Sports and The Refinement Culture

Do you watch baseball? Probably not. The average age of a televised baseball viewer is 57 and World Series ratings have been dropping for 20 years. About 68.5 million fans attended major league games during the 2019 regular season, down from a peak of nearly 80 million in 2007. There was a 12 percent decline in household viewers between 2019 and 2021.

There’s even a literal Babe Ruth type player in the league now. A 6 foot 4 Japanese player who hits 35 home runs a year and won 15 games with a 2.33 ERA as a starting pitcher. If he existed in 1998 he’d be one of the biggest celebrities in America. Derek Jeter and A-Rod were world famous. They dated models and pop singers. Their personal lives made headlines. Today? I don’t know how many people would recognize walking down the street.

Baseball is declining because it has a big problem. It takes almost 4 hours to watch a game. 4 hours on one event in an era with limitless entertainment options, ADHD Tik-Tok-ification, and a smart phone in everyone’s hands.

This has been a problem for years. A few weeks ago, I sat down to watch a spring training game and was surprised to see a giant clock behind the batter.

Isn't the whole point of baseball that its the only major sport without a clock? The sport exists in a permanent summer where school is out, the grass is green and the sun is shining bright in the sky. It was called America’s national past time, not sport, for a reason. It’s a leisure sport, that’s the appeal for me. You take in the atmosphere, there is action, but also sometimes there is no action. It’s a vibe. Its’ conversational and contemplative, with infinite minimal tweaks throughout. It’s great to see live, or listen on the radio and has transitioned to TV very well. Baseball has an aesthetic quality that other sports do not have.

The Clock

I don’t really enjoy baseball the way I enjoy football, or basketball. The pleasure of baseball comes from occupying a certain head space, a mode. The classic 19th century aristocratic leisure sports never had a clock (hunting, tennis, skiing), it ended when it ended. Clocks are for people who work for a living. People with jobs who know where they will be every day at 9am and at 5pm.

It’s true, baseball has been a through a lot of changes. They lowered the pitchers mound in 1968. They introduced the DH in the American League in 1974. Players openly took steroids in the 90s. But adding a clock is the most radical change of them all. It gets to the essence of the sport.

How did this happen?

Baseball and Refinement Culture

Baseball is the first sport to radically change their game because the optimization of the game has ruined it. This is happening in every sport, but baseball took the first step. Let me explain.

 The Refinement Culture. The Refinement Culture is a theory that states most sports games have been solved. The 2010s data analytics revolution has concluded the most efficient way to play in all major sports. Every team in each sport is copying this efficient way and it is leading to unpredictable results for the viewer.

Take the NBA for example. The shot value jumps from 2 to 3 points for 1 millimeter of extra distance. Meanwhile, the closer you get to the basket the easiest is to get to 2 points, so spend your time between these two spaces. Polarized. Leave the rest alone.

Data analytics started focusing on Soccer in 2013. You see the same thing pattern. This time it’s with the less efficient shot outside the box slowly fading away. More teams are dribbling inside and playing with short passes.

Same with baseball in the 2010s. When a batter steps up to bat, he can score a run by hitting a home run. That’s very efficient and so that’s what everyone does now. 50% of all runs scored come from home runs.

But hitting a home run isn’t easy. You’re going to strike out a lot. The league-wide strikeout rate has increased every season since 2005, when it sat at 16.4%. In 2021, that figure has risen to 24.1%. That is a 47% increase in 16 seasons. Not only has the strikeout percentage monotonically increased, but the rate at which it is increasing is growing. From 2005-09, the rate increased by 9.7%; from 2010-14, 10.3%. In the most recent five seasons, the strikeout rate increased by 11.6%.

If every hitter is swinging for the fences and either hitting a home run or striking out, that means the batting average should be dropping. It sunk to an all-time low of .233 in 2022.

This is Refinement Culture Baseball. Lots of Home Runs, lots of Strikeouts, and not a lot of other stuff going on. Just like the NBA and it’s 3-point or layup shot selection. The sports have hit a wall.

Each At-Bat is Very Important

If half of the runs come from home runs then each at-bat becomes crucial. This causes a chain reaction that is leading baseball to 4 hour games.

Managers bring in more pitchers per game to face each batter. Which leads to more commercials, mound discussions and warm-up pitches.

It also means both pitcher and batter are trying to disrupt each other's rhythm/rituals with stalling techniques when facing each other. Each at-bat is becoming 4-5 minutes long. Batters call time out or adjust their gear, practice swings, etc are all tactics to seize control over the tempo of the at-bat.

A writer sat down and watched a game from 1984 and a game from 2014 and realized the problem was the time between pitches increased tremendously. 

You can see in the comparison video below how before the pitch clock, both pitcher and batter are trying to disrupt each other's rhythm/rituals with stalling techniques which leads to a very long at-bat. The game is won by home runs. Add this all up it leads to a long game. The data analytics revolution, the Refinement Culture, caused baseball to become a 4 hour game sport.

Major League Baseball implemented the pitch clock during spring training this year. Did it work? Did the game get quicker? Were there any other side effects from adding a clock?

Did the Pitch Clock Fix Baseball?

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