![\"\"](\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Oscar-Madison-2-268x300.png\")
By Joe Torosian<\/p>\nBy Joe Torosian<\/p>\n
Kick it!<\/p>\n
While I don’t recommend it, it is interesting when working away from your desk\u2014your RamCave, like at a summer camp\u2014to hear the sports news trickle in.<\/p>\n
The stuff people are talking about, the surface stuff, the links everyone else is reading provides a healthy reset.<\/p>\n
The hot topic besides LeBron James, Aaron Donald, Sophie Cunningham, and the WNBA was the Dodgers. <\/p>\n
The argument being that the Los Angeles Dodgers are ruining baseball. As someone who always roots against the Dodgers, I feel perfectly positioned emotionally to say they are not.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers are not ruining baseball. Baseball is ruining baseball.
\nThe nerds who can’t play, who could never play, now control the play. <\/p>\n
And, I think there’s a place for the nerd, there’s a place for all the stats, but like olives dominate the taste of pizza\u2026the nerds have come to dominate baseball\u2014and it’s ruined the regular season.<\/p>\n
In the name of efficiency\u2014and how do you argue against efficiency?\u2014they’ve made the game less enjoyable. <\/p>\n
The playoffs still hold up, because no matter the Moneyball\/Analytic\/I’m Smarter Than You philosophy, you still can’t stop a dominant pitcher who has found the post-season zone.<\/p>\n
What has become less interesting, less joyful, and less compelling is the regular season. Baseball is not like other sports, which means it can’t be fixed, upgraded, or tweaked like other sports. It’s a different beat, a different tempo, it has no clock, it’s a Martian living among Earthlings with a different physiology.<\/p>\n
Nine innings of baseball need a narrative. It’s a story, it’s always been a story: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and a post-game denouement. <\/p>\n
A story that develops with the starting pitchers, the drama of when to pull them, and when to employ a Manny Mota.<\/p>\n
(Tangent: I contend if you never saw Manny Mota come to the plate in the bottom of the ninth in the Ravine with the game on the line\u2026you missed one of the great experiences of sports.)<\/p>\n
Yes, the game is more efficient. I will not deny that, but something is inherently wrong when a pitcher, the key part of a game’s story, can be pulled after seven no-hit\/perfect innings.<\/p>\n
Pulled in the name of saving the pitcher’s arm when baseball exhibits, still, no understanding of what works and doesn’t work in preserving a pitcher’s arm.<\/p>\n
As one scout passed on, the goal is only to get the pitcher to throw as hard as he can for as long as he can and then get another one when he breaks down.<\/p>\n
Baseball has robbed its fans of the craft of pitching.<\/p>\n
Yes, the Designated Hitter is more efficient, it produces more runs, but it robs the fans of the tension a plot requires to make it memorable.<\/p>\n
I could go on–as every New York Mets fan surely knows–the Dodgers and their money are not ruining baseball\u2014baseball is.<\/p>\n
Baseball is robbing its fans of organic moments in favor of hollow manufactured ones that look like cotton candy with mentions of distance, exit velocity, spin rate, multiple probabilities but evaporate in memory because they celebrate the nerd and the nerd’s created Frankenstein-efficiency\u2026rather than the flesh and blood inking the story on the field.<\/p>\n
I get much of the analytics. I understand what is being done, but the result when comparing regular seasons\u2014MLB’s version of baseball is more of a yawn fest than the WNBA.<\/p>\n
#86\u2014May the San Francisco Giants rot and lie stinking in the earth.<\/p>\n
Post-season still holds up, but if I were a Dodger fan I’d still be upset about Rich Hill getting yanked in 2017 & 2018. And if I were a Tampa Rays fan, I’d still be uptight about Blake Snell and Game Six of the 2020 World Series.<\/p>\n
Baseball will never lose me. I’ll always be there for baseball, and down to go to a game\u2014albeit if someone else is paying and driving.<\/p>\n
But baseball has become that childhood friend that I see every few years at a class reunion. Great memories, but he’s left-brained and running baseball, and I’m right-brained, and finding no way to reconnect fully.<\/p>\n
The Dude abides\u2026<\/p>\n
1,333<\/strong> By Joe Torosian Kick it! While I don’t recommend it, it is interesting when working away from your desk\u2014your RamCave, like at a summer camp\u2014to hear the sports news trickle in. The stuff people are talking about, the surface stuff, the links everyone else is reading provides a healthy reset. The hot topic besides LeBron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fanview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97609,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97608\/revisions\/97609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2 Corinthians 1:9<\/strong>
\njtbank1964@yahoo.com<\/strong>
\n\u201cRamView\u201d M-W-F<\/strong>
\nFollow Joe on X: @joet13b<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"