Mark Madden: Pitch counts, analytics are taking away baseball's trademark moments

Pitcher Jose Berrios of the Minnesota Twins had a no-hitter going Saturday: 6 innings, zero hits, zero walks, 12 strikeouts. (It wasn’t a perfect game. Berrios hit a batter.)

Berrios was pulled by manager Rocco Baldelli. He had thrown 84 pitches.

Every manager in MLB would do the same. That makes it all the more pathetic.

Baseball is a spectator sport. Nobody buys a ticket or turns on the TV praying the manager protects the pitcher’s arm. Fans want to see great moments, not wallow in analytics.

ESPN never did a “30 for 30” about pitch count. The Pirates babied Jameson Taillon’s arm as much as possible, and he still needed Tommy John surgery twice.

So many of baseball’s trademark moments wouldn’t be possible the way the game is played now. Johnny “Double No-Hit” Vander Meer would be “Pitch Count Nobody” Vander Meer. Don Larsen would have been lifted after six, just like Berrios, instead of throwing a perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

Those trademark moments are the glory of baseball. But baseball has flushed that concept.

I could write about why baseball stinks every day. In fact, I did so two days ago.

Baseball reeks of fresh embarrassment on a regular basis. It’s a soulless game that’s all brain and no heart. Every manager manages identically. By rote. It would take about 15 minutes to learn how to manage in the big leagues.

Arm trouble isn’t CTE. It doesn’t affect quality of life. Sports = risk vs. reward. It’s about guts, not elbows. Pitchers have always had arm trouble, still do, and always will.

Baseball lost me for good when Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash lifted Blake Snell after 5 1/3 dominant innings in Game 6 of last year’s World Series. Snell had allowed two hits, no walks and struck out nine. But pitch count, third time through the order, blah, blah, blah.

Tampa Bay lost that game and the World Series. Good.

Cash can do what he wants. Baseball can do what it wants.

I can do what I want, too. I was watching a re-run of “That ‘70s Show” before Snell had even completed his walk to the dugout. (“Eric’s Panties.” Arguably the best episode ever.)

It’s difficult to gauge baseball’s exact popularity as the pandemic plays out. But prior to covid, MLB was in a 12-year attendance slide. TV ratings for the 2020 World Series were 32% below the previous low. Most tuned out long before Snell got pulled.

But MLB doesn’t care.

The NFL constantly changes: More offense, more points, more excitement.

Baseball’s only change is from slow to slower to slowest. The players — big-time sports’ most arrogant athletes — have kidnapped baseball and insist it be played at an excruciating pace. The average time of an MLB game was 3:07 last year, an all-time high.

An over-reliance on the three true outcomes, Houston cheats to win a World Series and gets away with it, Fernando Tatis is excoriated for hitting a grand slam on a 3-and-0 count with his team up seven — baseball’s flaws keep piling up.

But criticism of the game does not.

Like every sport, baseball has its media stooges.

But baseball’s are incredibly protective of their game. They back their investment. Columns like this one rarely get written by lifers.

Baseball writers ignored obvious signs of baseball’s steroid scandal when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa rejuvenated MLB in the wake of the 1994 World Series being canceled because of a labor dispute. Now they won’t vote them into the Hall of Fame.

Baseball writers are self-righteous hypocrites who won’t foul their own nest even when it’s already caked with droppings. Instead, they write about how great the excrement smells.

Baseball won’t change any way but for the worse. Five innings = the new complete game.