Inside MLB's Desperate Mission To Make Baseball Less Boring

I have always found baseball boring, but it seems the sport is facing a crisis from its own fans. As “moneyball managers” form teams based on stats, the game gets less exciting. The result is longer games where “hits are near historic lows [and] strikeouts are at historic highs.” In other words, games have gotten more boring. One MLB executive described the solution this way: “what comes out of our research is that fans want more baseball in the baseball game.” Wow, I hope they didn't pay too much for that groundbreaking research.

The solutions they are testing, though, are pretty creative, “including letting batters try to steal first base, making the bases bigger and easier to reach, strictly limiting visits to the mound by coaches, and using robot umpires.” There is a lot of resistance to these changes among players, but the sport needs to do something to reverse the decline.

One solution no one seems to be suggesting, though, is reducing the number of games. If there were fewer games, maybe fans would care more about each one. Although, those robot umpires do sound pretty awesome.