Quote:
Originally Posted by One Post Wonder
Regarding the future of MLB, I think it's going the way of Horse Racing and Boxing:
When I was a teenager in the 1980's, every video gaming platform had a baseball game on it. It was one of the staples. Now, the only gaming platform with a twitch-based baseball game on it that is worth a crap is the Playstation - and almost no-one cares.
One problem has been that everything driving baseball has revolved around short-term profits for at least 25 years. The deal that cemented Sony's stranglehold on the gaming baseball market is an example. Great short term income, but hurts baseball's ability to market itself to young people.
Steroids were the same thing. Everyone with a brain knew that eventually, baseball was going to be embarrassed by the steroid problem in the 90's. The sports channel I would listen to was talking about this as early as 1995. And of course, records were eventually broken by guys on the stuff, and now everyone has a differing opinion of who holds which records. Baseball is a game of stats, and the stats are now skewed. But for a few years, great profits!
Another problem is that we've had a lot of great analysts come along and dissect the game, and determine the optimal way to play. And the optimal way to play baseball, by the current rules, is boring. A batter trying to draw a walk is good strategy, but boring to watch. Bringing in a reliever to pitch to one guy is boring to watch. Conservative (at least by historical standards) baserunning is good strategy but boring to watch.
Maybe some rule changes will help the game, but it might be too little, too late. I'm 46. I'm guessing that many of you aren't too young either. And personally I don't know anyone below the age of 40 who cares a lick about baseball. People who like to watch sports prefer football. People who like to get involved and play like basketball. Yes, the NFL is losing popularity but Soccer is willing and able to fill that void.
I'm just not seeing it. Maybe baseball has a long-term future in Japan or Central America, but I don't see it holding up here. It's sad. I think the sport has been hastened towards a premature end by greedy, myopic governance.
...and they put Bud Selig, the poster boy for all of the above, in the Hall of Fame. Bloody hell.
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I agree with a lot of this. The analytics era has brought a heavy relience on bullpenning, shifts, and the essentially three outcome at bat: home run, walk, or strikeout. But sometimes I wonder if I'm overreacting when I get annoyed by things like this. Baseball has gone through all kinds of different eras, who is to say those things won't fall out of favor by the mid 2020s?
As far as the horse racing and boxing, it does seem like baseball will become more of a niche sport in the future (and if that's the case, I say screw trying to change the game for the casual fan and cater to the hardcores). But the honest truth is, I think the biggest change is the explosion of different forms of entertainment in the last 20 years. The internet has created a world where literally anything you want to do is on demand. That wasn't the case for most of the last century, where watching sports was one of, i don't know, eight different ways you could entertain yourself.
I wonder if every sport is going to see a falling off of interest in the future. Baseballs average fan age is around 53, but the NFL's is 46. It's not like they're set up great for the future. Right now it seems like the NBA is the only league that is trending upward in terms of the interest of the coming generation. (Although I also wonder if the superteam era is going to have long term consequences that the league can't see, like the steroid era. It all seems fun now, but at some point people have to wake up and realize how out of wack competitive balance is in that sport.)