A Little Baseball Talk. Ok, it's Actually 1400 Words of Baseball Talk, so Bear With Me.

Yeah, yeah, I know this is supposed to be a newsletter about politics, but it’s my newsletter, and I get to take a little license now and then. Please bear with me.

I’ve made no secret in my life about being an incurable fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Anytime someone asks why I would ever even dream of making myself a social outcast to my school mates growing up in South Texas, aka, Astros Country, in the 1960s and ‘70s, I recite the story of my Dad and his best friend Raymond taking me to a game at the then-new Astrodome in 1965.

The Astros were hosting the Dodgers, and Raymond had lucked into seats 3 rows behind the 3rd base dugout, which housed the visiting teams in those years. We arrived early, and some of the Dodgers players, including Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, were signing autographs for the kids. So my Dad said, “go get those guys to sign your cap, Bullet,” (Dad called me either Bullet or Pistol, because he was an avid hunter and gun collector) I jumped at the chance. Koufax, Drysdale and Wes Parker, the team’s 1st baseman, signed the bill of that cap, which became one of my most cherished possessions. That is, until about two weeks later, when I promptly lost it. No idea what happened to that cap.

Anyway, Koufax pitched a great game for the Dodgers that day, and I was hooked on Dodger blue for life, just as I’ve been hooked on the Dallas Cowboys for life.

Like being a fan of the Cowboys, being a Dodgers fan has not always been a bed of roses. The World Series triumphs have been great, but they’ve also been few and far between, especially when compared to the New York Yankees. Prior to winning the short-season series in 2020, 32 years had flown past since the Dodgers’ previous world championship in 1988. It felt like the hated Yankees must have won about 20 of their own championships during that span, though I think the number might actually be 4. Maybe 5. But still.

So, last night was especially gratifying for me, especially given the team’s series of inexplicable playoff collapses of the past few years, and the criticism that its 2020 championship somehow meant less due to the COVID-shortened season.

This year, the Dodgers have taken criticism for trying to actively buy a World Series, and it’s valid: The Dodgers did have the 3rd-highest payroll major league baseball after signing Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the off-season.

But guess who ranked ahead of the Dodgers in payroll cost: The New York Mets, and the New York Yankees, both of whom the Dodgers defeated in this year’s playoffs.

So, spare me any talk about that, ok?

A Championship Run Filled With Injuries

This year’s Dodgers team managed to win this championship despite an amazing number of injuries. Yeah, every team has injuries, but for the Dodgers, this season was truly amazing in that regard.

Former MVP Mookie Betts spent about half the season on the injured list. So did power-hitting 3rd baseman Max Muncy. Another former MVP, Freddie Freeman, suffered a severe ankle sprain in September, causing him to miss much of the final two weeks of the regular season and hobble into the playoffs. That was after Freeman missed two weeks in August when he almost lost his young son to Guilliam Barre Syndrome. Thankfully, Max Freeman is well on the way to a full recovery now.

Freddie was the World Series MVP after slugging home runs in each of the first four games and hitting a 2-run single in Game 5, but he had done pretty much nothing at the plate throughout the previous two rounds of the playoffs.

But the real injury plague that struck the Dodgers - and to a big extent, all of Major League Baseball - in 2024 was to the pitching staff. It was like nothing the franchise had ever seen before, forcing the team to constantly make what seemed like daily roster moves and Manager Dave Roberts to do his best to deploy a roster of pitchers that never remained static for more than a few days at a time.

In all, an amazing 40 different pitchers tossed innings for the Dodgers during the regular season. That compares to 33 used by the Yankees, and 37 deployed by the Mets. All those numbers are too high, and reflective of the growing injury problem for MLB pitchers.

To understand how dramatically this aspect of the game has changed, realize that when the Dodgers won the World Series in 1988, they used just 19 pitchers on the season. The 1981 series champions led by the late Fernando Valenzuela used just 13 pitchers, and that is not a typo. It’s almost unimaginable today.

Some of the rise in the numbers of arms teams use in a season now is due to the natural progression of the game from 4-man rotations to 5-man or even 6-man rotations of starters, and from relief pitchers who used to throw 2-3 innings at the end of games to now a succession of 1-inning relievers.

But for the Dodgers, it was also about arm injuries, and lots of them. If you watched last night’s game, you saw former staff ace pitcher Walker Buehler close the game out with a shutout 9th inning. Buehler only became available to the team in July after completing rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery. Oh, and that was the second Tommy John surgery Buehler has undergone.

This is a team that won the World Series despite having just one starting pitcher who won more than 9 games on the season. That was 2nd-year player Gavin Stone, a guy who wasn’t even expected to be in the rotation before the season began, and who naturally was injured and unable to pitch in the playoffs.

Indeed, only a single starting pitcher who was in the Dodgers rotation to begin the season actually pitched in the playoffs. That was Yamamoto, who of course had missed almost half the season with shoulder problems in the meantime.

Rules Changes Needed

I go through all of this sordid background on injuries to highlight the fact that MLB has a pitcher problem, one that is likely being at least in part caused by recent rules changes: 1) the pitch clock, and 2) the prohibition of pitchers using pine tar to improve their grip on the ball.

I like the pitch clock rule, make no mistake about that. The time-consuming primping and preening by batters between every pitch had become one of the most annoying and tiresome aspects of the game before this rule was implemented in 2023. That’s all gone now, and the enjoyability of the games is much improved.

But the clock is probably too short, because it doesn’t allow these pitchers time to catch their breath in long innings, thus increasing body and arm stress. I’d suggest simply adding 3 seconds of time between pitches to see if that helps cut down the number of arm stress injuries.

The pine tar question is probably a more important - and stickier (pardon the pun) - matter.

Baseballs used in MLB games are slick and hard to grip. They’re all brand new, right out of the box. The ever-present rosin bag kept on every mound helps to some extent, but pitchers still have a hard time getting the spin they need to put on their pitches to deal with today’s hyper-trained major league hitters.

The premium on spin rate cannot be overstated for major league pitchers. The more spin they can put on the ball, the more their pitches are going to move on the way to the plate. A guy can throw the ball 105 mph, but if the pitch is perfectly straight, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are going to hit the damn thing about 450 feet and slow-trot around the bases.

Before it was outlawed in 2021, pitchers were allowed to use some of the same pine tar substance batters have always used to improve their grip. Without that substance to help, pitchers now are forced to grip down harder on the ball with their fingers, thus placing a higher degree of strain on every muscle, ligament, and tendon in their pitching arms.

It is crazy to have a World Series champion for which not a single pitcher threw more than 140 innings on the season. The 1988 Dodgers had 4 pitchers who threw more than that. Even 21 years later, the great 2009 Yankees team also had 4 pitchers who exceeded that number.

Baseball is a wonderful sport - perhaps the ultimate truly American game. The integrity of the game needs to be constantly monitored, and the rules adjusted to both maximize fan enjoyment and protect the health of the players.

MLB has a pretty major problem today with the health of its pitchers. If a couple of simple rules changes can help relieve that problem, they deserve to be considered.

That is all.