Derek Shelton's taking a healthy approach to a decidedly unhealthy situation.
The Pirates' new manager popped onto a conference call with a bunch of us Pittsburgh reporters yesterday from his home near Bradenton, Fla., was candid and conversational as ever ... except when it came to projecting how his summer strategies might play out.
"The big thing I'm trying not to do in any regard is to speculate on anything we're gonna do," Shelton spoke once, but it might as well have been his answer to a half-dozen such subjects. "There are just so many unknowns about what the game's gonna be like when we come back. I have thought about a lot of different things but, until we have an outline for how things are gonna transpire, I really don't want to make any assessments or judgments."
Given the apocalyptic setting at hand, that sounded just about right. I mean, picture the man penciling out potential lineups when no one can say with certainty when -- or even if -- there'll be an opener.
At the same time, that stance set me off to wondering: What if Major League Baseball did invest some of this idle time into thinking about how to grow its game?
Meaning, you know, right when it comes back. Because hey, as the politicos like to say, never let a good crisis go to waste.
And if I'm Rob Manfred ... well, after resigning over how badly I bungled the Astros cheating scandal, my next call to action, the one to reignite the 2020 season, to rekindle a broader interest in baseball, could be condensed to two words:
1. Pitch
2. Clock.
Spare all the other stuff. That's it.
When baseball reemerged from the 1994 strike, it did so with the unprecedented wave of home runs. Sure, that's because self-appointed Hall of Famer Bud Selig turned a blind eye toward Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and others sticking their rear ends with syringes, but the point is the fan's reaction: They loved it. Baseball was back.
When the NHL reemerged from any of Gary Bettman's various lockouts, most prominently after the lost Stanley Cup in 2004, it did so with an unprecedented array of trinkets for hockey fans. Rules were modified to make the game faster and more fun, with more goals but also shorter timespans. Even the sweaters were sewn anew. Here, too, they loved it. Hockey was back.
Baseball needs this now, I'd argue, much more than hockey did then. Of course their overall numbers aren't anywhere near comparable, but hockey's fan base is principally built, then and now, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, on a younger demographic. And hockey attendance, in spite of the most expensive tickets in professional sports, has never been higher.
Baseball attendance has declined four years in a row, with the 2019 average crowd of 28,198 being the lowest since 2004. The World Series TV ratings have declined four years in a row, with the 2019 figure of 8.1 being the second-lowest in history. And get this: The average age of those watching the 2019 World Series was 56.2. Just two years earlier, that was 53.6.
It's literally dying.
People in Pittsburgh talk about this sort of thing as if it's a Bob Nutting issue. It might be for some around here, but that sure doesn't explain all of the above.
So fix it. Meaning make the games, as hockey did, faster and more fun.
It's no coincidence that baseball's decline has come with a corresponding increase in the game's length. The average length of a nine-inning game in 2019 was three hours, five minutes, 11 seconds. The longest in its century and a half of existence. And this despite several measures being implemented over the past couple years to speed it up ... most of which actually worked.
Take the restriction on mound visits: They dropped from 7.41 to 3.94. Even Yadier Molina stopped strolling out as often. Didn't matter.
And neither will it matter with the new rule this year that relievers need to face a minimum three batters or otherwise finish that inning. In 2019, teams used an average of 4.41 pitchers per game, the most ever. Shaving a fraction off that -- it was 4.11 five years ago -- will shave mere seconds.
Two other major elements are out of everyone's control.
Hitters are being more patient, seeing 3.93 pitches per plate appearance in 2019, another record, and no one can instruct them to suddenly resume hacking. Heck, Rick Eckstein, the Pirates' hitting coach pretty much has his players swearing to lay off anything outside a targeted zone that's far smaller than the strike zone itself.
"It's a totally different way of looking at it," as Josh Bell told me last month. "There's no going back."
Nope. And the same holds true of TV ads. Manfred put forth a proposal a couple winters ago to cut each national commercial break by 25 seconds, down to two minutes flat, shaving roughly seven minutes per game. ESPN and Fox, which combine to pay MLB about $1.5 billion annually, both told him where to stick that. In-game advertising, common in soccer, is making inroads, but it's a long way from replacing standard spots between innings.
Besides, none of that comes close to the time wasted between pitches.
In 2007, the first year for which the data exists, pitchers took 21.5 seconds between pitches, and the average nine-inning game that year took 2:51. And in 2019, pitchers took 23.8 seconds between pitches.
Doesn't sound like much?
OK, then multiply those missing 2.3 seconds by the roughly 300 pitches that an average game sees, and we're talking about 11 minutes, 30 seconds off the total game time.
Now, follow the 20-second pitch clock already being used in the minor leagues, and we're talking about 19 minutes!
With the sport no worse for the wear!
Oh, the pitchers themselves will complain, and I don't have to guess at that since I know how the Pirates' guys feel about it. But too bad. They've been asked nicely to speed it up, and they've never heeded it. So have the hitters, who, by the way, will be required to be ready no matter how quickly the pitcher gets to the rubber. And same goes for all those ridiculous timeouts called by the hitters after the pitcher's begun his motion.
No one's listened. So make them.
The pitch clock's been in place in Class AAA and AA since 2015, so most current pitchers in the majors already have worked with one. It'll be no adjustment at all. Just an elimination of ... nothing.
• For the curious, the Pirates' fastest to the plate last season was Dario Agrazal at 15.49 seconds, and the slowest was Felipe Vazquez at 26.23 seconds. The latter's got a lot of time on his hands currently, as well.
• Amazing how far out of the public consciousness Vazquez fell so precipitously, isn't it?
He was supposed to begin trial three days ago in Westmoreland County, by the way, though that and most everything else in civilization's been placed on hold.
Guess what Steelers fans...
I’m coming Home!!!!!
And I’m coming to win!!!! pic.twitter.com/UjPdpE9ezd
— Stefen Wisniewski (@stefenwiz61) March 20, 2020
• Stefen Wisniewski's a decent signing for the Steelers at two years for $2.8 million, a nice raise for him -- he made $650,000 last season with the Super Bowl champion Chiefs -- but also reasonable for the team.
He's primarily a left guard at this stage of his career -- he's 30 now, a long way from his days at Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Penn State -- but he's also spent extensive time at center, including five full years there with the Raiders. And that, like the addition of Derek Watt, could replace not one but two players in offering depth at left guard (Ramon Foster) and backing up at center (B.J. Finney).
• Can't have enough winners. This dude's got two rings, with K.C. and Philly. That's legit. Helps offset the loss of Foster on a different level.
• The O-line looks done, with Matt Feiler sliding from right tackle to left guard. But man, some support at left tackle for Alejandro Villanueva would be welcome. Theoretically, that could be whoever loses the right tackle duel between Zach Banner and Chuks Okorafor, but learning LT in a single summer in Latrobe isn't realistic. There'd better be a lot of reps.
That said, be done with this. Other needs.
• Bill Daly, the NHL's VP and Bettman's right-hand man, went out of his way on Canada's TSN to stress that the 2020-21 season -- and that means the next one, not this one -- must have a full complement of 82 regular-season games. That, as Daly put it, represents the foundation of all the hypothetical plans being put forth to salvage the current season.
He added that it doesn't mean the current season couldn't carry into the much later months of 2019 but, rather, that the league would still want to ensure 82 games the following season.
Why?
Don't overthink it.
As one of the Penguins' team officials reminded me in Columbus, the NHL isn't like any other professional league when it comes to relying on gate revenue vs. TV revenue. Very early estimates are that a wipeout of the current season could cost $1 billion, and there are no long-term broadcast contract increases to mitigate that.
• That undoubtedly explains why NHL teams were among the most leery of paying part-time arena workers during this absence. Heck, the Penguins themselves relied in part on two charity organizations, their own Penguins Foundation and the Mario Lemieux Foundation, for their contribution. By contrast, the entirety of the Pirates' $1 million contribution, as I report in today's Friday Insider, will come directly from the team and not Pirates Charities.
Hockey's always been different that way. This will hurt, short and long term, teams and players alike.
• Does anyone really want to watch old sporting events?
Wait, to be more precise: Would anyone who claims they really want to watch old sporting events actually do so?
I get that the TV networks have to fill the airtime -- pity poor ESPN and their own handful of channels -- but I'm not seeing or feeling that. Might be a novelty for a night or two, and that's about it. Sports are unlike any theater in that the outcome is everything.
We'll see, I guess. I've heard AT&T Network will be trying some of this next week, replaying old Penguins and Pirates along with new commentary and intermission features. That'll be the real test, since that's local.
• All businesses deemed non-essential closed last night at 8 p.m. I stopped at one of them, the original Primanti's in the Strip, and ordered takeout, following all prescribed guidelines. It was sadder than I'm comfortable saying. The two workers in there, one of whom is a subscriber, had learned an hour earlier they'd be without jobs. One could barely speak.
Let's get through this. Let's accelerate it. Let's end it.
