Spring Training Begins With No Buzz

Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training today. However, nobody really cares about baseball starting up again. For the Red Sox and baseball in general, people that watch the sport are the elderly that fall asleep in the recliner while having it on in the background. Baseball used to be fun to watch. However, the game has changed and is surrounded by analytics also the games take four hours to complete. Nobody has four hours to watch a sporting event, especially baseball. The game needs to speed it up to reach its younger audience.

The latest person to speak about this problem is David Ortiz. Who called the game f- boring this week speaking to the Boston Globe.

Spring Training Beings With Zero Popularity

“We used to want to develop great hitters, now it’s all strikeouts with some home runs and it’s straight-up [expletive] boring. If you could bet in Vegas that the next hitter was going to strike out, you’d take it every time. We used to be criticized for taking big swings in certain situations,” Now that’s all they want every time. It’s hard to watch for me. I struck out 100 times a few times in my career and I was [upset],” Ortiz said. “Now everybody does it. I see kids now taking BP and all they work on is running into a home run. Everybody is swinging out of their ass. It’s not good for the game. If there’s a runner on first, you want to use that hole and hit the ball to right field. Then the runner has the opportunity to go to third and can score on an out or even a wild pitch. That’s how I was taught to play.”

Baseball Has A Credibility Problem As Spring Training Starts

The Red Sox are coming off a 2020 season that was very unwatchable. I couldn’t even name half the players on the team because I’ve never heard of them. The signings this offseason seem like Bloom is just trying to rebuild the farm system while trying to be competitive. Hopefully, 2021 is more watchable than 2020 or it’s going to be a long summer.

If Ortiz is saying the games are boring then that has to wake up someone in baseball to speed the game up.  Baseball gets dominated by the other major sports in the Country. For the Red Sox, they are last in popularity in Boston. In order for fans to go to the games this summer if they can. they have to be relevant. If they aren’t then it’ll be another year of bad baseball and low ratings.

Hopefully, with Alex Cora back people buy into the team and give them a chance. It would be nice if they get off to a great start. Get people to watch the games and get interested.

In order to get the younger generation to buy into baseball again, they need better star athletes. There is not one-star athlete on the Red Sox. The star baseball players are Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr. Mike Trout, and a few others. Even those names don’t draw national attention which means they need more of those players around the league. Stop with the analytics and making the game boring with stats nobody talks about. It’s all about the players that get on base, star baseball players, wins and losses. An average Red Sox fan is going to go to Fenway Park and not know a single player on the team cause they got rid of them all for average players nobody has heard of.

The identity crisis in baseball is real which is a shame cause I do like the game. I just wish they’d speed it up and make it more watchable to the younger baseball fan. So as pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training today there is absolutely zero buzz. Nationally, the sport is last in popularity, and hopefully, that changes in the future.
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