Whether you want to admit it or not, baseball has a problem.
Baseball has become a regional sport. That regional model is financially successful, sure — according to Forbes, 25 of 29 American MLB teams ranked No. 1 on cable in primetime last summer — but it has made the sport as a whole more irrelevant.
National TV viewership is down, and it’s not because of cable cutting. People care about their team, its rivals, and not much more.
Bottom line: You’re not going to watch a Marlins game unless you’re a Marlins fan. But it’s a good bet that you’ve watched the Miami Heat or Miami Dolphins in the last year (and both of those teams were eminently unwatchable.)
Adding to the problems, baseball has the oldest fan base in all of sports — 50 percent of fans are older than 50 and getting older — and has seen a sharp decrease in youth participation.
In short, baseball isn’t keeping up with the pace set by the NFL and NBA and could soon be relegated to the second tier of sports in America, alongside the NHL, NASCAR and soccer in the national sports conversation.
At this point, baseball will probably never be able to regain its status as the true national pastime, but it should still be interested in holding on to national relevance amid a sports landscape that becomes busier by the day.
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred sees the problems and is trying to do something about them.
Manfred reportedly pitched owners on a variety of radical rule changes this week — a pitch clock, a changed strike zone and limiting the number of pitching changes and shifts were all options on the table.
Any of these rules, should they be implemented, would represent drastic change. And in a sport that is rooted so deep in tradition, it’s hard to believe any would go over well with fans.
But there’s only one question that needs to be asked to determine if the rule change is a good idea or not: Would anyone stop watching?
If you’re a baseball fan who believes the game is fine as-is, would you swear off watching the sport if there was a pitch clock or if managers could shift only three times a game? Of course not.
But those rule changes could attract someone under the voting age to start caring about baseball — a 13-year-old kid who spends most of his time on Snapchat might actually want to watch a few innings.
Baseball’s problems won’t be totally eradicated by, say, capping pitching changes, but the small changes could better position the sport in a world where “longform” is considered anything longer than a minute.
Baseball is a macro sport living in a micro world. And while the rule changes might be drastic compared to other rule changes that have been implemented in the past few decades, they won’t change the game itself. There would still be nine innings, nine batters and 27 outs, and if you watch now, you won’t be going anywhere.
The sport has nothing to lose by trying to attract younger fans — the only mistake Manfred could make is not making a change.
