Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports enlisted some genius to provide ideas on how to solve baseball's perceived 'problems.'
https://sports.yahoo.com/10-degrees-mensa-members-idea-can-solve-almost-baseballs-problems-070035170.html
Passan lists Nick Elam's CV so as to demand that we deem him credible. He then explains the Elam Ending for basketball, in which the target score of leader plus 7 replaces the clock at the first whistle under 3:30 to decide a winner.
Of course, Bokolis has been saying for years that the NBA is NASCAR; they go back and forth 200 times, yet it all gets sorted out in the last four minutes, during which they play a different game than they played for the first 44. That's not to make myself out as some genius; I've been hearing similar solutions from everyone with an opinion since I was a kid.
While there are some things that Bokolis has been advocating all along, there is too much legislation for my taste. Addressing inconveniences with legislation smacks of Soviet Communism, and they will eventually legislate themselves into a corner.
The thing that makes baseball beautiful is that it is essentially the same game it has always been. That is what allows for comparative analysis of players of different eras through statistics. You cannot do this in the NBA or NFL because both of those have had multiple rules overhauls and multiple derivations from prior versions of their respective games.
In a 'Dynamic Strike Zone,' Elam advocates something similar to what umpires- with a 'swing the bats, boys!'- were able to do before technology standardized the strike zone. As shown with the NFL and NBA above, it's better to not legislate these kinds of things and having cameras everywhere gives you more than you've bargained for.
Bokolis has always been keen on stifling the parade of relievers and making two 15-team leagues/divisions. I've never stated it here, but I've always thought there should be an 'airspace' rule on guys sliding into bases. Most of the rest of the ideas are ineffectual, however cute, and Elam concedes that he hasn't put full thought into the issue.
Bokolis maintains that you will solve the pace issues by not allowing managers to call the pitches from the dugouts, by not allowing the batter any pause for air when he takes a strike and by requiring any pitcher brought on via mid-inning pitching change to finish the inning, or die trying.
If you speed things up, batters will feel a lot worse about striking out if it happens in 30-40 seconds instead of as long as it takes to read Casey at the Bat.
Bokolis has no problem with shifting. If the batters refuse to hit the ball the other way, it's on them. But, if a team over-shifts, they have to stay in that exact positioning for the duration of the AB. No shuffling around after each pitch.
Ultimately, while a team game, baseball is dominated by a series of one-on-one matchups. In these cases, psychology often matters more than talent. At some point, pitchers became less confident in their stuff and so fearful of contact that they resorted to nibbling or, most notably in the case of John Franco, downright refusing to throw strikes. Granted, today's players are better at punishing 'cock-shots' than those of prior generations. This, of course, turns the battle into a hunt.
Perhaps if pitchers realized that behemoths like Stanton and Judge strike out over four times as often as they hit home runs, the pitchers could regain the comfort and confidence in the matchup, and throw with more conviction instead of alternately nibbling and trying to make the perfect pitch.
The faster they mow down those batters, the faster the game will go...and we didn't have to reinvent the game.
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