London scores: 17-13, 12-8. Why not all the time?

Pitching duel or slugfest? Sunday, July 28, 2013

In order to show their baseball knowledge many baseball fans will say: pitching duel, pretending that a game with little action is preferable to a game with lots of action.
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The Yankees have returned to New York from the Isle of Britain only to play two more road games on the Isle of Long in the borough of Queens against the expansion New York Mets. The Yankees just vanquished the Boston Red Sox in London 17-13, 12-8.

The British fans in attendance have a completely distorted view of American baseball. They think it's lots of action. OK, there was the interminable jerking around between pitches by both batters and pitchers but when the plate appearance finally concluded there was often lots of action.

The British fans have not experienced the pleasure of a pitching duel, in which 90% of what passes for action is two guys (pitcher and catcher) playing catch.

There were various explanations for the very high scores, all missing the point. Why not have double digit scores all the time?

Who says that 2-1 is interesting? Sure it's close but where's the action? Baseball is a game of hitting, fielding, base running. It's devolved into a sort of arms race, literally. Pitchers muscle up so much that they can no longer pitch an entire 9 innings even with four days rest between attempts. Batters are so pumped up that they cannot prevent their muscles from popping.

100 miles per hour pitches are met with 105 miles per hour exit velocity. Both are done with baseballs so juiced that pretty much every batter can hit home runs.

Titleist baseballs for exceptional exit velocity and 1,000 foot Home Runs. Friday, June 23, 2017

Sometimes the batters dominate. Sometimes the pitchers dominate. When it's the pitchers, we have a pitching duel. Except the pitchers dominate by striking out batters. So we have two guys playing catch.

The natural instinct among fans and MLB officials alike is to find ways to suppress the scoring and thus the action. Fight against that and against your basic baseball instinct that leads you to believe that games should be low scoring.

Action is interesting and entertaining. It usually leads to scoring. But even if it does not, it is interesting and entertaining. So, why not all the time?