Mark Madden's hot take: Baseball no longer belongs to fans, and they're catching on

I hadn’t watched a baseball game in its entirety all year. Baseball is boring. Too rarely does anybody run the bases or chase the ball. I don’t give a flip about the three true outcomes. I want the ball to be in play.

But I watched the World Series Tuesday night. Championship-winning situations are interesting. Game 6 was indeed enthralling … until the bottom of the sixth.

When Tampa manager Kevin Cash removed starting pitcher Blake Snell, I started channel surfing. It reminded me why I don’t watch baseball.

The circumstances have been repeatedly reviewed: Snell allowed two hits and no walks in 5¹⁄₃ innings. Tampa led 1-0. Snell struck out nine. Snell was hardly exhausted: He threw just 73 pitches. He was livid when he got yanked. Reliever Nick Anderson, who conceded runs in his previous six appearances, allowed Los Angeles to take a 2-1 lead after facing just two hitters.

Cash’s rationale: He didn’t want Snell to go through the Dodgers’ lineup a third time. The numbers say that’s a no-go.

But consider these numbers: The next three hitters — Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner — were 0-for-6 with six strikeouts in that game. Snell was dealing.

Snell comes out. Tampa loses the game and the World Series.

Losing is Cash’s problem.

TV ratings that were 32% below the lowest ever for a World Series prior is MLB’s problem. A 36% drop in ratings from last year’s Series is MLB’s problem. A 14% decline in live attendance from 2007-2019 is MLB’s problem.

The biggest problem: MLB doesn’t think there’s a problem.

Baseball belongs to analytics, as confirmed by Snell being lifted. The chances for a magic moment have been severely curtailed. Twenty-nine years ago Tuesday, Minnesota’s Jack Morris pitched a 10-inning shutout to win Game 7 of the World Series.

That can’t happen now. We instead get the “magic” of watching managers finagle the game in soulless fashion via the numbers and nothing else.

Baseball belongs to the players, who don’t care how long the game takes. Regular-season contests lasted 3 hours, 7 minutes in 2020, an all-time high. Game 6 Tuesday took 3:28. But the hitters fasten and unfasten their batting gloves between every pitch, presenting OCD as nuance.

Baseball doesn’t belong to the fans. Not remotely. They appear to be catching on to that.

Baseball has taken the game’s most exciting play, the home run, and made it boring. Launch angle is a meaningless concept to a kid. Working the count deep makes spectators comatose. If the constant shifting of fielders means less offense, who wants that?

But the players don’t care. The managers don’t care. Analytics don’t care. If MLB cares, it must be too scared of the three entities mentioned to correct things.

Sports are not necessarily meant to be played in the most efficient way possible. They’re supposed to be played in the most entertaining way possible.

Analytics geeks pretend they’re experts because they can do math. Of course, they’re going to defend how baseball is played.

“If you don’t like it, don’t watch!” That’s a familiar refrain.

OK. I won’t.