Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

Today we’re going to talk about America’s pastime, baseball. Not the latest score, or who could win the World Series next fall, but some notable rule changes instituted this year, and this podcast is after all a little bit about rules. The changes are part of an effort by Major League Baseball to quicken the pace of games and improve batting performance. But are they working and is it worth changing an American institution? My guest this week, Doug Glanville, played nine seasons in the major leagues as an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Texas Rangers. He’s currently an ESPN baseball analyst and co-host of the baseball centric podcast, Starkville. Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug Glanville:

Preet, it’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m excited to talk about this, because it’s super interesting. First of all, why did MLB see fit to make changes? Is it really just about the fact that the games were getting too long?

Doug Glanville:

That’s a big part of it, and part of it is the length of the games. They recognize that if you compare it to an era where the pacing, or just the outcome of how long it was was-

Preet Bharara:

Like when I grew up, my family and I are from New Jersey and we watched, forgive me if people are not of this persuasion, but we grew up watching Yankee games in the ’70s and I don’t remember games being that long.

Doug Glanville:

Yeah. And that was part of the challenge. And the reason it took some time to consider how to do this is you have to make the assumption that era or that time period was the best version of baseball. That was a time that you’re trying to recapture. So taking it into the future with all the things that changed, including having lights for example, or something like that, you wanted to make sure that that was the right timeframe to match up with. But beyond the actual time of the game was really the tempo of the game. The fact that the game had all this dead time sitting in there, where players were fixing batting gloves and there was guys on the mound in between pitches, walking as if they were going on Caminos or something. It was just taking forever just to get the ball in play.

And when you combine that with the trends of the game becoming much more driven by strikeouts, and walks, and lack of contact, home runs, things that were not putting the ball quote, “in play,” then you had a problem, because you had a lack of action. You had a very protracted tempo and the games were taking eternity. So those combined, especially the pressure to just have not just a great baseball game as a sport, but a great entertainment product led to these changes.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a more broad criticism of baseball, on the part of some people who don’t know better and are unpatriotic, that baseball is one of the sports where the ball is least in play. I remember hearing a statistic some years ago that the total amount of time the ball is in play during a baseball game compared to some other sport is like 11 minutes. Does that sound right or is that an exaggeration?

Doug Glanville:

I wouldn’t be surprised, it’s not a lot of time. There’s so much where you’re just waiting. It’s a crescendo, it’s mano a mano, pitcher-hitter. So the theater of baseball is built on the anticipation, and so part of it is not having the ball in play.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So what are the major rule changes that people have been seeing as the new season has gotten underway, particularly that relate to speeding up the pace?

Doug Glanville:

Yeah. Well, in terms of the base stealing, that was a problem. Well, considering I have a little bit of personal experience from the standpoint of being a player that stole bases and tried to do it efficiently, I paid a lot of attention to what was happening in what I call the death of the stolen base, it was declining mightily. And part of it was not anything to do with skillsets, or speed, but about points of emphasis about risk, assessing risk. And once you start to get the data in, as analytics have dug deeper and deeper, they recognize that the risk of you getting caught, or the fact that you could get caught was never worth or started to become less valuable, than taking the chance in the first place. And what you gained by if you make it. And eventually the equation starts to become, well, if I’m losing a chance to score runs by 40% by getting caught and I’m gaining only 20%, then why even do it at all?

Preet Bharara:

And so the theory must, “But we favor base stealing, not because it’s in the constitution or in the Bible, but because it adds excitement to the game,” right?

Doug Glanville:

Well, it’s about excitement. And so you realize that the information and the synthesization of that information was so deep that you started to eliminate, literally just by making risk assessment, certain plays that were exciting, because inherently, and I think this is true across the board in many parts of our lives and facets of our entertainment spectrum, is that you like the low probability plays, you like the unlikely story, you thrive on the fact that this is a low percentage play, because that’s what excites you. Guy shoots the ball at half court, the guy only has one home run in his career, hits a home run in the World Series. That’s what you want, and you eliminate that when you weigh on the data so heavily to steer the game away from those plays, because it’s taking too much risk and threatening your team’s chances of winning as a whole. So yes, they wanted to add the stolen base, because it’s exciting and they made it more possible by the rules they put in place, the bigger bases.

Preet Bharara:

So can we talk about the bigger bases?

Doug Glanville:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So how much bigger are first, second, and third base now.

Doug Glanville:

They used to be 15 inches square, 15 inches by 15, and now they’re 18. So I think the term they use is like a pizza box. So that’s what they made.

Preet Bharara:

So that between first and second, and between second and third, that’s a gain for the runner of about six inches?

Doug Glanville:

Yeah, it’s a little bit of a game because you’re that much closer to the base because you’re your lead, you’re closer to going back, and you’re closer getting to the next base.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask you this question, if you’ve done this in your head, if the bases had been 18 inches when you were playing, given how many bases you stole, and obviously sometimes you were thrown out, how many more bases do you think you would’ve successfully stolen?

Doug Glanville:

Well, I think the way I think of it is if I did the exact same thing with the different equipment, I would definitely have gained bases, because those really bang, bang plays that are close, I was safe. Yeah, that’s been the difference. And I was a efficient base stealer, I didn’t steal a ton by I guess all time great category, but I made it over 80% of the time, which is the magic number for getting that green light to run at will. Because if you steal at 80% of the time, then it becomes a valued play, because effectively you’re putting yourself in scoring position.

Preet Bharara:

How are the new rules adopted? It’s not the Supreme Court, right?

Doug Glanville:

No, not quite the Supreme Court, but the equivalent of that, they had a commission, I know he doesn’t like to get total credit of this, but Theo Epstein, who is the architect of the ending the futility of the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox, by being the general manager and head of baseball operations for those organizations, when they finally won the World Series. And a crisis of consciousness on some level, he wanted to go and revisit some of the ways the data dies had gotten to the point where the games were losing this soul, this aspect of what excites people about the game, because the calculations were so rich and deep, you started to look at all these elements that were playing winning baseball by winning the moments, instead of looking at the large picture about, “Well, what do people value about this game?”

And I think, his work in conjunction with a lot of other input from fans, figuring out what people are missing about the game, the double, the triple, the stolen base, they were tired of the shift. They didn’t want all the strikeouts. All these things came together around these rules and they rolled them out carefully. They went to the minor leagues and tested it out. This was not knee-jerk, but it was something that had been in conversation for a while. And I think they felt very trapped and beholden by the data that was driving the choices that we’re making, that were getting farther and farther away, what was exciting about baseball.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s talk about the pitch clock. That is a totally new thing in baseball. There are shot clocks, there are other timing devices and other sports that urge the faster tempo of play. Explain what that new rule is and how that’s been having an effect.

Doug Glanville:

Well, it’s a tremendous effect. I would say it’s the most consequential of all the rules. And they effectively just put a clock, a timer on that pitcher-batter exchange, and there’s 15 seconds when there’s nobody on base, and there’s 20 seconds when there’s a runner on base and the pitcher has to release the ball in that timeframe. But also the batter has to get in the batter’s box and as they say, make eye contact. And as there’s a seven second or so window where they have to be engaged and then the pitcher can deliver. So they’ve cut out almost 30 minutes, and that’s a significant number so far, 30 minutes on a game, 26 to 28 minutes where the games are that much shorter, simply because they forced this action. And it’s early stages, of course. And when you look at the other sports, you mentioned the NBA, pitch clock, shot clock, all these things, nobody goes back and says, “Well, Steph Curry game seven. That game was ruined when he scored 50 points because of the shot clock.” Nobody says that.

Preet Bharara:

How do pitchers feel about the pitch clock?

Doug Glanville:

Yeah, I think overall it was a huge adjustment is, and even batters as well, because they were used to their tempo controlling the pace. The he who controls the pace in baseball controls the at-bat. So there was always this jockeying for position, and when the rule came out, they equally were affected. And I think pitchers overall have just gotten used to the idea that they have to have a tempo and a rhythm. And I don’t think it took long to adjust. They rolled it out in spring training. It was aggressively enforced. People violated the pitch clock all the time, and then slowly but surely, they kept moving towards less violations every week. And now in the regular season, that trend continues. So it’s part of the game. There’s always gamesmanship about how to best use the clock. We saw a pitcher the other day, hold to the one-second mark and then pick off the guy. There’ll be tricks, but it’s here to stay, because there was so much lethargic and slow pacing that they wanted to make a difference. And the pitch clock has been the most consequential.

Preet Bharara:

So here’s another change, which I think baseball decided was necessitated by a new trend in baseball only in the last few years. And that was an amazing thing to see, because I hadn’t seen it when I was a kid watching baseball. And that’s known as the shift. Could you explain what the shift was, how it came about and what the new rule is?

Doug Glanville:

Well, the shift was a transformational way to align your defense in baseball. And the way it worked was if you imagine you have first a diamond, first base, second base, you go around a third. Well, on one side of the field, usually on the infield particularly you have a second baseman and a first baseman on the right side, and you have a short stop and third baseman on the left side of second base, and then the outfielder in their position. So you associate baseball with a certain alignment, visual alignment, of where the-

Preet Bharara:

That’s what I remember.

Doug Glanville:

Yeah, where the second basement is. Well, in the shift they would move an extra player over to one side. So all of a sudden there are three infielders on one side of second base or on the left side, mostly the-

Preet Bharara:

But that depended on whether or not the batter was left-handed or right-handed.

Doug Glanville:

It did. And also depended on the batter’s tendencies. They, once again, the data was coming in. Well, he hits 80% of the balls on the ground and what he does, 90% of those ground balls are to second base. Well, it makes sense to stack that side of the field. So they stacked that side of the field and the goal was to take away ground balls, hard hit ground balls or soft line drives that used to get through when you only had two guys on that side of the field. And it was highly effective, especially taking away the power hitting-

Preet Bharara:

But it took a hundred years for people to come up with that idea.

Doug Glanville:

Well, and I think there was some pictures of Ted Williams in the ’40s or whatever, but yeah, I don’t know what it was and why it took so long for people to do it. And I played in Philadelphia where Marlon Anderson, the second baseman, he would play short right field a lot and Chipper Jones, the all-star Hall of Famer, he was always rolling his eyes when he’d ground out to Marlin in right field, but nobody else really did it. But slowly but surely, the data just was undeniable on where you should position. You have the information, there’s where he hits the ground balls, why wouldn’t you put a guy there?

And eventually it said, why not put two guys there? And that was something that they backed off, because it was so effective. And as a result, being effective meant less action, a lot more outs, low batting averages, and guys trying to hit home runs, because they gave up on hitting the ground balls. They were like, “All right, the best way to beat the shift is to hit it in the stands.” And often when they tried to do that, all the strikeouts that came with it, and that was becoming very problematic for the lack of action.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s the new rule that deals with the shift?

Doug Glanville:

So the new rule is a couple layers. One is you have to have two players, two infielders on each side of second base. So you can’t stack one side with three or four guys, that’s one. Number two, and I think this is highly underrated in its impact, is the infielders have to be on the dirt. They can’t be in the outfield grass, they have to be in the dirt because that’s the other thing they would do with the shift. They put the third basement out in right field and they would cut, what they would do is create the best angles, so the hard hit ball, they could round it and get in front of it.

Now they’re forced to be in the infield, they’re closer to home plate. And when guys at 110 mile an hour ground balls, just by sheer reaction time, they don’t get to the ball. So that’s become a base hit as well. So there’s no longer the beating the shift and beating the offense by the angles or by depth and by positioning having three guys on one side. So I think there’s multiple layers on why it’s improved your chances of getting a hit in the infield.

Preet Bharara:

So you were talking about the consequences of these rules. There’s an article from just a couple of weeks ago, emphasizing your point. It says, “Batting average is up 16 points, stolen basis have spiked 30%, and the average game time is down 31 minutes on track to be the sports’ lowest since 1984.” I have a question for you as somebody who played, will there be any sense of annoyance on the part of veteran players that in the statistics books and in the record books, this new generation of players has an undue advantage as far as hitting and batting average?

Doug Glanville:

Time will definitely tell. I would imagine if you have generations of this system, then yeah, they’ll be more so on bases for this period. We’re still not at the rates of Ricky Henderson stealing 131 bases or something, you’re not there. You’re not getting that many attempts, but you’re certainly not where you were last year. And there’s no question that it’s going to have an impact on the record books if stolen bases become idolized in a certain kind of way. I don’t know if it will in that way, because I think still home run is king and all those other elements. But yeah, some-

Preet Bharara:

I grew up during the age of Reggie Jackson,

Doug Glanville:

Reggie, and all these… It’s still data driven and statistics are going to be such a big part of our love affair with baseball that we’re going to be able to compare this era in a very different way. And that’s okay. We have dead ball eras, we have post-war, we have Negro League expansion integration.

Preet Bharara:

We add the steroid era.

Doug Glanville:

Had the steroid era, the sign stealing.

Preet Bharara:

Are we out of the steroid era, Doug?

Doug Glanville:

Are we out of it? Well, I don’t think you’re ever out of it not. Well, steroid is very specific. If you say performance enhancing or PEDs, I don’t think you’re ever out of it. I think it evolves its cat and mouse game. You have to be vigilant and they have more stringent policies than never had. However, it’s still always going to be a challenge in any hyper-competitive environment, like baseball, people are going to try to find edges. Even with a pitch clock, they’re sitting there trying to figure out how they can, or how can I hold the ball? All these things.

Preet Bharara:

So we’ve seen the consequences so far in batting average, stolen bases, game time. I presumed that one of the reasons in the background that this was being done was to increase viewership and baseball as a business and increase profitability. Do you know if there had been any statistics showing increased viewership or attendance at the ballpark in light of these changes or not?

Doug Glanville:

Well, opening week is the last data points I’ve looked at. It was highly successful. It was up over 40%. So you did have the viewership. You did have the-

Preet Bharara:

And do you think that’s due literally to these changes or at least in part to these rules changes?

Doug Glanville:

Well, I do think the changes in and of itself created a curiosity if nothing else. I think people want to say, “Yeah, let me watch. Let me just see what this is like.” That novelty, will that sustain? I don’t know. But there’s no doubt that you’re watching a game and I’m calling these games every Sunday and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I can catch my flight right now.”

Preet Bharara:

Is it more fun for you to call these games?

Doug Glanville:

Yeah, I call these games. It’s challenging in some way because I don’t have as much time to tell my stories and wax poetic in between pitches, because it’s so quick. But at the same time, you make your adjustments and you find other windows, but you also just notice that you’re able to, you schedule your flight, you’re in San Diego, you’re like, “Well, can I get a seven o’clock flight?” You feel a lot more secure in the game, not just getting away from itself to becoming a game that’s still five to four, but three and a half hours. You feel more secure that the timestamp will match the score and have a cadence to it. You’re eliminating this extra stuff that would happen, whether it was one nothing, or 13 to 12. That I think has been highly reduced the noise, so to speak. And it’s hard to say that anything other than that’s a good thing. It’s just you forget how much waste there was. What were guys doing? I don’t know. I was telling a lot of stories, so I probably didn’t-

Preet Bharara:

There was a lot of tobacco chewing.

Doug Glanville:

A lot of tobacco.

Preet Bharara:

And there’s a lot of spitting and there was a lot of scratching.

Doug Glanville:

Well, I remember Bill James had a great quote-

Preet Bharara:

And adjusting.

Doug Glanville:

Everything. And Bill James had a great quote, because he said, “People need stop coming about the pitch clock back in the day. Oh, we had a clock. It was called the sun.” It’s like, “Yeah, exactly.” Like, you’re playing wiffle ball with your brother outside and the sun’s going down, “Oh, I guess it’s time to go in.” It’s partly due to just technological advances and data. And guys are on iPads in between innings and trying to figure out like, “All right, how do I hit?” And it’s parenting, it’s like parenting. I’m telling my kids, “Get off your screens and you have 30 more minutes or five more minutes.” There’s so much distraction and stuff that the gut, the game just sort of evolved into this thing that’s very reflective of larger society, which sometimes is something to celebrate. But then you go, “Wait a minute now.” There’s a lot of time here where people are just overthinking everything, see ball, hit ball, and get back to some of the basics that made the game thrive and be exciting.

Preet Bharara:

There is such a thing as too much ball and play and too much action. Anybody who has been a parent of kids in little league, like I was with my two boys, which is one of the sports in which they have to institute the mercy rule, because there’s too scoring, there’s too much hitting, because the fielding is wanting among very young kids. Are there any other rules that you see are on deck to be changed either for the pace of the game or because they annoy people?

Doug Glanville:

Well, unquestionably the, well we call them robot umps, it’s probably a little dismissive, but there’s technology to allow automation or using technology to call balls and strikes. That is definitely going to come. It’s already being tested. The question in that area is whether you use it on every pitch, or you do it in a challenge system.

Preet Bharara:

A challenge, yeah. What do you think is better?

Doug Glanville:

I think a challenge system. I think baseball still has to retain, its baseball. You have umpires, you have, and although there’s not as many arguments, because you get the challenge plays and instant replay, I still think that dynamic is important to have. There’s just an element and there’s so much more to manage than fine you ball and strike. But we just describe all these rules that by the way, the umpires have to enforce. So they’re out there like, “Pitch clock, make sure you’re staring at the guy,” they’re checking everything. So you need someone to captain that. And I think you need to give them the power to continue to be in command of that. And yeah, you can challenge it. Pick your spots. “You sure? You sure that’s a ball.” Because by the way, just like basketball, nobody ever commits a foul in the NBA. Nobody, everybody, every call they argue, they dispute. So this is what happens in baseball, nobody’s ever been struck out looking on the right call. That’s just the nature of debating officiating. I do think challenge system would probably be the way it starts and they go from there.

Preet Bharara:

Final question, do you think, what I believe to be the most fundamental rule of baseball for all eternity will remain in place, or will it to be changed? And that rule is, as you might guess, there is no crying in baseball.

Doug Glanville:

That rule has totally been blown up and I’m-

Preet Bharara:

It’s already been violated.

Doug Glanville:

I’m kind of glad for it. I don’t know if you saw the Drew Maggi story, Pittsburgh Pirates, 13 years in the minor leagues, finally gets his first major league hit.

Preet Bharara:

I saw that.

Doug Glanville:

Unbelievable. Everybody’s got to cry over that. It’s just what it is. I lost my father the last game of the season, in 2002, when I got my 1000th hit of my career the same day. He passed away exactly when the time of the game ended, and I got to bury him with that baseball. So you got to cry in this game, you got to cry. And my brother had the same kind of story in his life when my father passed. So I think the game has evolved a lot away and we’ve gained a lot of emotional intelligence too. So hey, I’m all for it.

Preet Bharara:

Doug Glanville, thanks for your work and thanks for coming on and talking to us.

Doug Glanville:

All right, Preet, it’s been my honor.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues, making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I co-host with former US attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag ask Preet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669 247 7338. That’s 669 24 Preet, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noa Azulai. The audio producer is Nat Wiener, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nama Tasha, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.