Dear Major League Baseball: Please Lower the Pitching Mound
My personal ode to balls in play
I am a lifelong baseball fan. As a kid I’d fall asleep at night dreaming of playing in the pros, hitting home runs in front of screaming fans. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way, but I’ll never stop fanatically obsessing over “America’s pastime”.
However, many people don’t particularly care for the aesthetics of baseball. I understand completely; the game isn’t for everyone. But even hardcore fans are growing increasing disinterested because of the lack of action. More than ever before, games take longer, and there is less stuff actually going on.
Baseball has reached a bit of a crossroads. The rise of the Three True Outcomes (walk, strikeout, or home run) has led to a reduction in balls in play and a whole lot of standing around. Exciting aspects of the game like bunting, steals, hit and run, etc. have all gone out to pasture thanks to advanced analytics. The game can now be boiled down to players either jogging around the bases or jogging on and off the field. Whether this focus on power and acceptance of strikeouts even improves the chances of winning (particularly in the playoffs) is an open debate.
This is no way an anti-sabermetrics piece. Quite the opposite, in fact overall I love the troves of data now available, everything from Wins Above Replacement to park and era-specific adjustments to pitcher spin rate. But the change on the style of play is significant and universal.
The modern paradox of baseball is that it has never been harder to put the ball in play, yet it has never been easier to hit a home run. Players are big, fast, strong, and 1–9 can go yard. On the flip side, pitchers throw so, so damn hard now. 95+ used to be a rarity, now it’s the norm. Every major league team is stacked with guys who can reach triple digits with elite spin rates (which makes the ball even harder to hit), particularly in the bullpen.
And the breaking balls. Oh my god the breaking balls. Insane amounts of movement at velocities that even 10 years ago were unheard of. The level of pure filth seen from modern major league pitchers is ridiculous, and game calling has improved drastically. There is no longer any such thing as a “fastball count”. Pitchers throw fewer fastballs than ever, and it’s typically 95+ up in the zone counteracted by nasty off-speed stuff at any point in the at-bat. You try even catching an 85mph slider with vertical break and the horizontal drop of an old school Barry Zito curveball, let alone hitting one. Hell, Jacob DeGrom can throw his slider in the low 90s, Shohei Ohtani can do the same with his splitter, and they are far from the only ones.
While the rise in the three true outcomes has been a slow but steady change since the 1920s (thanks Babe Ruth), the rise of advanced pitching metrics over the last 10–15 years has drastically exacerbated the issue. In a sport where the defense possesses the ball and failing 7 out of 10 times means you’re enshrined in Cooperstown, the edge has tilted towards the pitcher even further than usual. Total runs scored hasn’t budged too much (for many reasons outside the scope of this article), but modern day offense has essentially become 9 dudes with a decent understanding of launch angle closing their eyes and hoping the pitcher makes a mistake that they can hit 400+ feet.
I don’t know about you, but sitting around for 4 hours waiting for a 3-run homerun isn’t necessarily my idea of ideal baseball. So what is there to be done? Much ado has been made about the state of the baseball itself, bullpen construction/pitching changes, defensive shifts, and time between pitches/pace of play, and these are all factors in where we are today. However, I have another idea, one that doesn’t seem to be discussed all that often; lower the damn pitching mound!
The Pitcher’s Mound: A Brief History
Baseball has been around for a long freakin’ time. The first professional season was in 1869 (courtesy of the Cincinnati Red Stockings), with the National League formed in 1876 (hence the nickname “Senior Circuit”) and the American League formed in 1901 (“Junior Circuit). Prior to 1893, pitchers threw from a painted box that was flat, but with the addition of the rubber and a downhill slope, it was discovered that you could throw significantly harder. Hence, the modern pitcher’s mound was born.
In 1903, the mound height was regulated at a maximum of 15 inches, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate (although there was some fluctuation in the exact height by ballpark). In 1950, it was required that all mounds in MLB should be exactly 15 inches high.
Then came 1968, known as “The Year of the Pitcher”. The level of pitching across baseball was so dominant that no hitter batted higher than .301. 22 pitchers had a sub 2.00 ERA, with Josh Gibson setting a modern day record of 1.12 (and 28 complete games!!). Major League Baseball decided that something had to be done to save offense, and decided to lower the mound 5 whole inches (reducing its total height by 33%!), to its present day height of 10 inches.
53 years is an awfully long time in sports. Football and basketball are nearly unrecognizable compared to games played in 1968. While the speed of the game is now extraordinary, if Babe Ruth were to magically appear at a 2021 game, he would at least be able to recognize the game as it currently exists, without any “what the hell is that?!” moments like the forward pass in football or 3-pointers from 35 feet in the NBA.
But all sports must change and adapt as athletes become better and training methods and data improve. Baseball, as rooted in tradition as it is, is sometimes slow to see and accept these needed changes. 50+ years is long enough, it is high time to reduce the height of the mound once again, perhaps by 2–3 inches.
Other changes have a significant amount of accompanying uncertainty. Modifying the baseball brings complicated aerodynamics into effect, and is impossible to completely control (even major league baseballs are not uniform in size or weight, with an accepted range of 5 to 5 1/4 ounces in weight and 9 to 9 1/4 inches in circumference). Banning shifts is a slippery slope, and doesn’t do much to actually help put more balls in play. But the height of the mound is the height of the mound, in all 30 ballparks. Though a 2019 study conducted by MLB determined that lowering the mound wouldn’t reduce velocity from pitchers, the impact on hitter’s perception/eyeline and spin rate is unclear.
My personal opinion is that the impact goes far beyond sheer velocity; major league hitters can catch up to 100mph heat, that isn’t the problem. It’s fairly common knowledge that tall pitchers have an advantage in that their release point is in a higher plane relative to the hitter’s eyeline, and the change in plane (often referred to as a pitcher “getting downhill”) makes the baseball harder for a hitter to see and adjust to. It’s no coincidence that modern pitching theory has come to focus almost exclusively on an up/down approach to setting up pitch sequences, attempting to adjust the hitter’s eyeline and perspective as much as possible across various planes.
Lowering the mound certainly won’t fix everything, and MLB knows there is an issue with the current style of play. Robot-called strike zones are an inevitability, and the ghost runner on second to begin extra innings seems like its here to stay. But to me, modifying the mound seems like low hanging fruit in its quantifiable change on pitching mechanics relative to the hitter. Please MLB, give it a try and see what happens so I can hear the crack of the bat a little more often.
