Pedro Moura - How to Beat a Broken Game: The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink

T HE NIGHT THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS FINALLY won the World Series, nothing happened until Mookie Betts, the smallest, lightest man on the field, wrested control. In the sixth games sixth inning, the Tampa Bay Rays removed their thriving ace, Blake Snell, fearful of Betts taking a third look at him. Betts thumped a double on the first strike he saw from a skilled Rays reliever. On the game-tying wild pitch, he scampered to third base. On a routine grounder with Tampa Bays infield in, he maximized his secondary lead, accelerated at contact, slid headfirst, and touched home a few tenths of a second before he could be tagged. If it was anybody but Mookie on third, said Tampa Bay third baseman Joey Wendle, we wouldve got him at home. Betts rose, howled, and pumped his right fist five times. The Dodgers would be winners. All series, Betts proved the most comprehensive contributor, and the most entertaining. He homered. He executed double steals. He secured screaming line drives. He demonstrated modern baseball at its best, superlatively skilled and impossibly instinctual.

Baseball at its worst surrounded him. The decisive game featured almost as many strikeouts as balls in play. After Bettss sixth-inning romp, no one but him reached second base again in 2020. And no one was watching. The last time fewer Americans watched a World Series, the World Series was not on television. The Dodgers thirty-two-year championship drought was over, but their sports struggle continued.

The evidence attests that baseball is broken. The games become more of a bore every year, and the leagues early efforts to speed pace of play changed little. It is simpler to explain the problem than it is to suggest a solution. More than our pitiful attention spans, the prime culprit is the advent and spread of data into the consciousness of the executives running the sport and, more recently, the athletes playing it. Once they grasped what earned them money in the modern game, hitters adjusted their swings to pursue it. They started hitting balls harder and launching them into the air more often, accepting a corresponding increase in strikeouts. Pitchers were already throwing harder than ever, so hard they made it halfway through a game just over half the time. They changed their games to negate hitters gains, throwing fewer fastballs and throwing them high, where uppercut swings cant reach. Strangely sticky concoctions enabled them to generate gratuitous spin.

The battle of extremes yields an imbalanced product devoid of action and drained of surprises. Even no-hitters became the norm for a time in 2021. Sacrifice bunting, calculated to be inefficient, is a rare relic. Base stealing is often considered foolhardy. On average, balls in play are now spaced more than four minutes apart, more than twice as slow as a century ago. A typical 2020 game featured 33 percent fewer balls in play than the average 2005 game.

Im worried, said longtime manager Buck Showalter. Young or old, if youre not worried, you dont love the game. Even on that, there is disagreement. I definitely dont worry about it, said Giants manager Gabe Kapler. Baseball has always gone through ebbs and flows. The game survives through it all. But more stakeholders side with Showalter, one of fifteen men on commissioner Rob Manfreds competition committee, a group of baseball lifers reestablished in 2017 to dissect the sports struggle attracting new fans. Showalter reports that the league understands the extent of the problem. Weve just made the game too predictable, he said. And its not the players fault, because theyre gonna chase what pays the most.

Showalter indicts the financial incentives and the defensive shift. Most insiders assign blame differently. Fellow former manager Jim Leyland faults hitters for lingering too long outside the batters box waiting for their walk-up songs, refocusing their eyes. Marlins manager Don Mattingly sources it to swing changes. Its been building, he said. Now, were at a point where its getting so much more attention because its a game that, sometimes, is unwatchable. Speaking to ESPN, Cubs manager David Ross likened the modern game to a nightly derby. We are not trying to play baseball, he said. We are trying to hit home runs.

Others omit blame in favor of frustration. Its disgusting to watch, really, said recently retired reliever J. P. Howell. What is this, a barroom brawl? This isnt our art. Tigers manager A. J. Hinch said he harbored great concern that a game dominated by strikeouts, walks, and home runs would not entertain the masses. Were trending in the wrong direction, he said. It doesnt mean we can just snap our fingers and make a rule change or do one simple thing and all of a sudden were going to turn into a more balanced sport.

As it did to many fields, the COVID-19 pandemic amplified the inequity. It is far easier for a marooned pitcher to simulate game action than it is for a hitter. Most minor leaguers did not play any actual games in 2020, and the 2021 return laid bare their weaknesses. Strikeouts shot up further.

As a business, baseball is also broken, or, like the game, at least imbalanced. The start of this century brought unprecedented sustained labor peace, but players and owners have grown more and more at odds in recent seasons. Soon after the sports COVID shutdown in March 2020, players agreed to be paid on a prorated basis for any games played. Team owners later tried to alter the terms of the deal. When players balked, the disagreement went public, and it stayed that way until Manfred, acting on behalf of the owners, imposed a sixty-game season to begin in July. When coronavirus outbreaks inevitably occurred, the league blamed players for their lack of vigilance, not its insufficient protocols. When a COVID-positive Justin Turner emerged from a Globe Life Field spare room minutes after the Dodgers won, it was he who was condemned, not league officials, who failed to follow protocols that called for him to be sent away from the premises when he tested positive.