It’s time for baseball fans to tell MLB that it’s rule changes are killing the game

The more I learn about the new pitching rules that will be applied to Major League Baseball games in 2020, the less I like them.

It’s bad enough that pitchers will be forced to face three batters, damaging a manager’s strategy by artificially limiting the moves opposing managers can make during games. But the fact that teams have to designate what players are allowed to be pitchers, eliminating others from being on the mound, goes against the very fabric of the game.

While any player can serve in extra inning duty, guys who haven’t previously been tabbed as two-way players or pitchers can’t enter the game on the mound.

Obviously, the rules are put in place to keep teams from manipulating the three batter rule. But, in an era where some folks are delighted by bizarre defensive shifts, it seems ironic that some of the tactics former St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog used nearly 40 years ago have been outlawed.

Do you remember the gamesmanship Herzog used to engage in with former San Francisco Giants manager Roger Craig and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy LaSorda? An opposing manager would bring a lefty in to face right handed reliever Todd Worrell, so Herzog would counter with southpaw Ken Dayley. But, instead of allowing the enemy field boss to force him to take his star closer out of the game, Herzog would put Worrell in the outfield for a batter, then bring him back to the mound.

Managers can’t do that anymore. Why?

The very fabric of baseball is the fact that players must both field and hit to occupy a spot in the game. If they’re removed from the action for a pinch hitter, relief pitcher, a defensive replacement or a pinch runner, they’re out of the game for good.

Changing the way players can be used complicates the game unnecessarily, waters down the talent pool and makes the game less strategically interesting. Maybe that’s why we are seeing so many inexperienced managers these days. All that’s left to “manage” is making sure the guys the pencil pushing sabermetrics guys’ algorithms choose are inserted in the game and then left alone.

It’s hurting the game not just today, but also in the future. Players are constantly being allowed to get away with doing less because they don’t have to execute in as many aspects of the game. There is a perception that pitchers inherently can’t hit because of the designated hitter rule that has spread like cancer in baseball of all levels. Tell Bob Gibson, Adam Wainwright and Jeff Suppan that pitchers can’t hit. Then it was okay that batters can’t bunt because it’s acceptable for players to strike out 100, 150 or 200 times a season and now the shifts expose the fact that batters can’t place hit anymore.

Baseball is getting too watered down

People watch major league games because they’re supposed to feature the best players in the world. Baseball is not quite the spectacle it once was when players can’t even handle the basics anymore.

The sad thing is that baseball has always been cyclical in the past, gravitating back and forth from deadball style games of speed and defense to the power game made popular by Babe Ruth in the 1920s and the likes of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays in the 1950s. But it seems now that essential elements of the game are being forgotten. Once they’re gone, will we ever see them again.

People have been tricked into the idea that modern MLB games are an evolution of a 150-year-old sport. But the truth is that they’re a sad substitute forced on us by a short-sighted, corner cutting commissioner who would rather use plastic disposable parts to replace a product that was once made of American steel.

When will we wake up and demand real baseball again?

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.