Baseball’s Fight with Fatigue

http://www.wsj.com/articles/baseballs-fight-with-fatigue-1424710560?mod=WSJ_hp_EditorsPicks

by peterkrieg • 11 years ago

32 48 11 years ago

TwoBit2• 11 years ago

I must not understand Baseball well, because it strikes me as one of the least fatiguing sports that there are.

Here is what I'd recommend: for four hours, alternate sitting and standing every ten minutes in a sunny park. When standing, once every thirty seconds or so tense into a squat position and concentrate as hard as you can on something about 100 feet away. Every 10th time, sprint all out in a random direction. Every 20th time, throw a rock as hard as you can as far as you can.

What you will find is that you, a normal human, can keep this up for about one hour, before you collapse of exhaustion or hurt yourself.

That the super humans who play professional baseball are able to do this day in and day out for more than half a year is insane.

UnethicalHacks2• 11 years ago

No, if you're a professional athlete this should not be all that difficult. Boring but not difficult.

Look at the average baseball player. So many of them are plump or overweight. I'd argue that soccer players running 10-15 miles every game have a bit more to deal with.

baseball needs some yoga and proper nutrition.

mdanger007• 11 years ago

The people who pick your coffee probably have as exhaustive a routine. Doesn't make it a spectator sport.

TwoBit2• 11 years ago

Compare that to what other athletes do in their sports and it seems trivial. The Tour de France involves racing your bike for 130 miles a day, every day for a month, over mountains multiple times a day.

MSM• 11 years ago

I've had a few conversations with friends about which sport I'd choose to play if I could be a professional in any sport. I think baseball would be at the bottom of my list.

You have to go to the ballpark nearly every single day for almost 8 months. I'm from Detroit and I'm looking at the Tiger's schedule right now. In September they have TWO days in the entire month without a game. By that time they will also be playing doubleheaders or make up games because of weather. In May they go 21 consecutive days with a game. Even if it's not as physically demanding as hockey or american football, that's exhausting. Imagine having to go to the office that much.

On top of that you're playing until nearly November if you're in the World Series and then spring training starts in Feb (it's already started). There's nearly no offseason.

UnethicalHacks2• 11 years ago

And the average salary is $3.8 million.

[1]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/baseball/major-league-...

Someone• 11 years ago

If "it requires extreme dedication" is a showstopper when deciding what sport you would want to play professionally, you probably shouldn't play any sport professionally. Even the 'easy' games such as darts or billiards require hours of practice every day.

But as to baseball: they have games. What are they complaining about? :)

If you pick an endurance sport such as cross country skiing, swimming, or rowing instead of a game (sport is "something with a start and a finish"; a game is something you play), you will easily be training every day for four hours or more for 8+ months in a stretch without ever entering a real competition.

All that for two or three races that count a year or, if you are really good, for one race every four years at the Olympics (rowing is extreme here, as it doesn't do races at different distances, and as it is rare for people to enter in more than one race in an event. Underperform in that race, and it is 4 years of training to get another try. Swimmers and cross-country skiers have it slightly better, as they typically enter in multiple races at an event).

The only plus these sports have over professional baseball is that sportsmen do not travel that much.

defen• 11 years ago

162 games in 184 days, half of which are in not-your-home-city. Any particular game isn't too bad, but the cumulative stress of that many games and that much travel really adds up. That's also why the meta-game of baseball is important - e.g. sometimes it's better to play your weaker guys in the middle of the season, with the concomitant reduced chance of winning those relatively unimportant games, so you can have your stars rested for September/October. But don't rest them too much, or you won't even make the playoffs...

bitsoda2• 11 years ago

Interesting ideas by the Marlins, but I'd like to see the MLB take this further by cutting down the number of games from 162 to 100, and trimming the inning count from 9 to 7. Sure, the historical data won't match up, but it would be better for the players and more entertaining for the fans to watch shorter, less frequent games.

On an unrelated note, it would be nice if they expanded the playoffs to include 16 teams with the first two rounds being a best out of 5, concluding with the NLCS/ALCS and World Series being a best out of 7, of course. It would get more fanbases interested in their team if they at least made a playoff appearance more often.

The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership as the average age of your typical MLB viewer is ~54 years.

[1]http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-01/fixing-baseb...

steverb2• 11 years ago

Personally, I've always thought they should put a speed limit on pitching. These days watching baseball feels like watching two guys play catch.

pokpokpok• 11 years ago

if you mean that you want them to nerf pitching, I think that the appropriate way to do that is to lower the mound

corin_• 11 years ago

There actually already is a rule on this, the pitcher has to release the ball within 12 seconds of receiving the ball, as long as the batter is ready to receive the pitch. It's just never enforced. But there has been a lot of talk about possibly starting to enforce this rule, primarily using a visible clock/timer in games - though I think MLB were talking about changing from 12 to 20 seconds if they do start enforcing it.

grecy2• 11 years ago

by cutting down the number of games from 162 to 100

Since coming to North America I've always felt one of the problems with Baseball and Hockey is they just play too many games, so no game is significant enough. When your team loses to a certain team, you don't care enough because you know they'll play them multiple times more.

Baseball is 162, Hockey is 82 games in "regular season"

NFL is only 16 games, which to me, makes it much more exciting because each win or loss really matters, and as a spectator I actually care.

bcantrill• 11 years ago

You just haven't followed baseball closely enough. When it's September and you're in a close divisional or wildcard race, there is nothing more exciting in sports: every pitch counts and every at-bat counts -- and there are ~5-6 games per week. (And that only counts your team! Part of the terror of a close race is that you're also watching every pitch and every at-bat of your rivals.) If anything, it's almost exciting to a fault...

Legion• 11 years ago

In my opinion, the lockout-shortened 2012-13 NHL season (started in January, 48 game regular season) was the best thing ever.

Particularly in a country where NFL football reigns supreme, the NHL starting an 82 game season in October is just a loser. Starting the compressed season in January, with the NFL regular season over, made so much more sense.

jghn3• 11 years ago

I agree fully, although IMO there's another factor at work here (albeit a side effect of your point anyways).

Not only are there so many games, but they're all on TV. The NFL mostly stacks their games on Sunday so "football sunday" has become a social event for people. Leagues like the MLB, NBA and NHL spread their games all over the week and with modern cable packages on pretty much any given day you can find a game to watch - the specialness is lost.

This is one reason why I think it's a bad idea for the NFL to start spreading games around - sure there was always MNF but they've had TNF now for a while and there's always talk about adding more. They want those primetime slots but all it does is weaken The Event effect of sundays.

twoodfin• 11 years ago

The long season not only fits baseball's cultural niche as the lazy Summer, lose-today-but-lick-'em-tomorrow sport, it also has the nice effect of reducing the significance of lucky breaks and hot streaks. The season's long enough to have a long run: Better teams win and worse teams lose. Players' individual statistics are at least stable enough to usefully model and predict overall team wins.

I love the excitement and unpredictability of NFL football as much as the next red blooded American, but there's something a little bit unsatisfying about a team's entire season routinely hanging in the balance of a single referee's call or a ball bouncing right instead of left.

vivekpreddy• 11 years ago

The problem as with reducing the number of games for any sport always comes down to money. Reducing a season by 62 games for each team is a huge loss in revenues which owners will never go along with, especially owners of the highest grossing teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Giants.

I like the idea of off-setting that with more teams in the playoffs, but that would be the biggest hurdle to climb in terms of reducing the number of games in a season. You could argue that maybe the players union could strike, citing to grueling of a season, but their compensation is directly tied to revenues, so they'd be opposed to a reduction in games as well.

bmj• 11 years ago

The new MLB commissioner has responded to questions spurred by the WSJ report [0].

[0] http://deadspin.com/rob-manfred-wont-rule-out-a-shorter-base...

VLM2• 11 years ago

"The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership"

Your linked article also carefully tiptoed around the other elephant in the room, that being, as the pix demonstrates, not just a sea of old people, but a sea of old white people except for one Hispanic (old) guy. As whites become a minority race and the average age of a MLB viewer goes up one year per year, the pro level will die out pretty soon. How this interacts with billion dollar municipal bond offerings to pay for stadiums and such is interesting to contemplate.

Note, its probably a net gain to the sport overall, even if only 5% of the couch potatoes join or attend a local amateur game or take their kids to little league after MLB shuts down. Even if only 1% take a ball to a local park, it'll still be a net gain for the game overall.

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

Perhaps it's just that we have two good and popular teams in the Bay Area, but I don't recognize the problem you're talking whenever I attend a baseball game.

VLM2• 11 years ago

No one wants to comment on the blindingly obvious startup aspects? When dealing with millions of dollars, experienced professionals don't get shoved like sardines into the smallest possible space, don't even try to produce at world class level for 16 hours a day 7 days a week for years, don't turn to energy drinks and potato chips as a primary source of nutrition... Apparently pro-ball is the "anti-startup" despite the similar focus on individual rock stars and teamwork and millions of dollars on the line. Perhaps they're just dumb jocks, or maybe, just maybe, startup culture is wrong? Obviously its one or the other.

chrisBob2• 11 years ago

I am surprised they focus on the hitters. I thought that the pitchers were the only ones that were a big concern. It sounds like the league needs a rule that each player can only play 5 days with out a mandatory day off.

hyperliner• 11 years ago

Also, more focus on the catchers. They take a beating too.

rhino369• 11 years ago

I don't think the league needs to mandate anything. It's not like these are dropping dead. It is like a marathon, pacing yourself is just part of it.

smeyer• 11 years ago

I think they focused on hitters because in general a lot more attention is already paid to fatigue with pitchers (carefully monitoring innings pitched, pitch counts, rest days, and so on). It's possible (although not guaranteed) that there is much more room for improvement in the way teams deal with fatigue for hitters.

snappy173• 11 years ago

baseball, as with all sports, has a long and storied history with using various performance enhancing drugs to cope with injury and fatigue. amphetamines were commonplace in ball four ... bouton casually discusses greenies, players' coffee vs. regular coffee, etc. there was a sporting news snippet from the 1910's (that i can't find right now) that discussed pitchers dealing with arm fatigue ... the takeaway was that some pitchers preferred cocaine injections, while others preferred morphine. and then there was the steroid era ... lots of attention of course to creating cartoonishly large players, but most of these drugs were to shorten recovery from workouts ... you don't magically get huge from taking steroids.

Baseball’s Fight with Fatigue

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