on improving baseball

27 Mar, 2025

happy day after opening day. i'm going to suggest some improvements to help baseball

1. Robo umps behind the dish

• "It's about damn time". The margins in hitting and pitching today are razor thin. Pitchers are throwing 98+ with movement. Hitters are trying to pick up spin out of the hand and make split second decisions. But still relying on 60 yo umpires guessing balls and strikes behind a catcher’s helmet?? Crazy. Can keep the field umpires.

2. Allow sticky stuff

• The crackdown on foreign substances was a good idea, but possibly has more downsides than upsides. Since the ban, we’ve seen an increase in elbow injuries and command issues, all of which raise the risk for pitchers and hitters alike. MLB should approve one standardized tacky substance (like the NBA’s official ball or NFL gloves). The goal isn’t to help pitchers more. It’s to let pitchers grip the ball safely, avoid injury, and maintain command.

3. Reorganize the divisions

• This reorg will create new rivalries and also give smaller market teams a chance by playing more of their games against other like market teams. Playoff format would be the 6 division winners and 6 wildcard teams (total), no more NL / AL. playoffs are a 12 team tournament. top 4 teams get 1rd bye
  • NE: NYY, NYM, BOS, PHI, BAL
  • SE: ATL, TBR, MIA, WSN, CIN
  • MW: CHC, CWS, MIL, CLE, STL
  • MERICA (working title): DET, KCR, MIN, PIT, TOR
  • SW: TEX, HOU, ARI, COL, SDP
  • WEST: LAD, LAA, SFG, OAK/LV, SEA

4. Allow players to run through bags like first base on force plays only

• players must retouch if advancing. will lead to more aggressive baserunning, less injuries via awkward pop up slides. this could also eliminate the take out slide at 2b, an old school,fun baseball tactic but inherently dangerous

5. Many many many more regular season games in: mexico, colombia, venezuela, domincan republic, puerto rico

• MLB should treat Latin America like the NFL treats London/Europe, as a core expansion market. It also represents MLB’s entire talent pipeline, creates electric atmospheres for players, allows many of them to play in front of family and friends, and for players to become more famous around the world

6. ASG is US vs world

• With no more NL vs AL we need a way to divide up the games best. No better way than US vs the world.

7. Salary Cap: modeled after the nba

• A salary cap doesn’t have to flatten the league. It can work like the NBA’s soft cap:
  • Cap floor: $xxxM
  • Cap ceiling: $xxxm
  • Luxury tax tiers (with draft pick penalties)
  • Revenue sharing tied to spending, not profit hoarding
  • Earlier free agency (5 years instead of 6), so players get paid closer to their peak.
  • Creates urgency for teams to win & parit
  • Rewards good front offices
  • Gives every fanbase a reason to care year round.

8. Make baseball players famous again

• Baseball players are cool, actually. Funny. Good hearts. Great role models. Handsome. They used to be the most famous athletes in our country. For baseball to truly be back, this needs to return.

Start with:

• Player run content (vlogs, mic’d up workouts, cribs)
• Player led interviews with other players (see: Travis and Jason Kelce, Brunson & Hart, Draymond Green’s shows) If you're a player and reading this holler. I can help
• Loosen media restrictions. let fans share baseball content???
• Minidocs that follow players home, on offdays, or with their families, especially for international stars
• Have players break down their own pitch sequencing or big at bats
• Align players with other cultural icons. Which players love fashion? food? game? music? cars?

9. Lean into nerds

• Baseball is the most analytically advanced sport on the planet. The work that started in baseball front offices changed sports forever. They are some of the most coveted jobs in the world. Teams are run by polymaths, physicists, econometricians. Folks who could be working at SpaceX or building hedge fund models, but instead, they’re trying to figure out how to get a 24 yo to throw 1% more spin on a slider in a Tuesday night game in Kansas City. They’ve been made out to be villains. In reality, they’re working on some of the most fascinating, complex problems in modern sports, for example:
• How to project a teenager’s muscle development over the next 5 years
• How to measure decision making speed at the hot corner
• How pitch shape changes based on wrist angle and finger pressure
• How to blend 3D motion capture with in game performance to model fatigue

This is cool as hell. But baseball has done almost nothing to make it legible to fans. So instead, let’s celebrate their work

Start with:

• Coaches explaining why they made a mid game pitching change based off of the numbers
• Short form video series where analysts break down real trades and decisions
• Have the "nerds" explain advanced concepts “What is Pitch Tunneling?” or “Why OPS matters more than BA”. Right now these concepts are being forced on fans without a thoughtful explanation of where the game is going
• Bring in a front office staffer or analyst for one inning. Humanize these hard working brilliant folks.
• Run content on how data actually helps players: the analyst who helped a hitter rework his swing plane, the guy who built the travel fatigue model that saved a starter from blowing out, the motion capture engineer who fixed a reliever’s stride length

The point isn’t to make every fan a sabermetrician. It’s to let them feel like there’s something deeper going on, because there is. They hate not knowing what’s going on, and being told it’s too complicated to understand.

I love ball.