John Smoltz loves baseball, but he has no qualms about modernizing the game. A hardcore traditionalist he is not.
Last year, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred appointed Smoltz to a 16-member competition committee dedicated to fine-tuning a sport often criticized for being too slow in a cloud-based, 21st century world.
Smoltz sees a need to speed up the game; reduce the number of pitching injuries by moving away from a mentality of big muscles and throwing as hard as possible; consider rules changes that counter some of the sabermetric-friendly strategies now in vogue; and reduce mid-season blahs by awarding split-season playoff berths to ramp up the drama.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Smoltz told SBJ. “Every single sport has made major changes and, no matter what the early backlash was, everyone accepted it. Football made some of the most dramatic ones, like the extra point [moved] back, the defensive limitations so it’s now an offensive sport. When the game gets less interesting at the end and you’re losing viewers, that’s when I think it’s the responsibility of whoever’s running that sport to take a look at it.”
Significant changes, Smoltz believes, are coming sooner rather than later because of the lulls that cause fans to look at their phones as much as the field.
“Fans aren’t into sitting around for three and a half hours [without much happening],” he said. “I anticipate rule changes are in the mix. That’s what’s going to make the game vibrant and exciting again because right now we’re trending in the opposite direction.”
Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.
