The Monkey Cage

I see this as a partial equilibrium argument when what you care about is the general one. I’m no expert, but I’d predict that if you eliminated the second ball you wouldn’t leave anything else the same, the value of all other strikes,balls, bunts, and steals.

I think that eliminating ball two might actually make games take longer. Ball 2 doesn’t change much from a hitter’s perspective (where the “action” is); but it has a lot of value to the pitcher. In a 1-1 count, a pitcher can try to get a batter to chase a ball outside of the zone that will either cause them to swing and miss or hit something easily manageable. If a pitcher has a 1-2 count, they can be a lot more aggressive and the hitter has to be more defensive.

If, however, the second ball is eliminated, then the odds swing perceptibly in favor of the batter. They can anticipate more strikes being thrown and have better chances of getting hits or, alternatively, make it easier to get walks. Hits and walks create rallies, which take a long time and create the need to change pitchers frequently. Which, of course, requires a television commercial break. And that, I think, is what slows down the game.

In college, I used to watch my college team play. They were good enough to go on and win the College World Series. There was a noticeable difference in time between the un-televised games during the regular season and those televised during the run up to the College World Series.

a very, very minor point: Scott’s no-hitter clinched the division, but the New York Mets went on to win the pennant that year.

Baseball is my favorite sport, but with the exception of Red Sox playoff games, I really wouldn’t just sit down and watch a game. It is, however, a perfect game to have on in the background and doing other stuff (such as talking about baseball).

As for the 4 balls in a walk: as previously said, if there were only 3 balls for a walk, offense would skyrocket (especially walks—not very exciting). 4 balls was settled on because (it was originally 8 balls), because it was a nice balance for the pitcher and batter.

As for speeding up the game, you could limit the number of relievers in an inning, have a time-limit in between pitches, or cut down time in between innings (obviously won’t happen).

Baseball game times have been increasing more or less for at least the past 80 years. The recent reasons involve:

1. More scoring
2. More pitches per plate appearance
3. More time for commercials between half innings
4. More situational pitching changes in the late innings.

reducing the number of balls for a walk would reduce #2, but likely increase #1 and maybe #4.

The easiest ways to speed up the game (and not to lose contact with the games traditions, which cutting out a ball would definitely do, would be to limit the number of pitching changes made in a half inning and to reduce the time for commercials between half innings.

Other possibilities are to raise the allowable mound height, embiggen the strike zone, limit the number of times a batter can step out of the box and the time between pitches.

Somewhat on the same lines, why not change the rule with fouls? Instead of the first two fouls being strikes, and all the remaining fouls being meaningless, have the first foul count as a strike, the second as a ball, the third as a strike, the fourth as a ball, and so on.

I remember spending alot of time watching batters foul off one pitch after another. The alternative would mean that you could no longer in theory have an infinite number of fouls. But some balance is kept between the batter and pitcher because the batter does get a little credit for being about to foul off the ball.

As long as the vendors keep serving roasted Irish babies up through the 7th inning, I’ll be at the ballpark.

There’s nothing like fresh roasted Irish baby at the ball game.

I understand that this is at least partly tongue-in-cheek, but it strongly reminds me of the following situation.

A woman meets a man and they fall in love, but he does little things that annoy her, so she suggests he change them to “show his love.” He does. Eventually the changes mount up, and she leaves him, because, “you’re not the man I fell in love with anymore.”

Anyway, absent a strong rooting interest, the only way to enjoy baseball is in the stadium or on the radio. It is definitely not a game to be watched on television by any but the most ardent fans.

Jorge: I mostly agree with your last point, except that I’d add that, for me, baseball has always been best on the radio. Going out the ballpark is nice once in a while, but it’s a hassle and it’s expensive and the long delays get boring and people spill stuff on you, etc. As for your main point,I accept that in toto. When I drag my wife to a game, she’s always asking questions like “Why don’t they shorten distances between the bases so it would be easier to score runs?” or “Why not eliminate force-outs and make the basemen tag all the runners?” To which my answer is invariably “Because then it wouldn’t be baseball.” (Which is the same reaction I have to designated hitters: That’s not baseball.)

Baseball is a game of failure. What other sport provides accolades for a player who succeeds about thirty percent of the time?

The batter is already at tremendous disadvantage, and that one extra pitch allows the batter one extra chance to make contact with the pitched ball. Changing that dynamic would affect the strategy of the game in a very broad and likely quite negative way. Imagine watching numerous no-hitter games every week, hardly exciting.

Professional baseball also has many “unwritten” rules against players engaging in “exciting” plays. Plays such as the delayed steal, first and third double steals, and fake steals are almost never performed in professional baseball at any level and are actually considered “Bush League” plays by professional players and coaches. Not because the plays don’t work at that level, but because those plays can make players look bad. No one wants to look bad, and so the gentlemen’s agreement is “I don’t make you look bad, you don’t make me look bad”. Good for the players professional career, but bad for the excitement factor of the game.

There is good reason that baseball players call the professional game “The Show”.

Poli:

You say: “The batter is already at tremendous disadvantage, and that one extra pitch allows the batter one extra chance to make contact with the pitched ball. Changing that dynamic would affect the strategy of the game in a very broad and likely quite negative way.”

However, the whole point of the research referred to in my post is that ball two does NOT change anything; all the probabilities remain essentially in place.

Lee:

Only because you’re comparing shifts in batting average based on counts. By the author’s admission, OBP, a much more meaningful measure, does shift significantly at ball two - that destroys his whole argument.

Mike:
Yes, it changes “nicely” the probability that the batter will walk. Does that have a significant bearing on the outcome? I don’t know. To find out, we’d have to know how ball two affects the probability of scoring a run, and the probability that the run that’s scored in that way is the decisive run in the game. Otherwise it doesn’t really matter, does it?

(And here I’m ultimately making a Riker-Ordeshook type argument. If the game (the election) isn’t decided by a single run (a single vote), then what happened to that particular batter after ball two (what the individual voter did in the voting booth) is inconsequential. Just to bring all this baseball talk back to political science.)

Well, pulling the current Red Sox stats from the web, their overall OPS (On-base-percentage + slugging average) is .829, but .958 starting from a 1-0 count. That’s an enormous difference - about 1.75 runs per game! (http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/ops-for-the-masses/)