I am not a baseball purist. By that, I mean that I am not a crusty, cynical senior citizen who whines about how all of the baseball players from "back in the day" were hard-nosed players, great citizens, threw 105 miles per hour and hit the ball 570 feet.
I dig the long ball. I dig the high on-base and three-run homer approach of today's top offensive teams (especially in the AL). This style is not a bastardization of the game; it is an evolution of the game, a phase of the game, and an effective way to score runs right now.
But I do miss small ball. And I don't mean the type of small ball that every team plays, where NL pitchers bunt runners over and light-hitting contact hitters slap the ball to the second baseman to move a runner over to third with no outs.
I'm talking real small ball--the type of small ball that teams don't just participate in every now and then, but that teams are built around: A leadoff man who steals 70 bases, a lineup that has a handful of base-stealing threats, and a defense that snags everything, especially up the middle.
This type of team is rare or non-existent today because it isn't feasible. There aren't many more than a handful of legit base-stealers in either league, much less on one team. And it's that lack of base-stealing that I believe is the #1 culprit for the disappearance of small ball. What would need to be done to bring back stealing?
1. Stop building the bandbox parks. Make it worth it to take a risk to grab an extra bag by lowering the number of home runs and doubles. Teams will put an emphasis on drafting, developing and playing base-stealers at the expense of poor-man's sluggers like, say, Scott Thorman.
2. Call balks. A pitcher is not to deceive a runner with his delivery. Well, to be specific and go by the rule book, a pitcher is to be called for a balk when he "makes any motion naturally associated with his pitch and fails to make the delivery."
So when a pitcher lifts that leg up like he's going to toss a pitch, then spins and throws to a base? Yeah, that's a balk, unless lifting a leg up while facing home plate is considered starting to throw towards the base (which may be arguable for Hideo Nomo and, sometimes, Justin Verlander). Washed-up Japanese pitchers aside, umps should enforce the rules the way they are written by calling deceptive pick-off moves that involve pitchers starting a natural delivery home before throwing to a base.
3. To make running easier, bring back the uniform shorts that the White Sox wore in 1976.
4. Don't actually do #3.
Anyone else love the excitement of the stolen base and want to see it come back? Have any ideas to make it happen?
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7 comments:
Note that I think any team is going to be best off with a few sluggers, but I do think there is room in the modern game for a team to have the sluggers complement the base stealers instead of vice versa, especially if said team designed a stadium around such a style to begin with.
The Mets have a lot of young team speed. They're first in steals in MLB and just 14th in HR and 22nd in doubles. Dare I say that the best team in the NL is a small ball team? Certainly by today's standards, I think they are.
I don't think it's as much the number of SB they have as it is the fact that they're successful 85% of the time. Wright's 10 SB and 0 CS is wonderful - he and Reyes should keep it up, and tell Endy Chavez to stop.
They are second in the NL in sacrifice hits, which would be an indication of successful small ball, but Colorado is first and the Reds are tied with the Mets, so I don't think any conclusion can be drawn from that.
The fact is, they're first in the league in OBP and fourth in SLP (and squarely in the middle of the pack in HR), while their pitching staff has given up the least amount of hits in the NL with an ERA+ of 116, and their relief pitching has been fantastic. That's why they're in first place, not as much because they're stealing a bunch of bases.
Nice blog, by the way.
Thanks for the comment.
That's a fair point, but in fairness to small ball: it's not getting a bunch of guys that hit .250/.310/.375 and steal a ton of bases and then expecting to win. To win, period, a team has to have some good hitters--guys who can get on base primarily. And at least a couple of guys who can hit for power.
Small ball as I see it today is more of making a concerted focus to bring in guys who can run somewhat at the expense of those who can slug. Maybe you draft a guy like Jose Reyes instead of one like Ryan Howard. Perhaps you bring up a guy who hits a little lighter than another but has more speed.
In other words, small ball is not an absolute sacrifice of power, but a shift of focus away from it to some substantial extent.
I consider small ball to be strategies that play for one run, rather than trying for multi-run innings. To me, small ball is stealing, sacrificing, pinch running, always trying to advance the runner a single base, even if it costs an out.
Small ball is David Eckstein. Small ball is Brett Butler. Small ball is not Adam Dunn.
Personally, I dislike the balk rule and believe it is impossible to enforce fairly and uniformly. I'd as soon abolish the balk rule and control throw-overs by some other means, like assessing a ball for each unsuccessful pickoff attempt after the first.
To Dagrims,
I agree that small ball is not Adam Dunn, but I disagree that it is necessarily David Eckstein. I think there is a tendency to label anyone who can bunt and who can't hit for power as an example of "small ball," but that cheats small ball. It would be like saying that Mark Bellhorn represents the new style of baseball because he's not too fast, doesn't play good defense but hits for power and takes a ton of walks. Then I could say that you can't win with nine Mark Bellhorns in the lineup to criticize the new style.
I don't think that's fair. That approach takes styles to the absolute, and taking a playing style to the absolute isn't a good formula for winning in any regard, really.
David Eckstein doesn't hit for power. He also is not a good base stealer. He bunts well, sure, but he doesn't have great range. David Eckstein is actually exactly in the middle of small ball and modern baseball. To represent modern baseball, he'd need more power and he'd need to bunt less. To represent small ball, he'd need to be better on defense and have better range.
Obviously, it's not smart for a team to always play for one run in an inning. I agree that small ball is about advancing runners, though, and generally relying on pitching and defense to win low-scoring games. I think a team can still be successful with that approach as long as it doesn't take it to an absolute, just as slugging teams shouldn't take that approach to an absolute--there'd be nobody left to play defense up the middle and to pitch, and having a few guys with speed and who can advance runners is always useful. Similarly, a successful small ball team would make use of the services of a few lumbering sluggers and high-OBP, low speed guys.
I think I'll put together the "All Smallball Team" in a future blog post. :)
I meant to say that Eckstein would need to be a better basestealer and have better range. Sorry for the redundancy!
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