being able to recount statistical occurrences. The Age of the Computer has put baseball in a plastic dome where humans get to watch trained millionaires engage in their art and craft. The coaches don't coach they mirror performance in numerical and statistical fashion. Just to change the subject a bit, I think this is why many don't like Tebow. I am sorry, I watched every ball thrown by Elway in competition, and there were times I said, "What is he doing?" Stats, stats, stats and coaches who can't stretch belief beyond those stats.
» left by Terry Mitchell 193 days 20 hours ago.
93 fans.
Christofer, unfortunately all sports seem to be stats-driven these days. I hate it.
» left by William Gills 187 days 10 hours ago.
4 fans.
Interesting concept. My beloved Red Sox have given leave of one of the biggest baseball computer driven, statistic oriented brainiacs in baseball - Theo Epstein. Unfortunately for him the Red Sox didn't allow him to take his computer with him, it stayed in Boston.

In addition to the pitch count limiting starters to 100 pitches or so, some games go on and on for hours in the late innings, one reliever after the other throwing to only one batter. Something's got to change, but I don't see it coming very fast in this computer, technology dependent world.
» left by Terry Mitchell 187 days 4 hours ago.
93 fans.
William, thanks reading and sharing your thoughts on the subject.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.