A Modest Proposal

Saturday, March 02 2019 @ 07:32 AM EST

Contributed by: Magpie

It's time for a fresh thread, and I want to alert one and all to Nate Silver's modest proposal to fix that which is broken. That thing being baseball, of course, which has been broken by an endless procession of ordinary pitchers wandering out of the bullpen to throw as hard as they can for no more than one inning. The result has been tedium, historic numbers of strikeouts (seldom the most exciting thing that can happen on a baseball diamond), and a game awash in mediocrity. Your modern dugout manager has found a way to actually weaponize mediocrity, and roughly a third of each team's active roster consists of these... mediocrities.

Yes, I'm an Old Fogey. And this isn't what I signed up for. You?

Silver's solution is quite simple - each team will be limited to 10 pitchers on the active roster. (Other players on the roster would be allowed to pitch, but they can't face more hitters than they themselves have had plate appearances. You know, if you were thinking of trying to disguise a relief pitcher as an outfielder.)

Simple, elegant, and probably too extreme for Day One. I'd settle for establishing a firm 12 pitcher limit for now, and cutting it back to 11 in two years.

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