OC Register: Hoornstra: Baseball in 2020 might be your grandfather’s game after all

[AngelsWin.com]

The St. Louis Browns qualified for the World Series once in 52 seasons of existence, in 1944. World War II had reached a crescendo in Europe and Asia. Back home, the American League looked different. While several of its biggest stars – Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg – were serving their country abroad, the Browns were an exception. They had few stars to lose.

Five of St. Louis’ top six starting pitchers returned from the 1943 season. So did their closer, George Caster, and pitcher Jack Kramer, who had already been discharged by the Navy. The Browns’ lineup was led by All-Star shortstop Vern Stephens. Their next-best hitter by Wins Above Replacement was outfielder Milt Byrnes. Byrnes spent 15 seasons in professional baseball and exactly three (1943, 1944 and 1945) as a major leaguer. That captures everything you need to know about the 1944 St. Louis Browns.

The 2020 season is similarly challenging the definition of what it means to be a major league ballplayer. It’s something we haven’t quite seen since the liberation of Europe.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. When some players were stricken with the novel coronavirus, and all were given the right to opt out of the season, rosters were bound to be impacted. The only question was how much.

The answer is beginning to reveal itself. We’re also beginning to see how those opt-outs, and an unprecedented rash of injuries, are impacting the game. It hasn’t looked good. In fact, it’s looked bad enough that you wonder if the 2020 equivalent of the 1944 Browns will reach the World Series. If the Rockies truly feel this is their year, well, it might have to be.

Less than three weeks into the season, 90 players have made their major league debuts. The equivalent date on last year’s calendar was April 17; 41 new players had debuted to that point in the season. Ten rookies have debuted for the Astros this year alone, nine for the Marlins.

Truthfully, I expected more. The 2020 operations manual agreed to by MLB and the MLB Players’ Association didn’t specify how many positive tests could end the season for a team, or for the entire league. It made no rules that superseded the terms of Rule 29 – the “Disaster Draft” policy for repopulating the roster of any team that loses five players due to epidemic illness. With no minor league seasons, teams were given a pool of up to 60 players to pull from within the organization. Forcing teams to postpone games until enough of their existing players returned to health seemed like Plan C. Yet this is exactly what happened once the Cardinals and Marlins were hit with outbreaks.

With so many youngsters debuting in such a condensed time frame, the baseball was bound to get noticeably worse. In 2020, this has been more true for hitters. The league-wide batting average of .235 through Tuesday would be the lowest ever in a full season. You might think that’s because strikeouts have increased, yet the league-wide strikeout rate is actually down a shade from last year.

Fewer strikeouts means more balls in play, which tends to be a good thing. Curiously, batting average on balls in play had plummeted to .280 through Tuesday. Over a full season, that would be the lowest mark since the strike-shortened 1981 season. Hitters have less reason to put the ball in play if making an out is so inevitable. More than ever, the 2020 brand of baseball incentivizes home runs, walks, and strikeouts.

The numbers also suggest fielding has improved tremendously. Maybe it has, though sometimes the optics leave me unconvinced. Just this weekend, Angels rookie Jo Adell was responsible for a four-base error – a fielding mistake so rare and so costly, it only occurs a few times a decade. Would Adell make that mistake if he had been playing Triple-A games every day until his debut? Like so many questions this season has posed, the answer will be lost to history.

During World War II, it wasn’t uncommon to see men typically deemed too young or too old on the field. Joe Nuxhall became the youngest ever to appear in a game when he pitched for the Reds at age 15 in 1944. The following year, 46-year-old Hod Lisenbee came out of retirement to appear in 31 games for Cincinnati.

The 2020 season hasn’t provided such extremes yet, but we’re getting there. When the Braves lost their first- and second-string catchers for the first week of the season, they turned the reins over to Alex Jackson and William Contreras, who at age 22 is more likely to be a senior in college. The Yankees recently selected the contract of 40-year-old catcher Erik Kratz. Kratz has played 1,027 minor-league games in his career, while 20-year-old Padres pitcher Luis Patiño has played 50.

A league of outliers is fun, but only to a point. You can only change the definition of what it means to be a major league ballplayer so much before the game becomes substantively different, before the St. Louis Browns are able to back their way into a pennant. The game is worse without David Price, Yoenis Cespedes, Buster Posey, Marcus Stroman, Jordan Hicks, and the 224(!) players who have been placed or re-placed on the injured list since July 1. Unless you were alive from 1943-45, the 2020 season probably represents the worst baseball you’ve ever seen from the best league in the world.

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It’s important to draw a distinction between the circumstances then and now. What DiMaggio, Williams, Greenberg and others sacrificed for their country was rightfully perceived as virtuous. The record book is not richer for the home runs they lost, but the world became a better place when the Third Reich fell. The Browns weren’t given an asterisk next to their lone World Series appearance. They gave us a story to pass along to future generations about what we value as a society.

Five major league ball players stand in front of their training plane at Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., Dec. 1, 1942, where they are receiving civilian pilot training wings in order to become Naval pilots. From left to right: Joseph Coleman of the Philadelphia Athletics; John F. Sain, Jr. of the Boston Braves; Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox; Johnny Pesky of the Boston Red Sox; and Louis Gremp of the Boston Braves. (AP Photo/Abe Fox)

The mere existence of a 2020 season wasn’t met with such a unanimous reaction. The Cardinals have played five games. The Giants and Mariners have played 20. “What are we doing?” is a natural response. The answer, in part, is we’re playing a brand of baseball distinctly different from anything in the last 75 years. It’s too soon to say if we’ll tell future generations whether this is good or bad, whether the whole exercise was worth it. In terms of the aesthetics of the on-field product, we already have the answer.

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[Lou]

This writer is the worst. 

[Pancake Bear]

19 minutes ago, Lou said:

This writer is the worst. 

No, I just checked: It isn’t Mark Whicker.