Has the Swing-for-the-Fences Approach Hurt the Game?

[AstrosFan]

Everyone's a slugger nowadays. But not everyone's a great hitter. So we end up with players going for the long ball, and winding up with lower batting averages than they are capable of, and strikeout totals beyond anything the game has seen before. We would expect evolution to make players more talented physically, but if the approach at the plate is all wrong, maybe the players aren't as good hitters as in the past. Are players too focused on the home run, that it has hurt the quality of hitting in baseball?

[willshad]

There are plenty of guys who hit for power, while also hit for a high average. If anything you should be saying the opposite..that the hitters now are able to do what guys of 20, 30 or 40 years ago couldnt do. You didnt see many guys during that time bat over .300 with 40 home runs. Nowadays that is common.

[AstrosFan]

But we must remember to account for the advantages today's hitters enjoy, result in a higher batting context. Even if the average/power combos are occurring more frequently these days, it doesn't necessarily mean todays hitters are more complete than those of 20, 30, 40 years ago. And let's remember not to limit ourselves in how far back we can compare. Finally, I do not think today's players are close to reaching their potential as hitters, when everyone is approaching the game as a home run hitter. We may not be at the worst point in the game's history in this regard, but I think a smarter approach at the plate would benefit the game.

[csh19792001]

Everyone's a slugger nowadays. But not everyone's a great hitter. So we end up with players going for the long ball, and winding up with lower batting averages than they are capable of, and strikeout totals beyond anything the game has seen before. We would expect evolution to make players more talented physically, but if the approach at the plate is all wrong, maybe the players aren't as good hitters as in the past. Are players too focused on the home run, that it has hurt the quality of hitting in baseball?

I couldn't possibly sum it up better than our esteemed member Brett. Here's his post on the subject:

"I've got a real crisis and its been brewing since about '98 now. I HATE the modern game of baseball. There is very little I enjoy. Around '98 with the offensive explosion and the possibility that home runs could come flying off of anyone's bat it just turned into a sucky game to watch or listen too.

In the 80s I would listen to any game I could find on the radio. Why? A guy gets a hit in a key situation and its a big deal. Today its walk, strikeout, home-run. In the 80s, a team would pull out all the stops to get an insurance run to put them up 4-2 in the 8th. They'd go into the 8th with a plan to get 1 run!

A home run was a game changer, and a guy who could hit 30 was really valuable.

The little things like cutting off a gap hit and holding a guy to a single could change a game.

Baseball is not worth watching today.

Hitting home runs entails putting the barrel of the bat in a spot with enough speed that the ball will go out! That's all. All hitting is the same. Put the barrel of the bat on the ball in the right spot with enough speed and then watch the magnificent flight.

Players from about 1991 and before had to do every little thing on the field to be great. They had to hit the cutoff man. They had to run out every grounder because one extra man on base could be the difference. They had to get into position on a fly ball to make a great throw.

Those things have all been devalued.

Its similar in (heavyweight) boxing because boxing has basically been "figured out" in the last 15 years. A 6-4 250 pound guy who can defend and punch is going to win 12 rounds of three minutes. That is the formula. A 6-0 190 pound guy can not do it. Boxing has moved in a singular direction and away from all around skills. It happens in a lot of sports. (I actually think that in the lower weight classes, it's a lot better though).

But baseball IS harder to dominate today. Home runs come from everywhere. The game is just too easy, but think about this, its kind of simplistic in the way that checkers is and you are jsut not going to get a guy dominate a game like that because everyone can pretty much do the 2-3 basic things that they need to.

There are a few players who can still do special things. A-Rod playing SS was one. It can still be hard to find a great centerfielder who can hit a ton.

By the way, I had a wierd but fun dream last night that I got a chance to play in a "deadball" baseball league. I'm not going to get into it now but I will say I'd rather have a dream like that than watch 10 baseball games today.

Games will turn off fans when they become too physical and less mental. Baseball has just become too predictable. You watch the home runs, and the strikeouts and the webgems and you basically watch most of what mattered in the entire major leagues that night.

I think that in today's game, you can look at uber stats and basically rank players down the line. You can look at OPS+ and pretty much tell who is the best offensive player. I believe its very accurate in todays simplified game.

But I'm doubting that you could just look at stats like that before the 90s and know who the best were. Games were more often won off of a key single, or a guy stretching a single into a double to get into scoring position in a key situation. A guy can have a 170 OPS+, but what percentage of his at bats actually came in situations where the game was on the line back then? The stats work best with lots of offense and less value to little things.

[gator92]

But we must remember to account for the advantages today's hitters enjoy, result in a higher batting context.

While we're at it, though, let's account for the negatives, like splitters, the additional talented pitchers and fielders due to full integration (though perhaps diluted by expansion) and the gigantic gloves fielders wear these days. Not to mention smooth infields and artificial surfaces which give better bounces on grounders...

[Sultan_1895-1948]

While we're at it, though, let's account for the negatives, like splitters, the additional talented pitchers and fielders due to full integration (though perhaps diluted by expansion) and the gigantic gloves fielders wear these days. Not to mention smooth infields and artificial surfaces which give better bounces on grounders...

The benefit to hitters, from having their balls move more quickly through the harder infields, far outweighs any "better bounce" theory. Think you might have been reaching on that one.

I will agree with you that there are some negatives today's hitters face. None of which, have anything to do with night baseball, travel, technology, knowledge passed down through the years, strikezone, hitters backdrops, etc.

The biggest disadvantages I see, are what you mentioned. The bigger gloves held by better positioned and more athletic fielders. Having that been said, some of that athleticism has been diminished by players focusing more and more, mentally and physically, on putting up offensive numbers. Power numbers bring big money, and the game is setup to invite such an approach. The negative to the fields being so small, is a smaller outfield area for hits to drop, creating lower batting averages.

[SHOELESSJOE3]

While we're at it, though, let's account for the negatives, like splitters, the additional talented pitchers and fielders due to full integration (though perhaps diluted by expansion) and the gigantic gloves fielders wear these days. Not to mention smooth infields and artificial surfaces which give better bounces on grounders...

Some points there, but it's all tempered by.........

The lower mound that was changed because MLB was getting a bit nervous in a period when they believed offense was lower then "they" wished it to be. That was in 1969 and also a lower strike zone.

The strike zone lower than ever and if one looks to the rule book you will see that the book and the umps are on different pages.They tossed away the book on the strike zone and Bud and the boys just look the other way.

The ball, no longer even debated, it's not the same. Lab tests in 2000 at Rhode Island found only the late 1980s and some 1990s balls out of specs. A number of calls to Selig's office to discuss the synthetic material over the limit went not only unanswered, he never returned the calls.

It's all about money and why not it's not only a game it's a busine$$. Notice MBL never panics when offense soars only when it drops. There was only one exception Ford Frick from the old school saw Maris with 61 and enlarged the strike zone soon after. Not long after, 1969 they lower the mound and make the strike zone smaller.

Not so sure about smoother fields, where did that come from. Ground keeping today better than years ago, news to me. Artificial turf, thank God the newer parks in recent years go to the real stuff. Add to that how many balls on artificial turf got by infielders that might not have on real grass.

Your other points valid and well taken but I post some others that balance out the favorable conditions, both time periods.

It's the same old story, no one era had it all going for them.

[csh19792001]

Not to mention smooth infields and artificial surfaces which give better bounces on grounders...

How many artificial fields are left? 2 out of 30?

[Seattle1]

More players should probably try to emulate Ichiro Suzuki. He rarely swings for the fences, but still hits some homers here and there after all. He even hit the only inside-the-park homerun in All-Star Game history!

:twocents:

[Sultan_1895-1948]

More players should probably try to emulate Ichiro Suzuki. He rarely swings for the fences, but still hits some homers here and there after all. He even hit the only inside-the-park homerun in All-Star Game history!

:twocents:

lol, the league would probably hit .100 if they literally tried to emulate Ichiro. Like trying to emulate that chinese lady who flips bowls from her feet onto her head, stacking them. He's as rare as rare gets. If you just mean, emulate his approach, I'm all for that. He's fun to watch hit. Same with Reyes.

[AstrosFan]

I agree the better fielding equipment and smaller parks result in lower batting averages today. But I don't like the way we're encouraging everyone to be a home run hitter. I think the way baseball is catering to the long-ball approach is resulting in a plethora of hitters who really aren't sluggers, but think they are because the conditions of the game make it possible for even a player with average power to hit 25 home runs. And the weak sluggers will hit 10-15 home runs, and they'll realize that they could hit even more if they hit the weight room and bulked up, because a lot of those fly balls came pretty close. So they'll bulk up, and get up to the 25 home runs, but their batting average will fall when they start going more for the long ball, and their speed and fielding performance will drop. I don't think it is just the players' fault. Everyone has contributed to this: fans, owners, agents, managers, etc. We need to stop shrinking the parks, to name one thing, to discourage players from thinking they're something they're not.

[csh19792001]

We need to stop shrinking the parks, to name one thing, to discourage players from thinking they're something they're not.

They need to stop building parks which are the same size as many high school fields, for starters. Hell, the NYS Collegiate League team in my home town has a home field as large as many of the ML parks built in the last 15 years. The Eastern League (AA) team I grew up watching had a park bigger than most.

I did some research awhile back and started a thread with this, but got no response:

This is a continuation of my last post, but I figure it probably deserves it's own discussion thread in the history forum.

I used Clem's Baseball as my source and went through systematically (using Excel) to compare the park dimensions from the teens and 20's to compare with the parks of today.

I'll start with the parks of yore. All I have time for now. Someone with more time or a database could probably compute today's park dimensions quite quickly.

Most of the original 16 parks were modified in the 20's, some were originally larger and vice versa. I used the longest dimensions from each park listed for the 1910-30 period to demonstrate the magnitude of the discrepancy between eras. For some parks, left center and right center were included, for many they were not and the data were omitted.

Major League wall distances from home plate for the 1910's-20's:
Left Field Line: 345
Left Center: 401
Center Field: 453
Right Center: 371
Right Field Line: 318

With wall heights, a caveat arose. I wanted to look at average OF wall height and compare it to that of today's, but realized that due to wildly differential heights even within the same parks, averages wouldn't represent an accurate portrayal of reality.

For example, here are some idiosyncrasies:

-The Baker Bowl had a 281 foot RF line and relatively short power alley, but a 60 foot wall.

-League Park was 290 to RF, but had a 45 foot RF wall and a 25 foot CF wall.

-Fenway: The sign says the Green Monster is 310 feet from home plate. It's 304.779 feet, high according to one measurement or 308, according to another. It has been green only since 1947. Before that, Fenway's left-field wall was covered with advertisements. The original 25-foot wall was made of wood, which burned along with the rest of the park in a January 5, 1934, fire. The second, 37-foot wall was tin over wooden railroad ties. The current hard plastic wall, also 37 feet high, was erected in 1976.

-Ebbets had a 37 foot right field wall.

On average, the walls of yesteryear were taller than those of today, especially the right field walls.

I didn't even breach distance behind home plate, much less foul territory as sidebar topics related to how parks have changed over the history of the game. If anyone is interested in figuring out how dimensions and structures have changed, below is a list of today's parks, and also a methodology for computing park size, or "basic playing area" as the author calls it.

2006 Major League Park Dimensions

We have the biggest, strongest players have, the hardest, most resilient bats, and the most tightly wound baseballs.

And these parks are a joke for today's stars and pose very little challenge. This creates monolithic games based almost entirely off of HR's and the thread of HR's.

[Pere]

I had a wierd but fun dream last night that I got a chance to play in a "deadball" baseball league.

Have you got a vintage club near you?

[SHOELESSJOE3]

We have the biggest, strongest players have, the hardest, most resilient bats, and the most tightly wound baseballs.

And these parks are a joke for today's stars and pose very little challenge. This creates monolithic games based almost entirely off of HR's and the thread of HR's.

May I add one more, one that was a much discussed issue in the early 1990s but has been buried now since the steroid problem took front and center.
One that in the early/mid 1990s had articles in USA TODAY and a few dozen other newspapers, Baseball Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Baseball Digest, The Sporting News, yes many articles and some with diagrams. Diagrams showing whats in the rule book and what takes place on the field, not even close.

Speaking of a hugh contributor to the home run derby of the 1990s...........the strike zone, no longer a topic of discussion. The strike zone that in the book, the upper half is a point midway between the top of the uniform pants and the shoulders. Thats in the book, on the field the umps have lowered the upper half to just a bit above the belt, hitters delight.

The pitcher is squeezed, he has to come down with the pitch and the hitters of course know that. Not only location favors the hitter but pitches that were once strikes are now balls often putting the hitter in the favorable "hitters count."

A shame, MLB looks the other way, allowing the umps to call their own strike zone, not the one in the rule book. Call the book strike zone and the homers will go down but for sure that will never happen, MLB will not take any action that would put a damper on the phoney home run derby.

[Seattle1]

If you just mean, emulate his approach, I'm all for that. He's fun to watch hit.

Yeah just don't swing for the fences all the time. Just try to get a hit. "Hit it where they ain't." You know, play baseball.