Excerpt: "State of the Game, Pt. 3"

"For all the numbers I've thrown at you this week, we're dealing with something subjective: what should baseball look like? Is there some kind of balance between offense and defense, between pitchers and hitters, between three true outcomes and balls in play, that represents the best kind of ball? For too long, that balance has been expressed in terms of run environment. But as I've pointed out this week, the 4.17 R/G world of 2013 and the 4.12 R/G world of 1992 have nothing in common but the scoreboard. A simplistic reliance on run levels and home-run counts has led to the conclusion that somehow baseball is "normal" again, when what we actually have is the game from 15 years ago with strikeouts pumped up. Power, as measured in just about every way, hasn't changed all that much."