Manager Casey Stengel famously moaned about his 1962 New York Mets team, which lost 120 games, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” But I’m beginning to say the same thing as I watch today’s major leaguers botch the fundamentals of baseball.
In a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday, September 16–one with Wild Card playoff implications for both teams–the Giants had Heliot Ramos on third base and Rafael Devers on first base with one out in the top of the first inning. Matt Chapman hit a fly ball to medium-deep right field. Ramos tagged up, as did Devers. Right fielder Corbin Carroll caught the ball and then launched a high arcing throw to home plate, way over the head of the first baseman, who was the cut-off man, and the ball went all the way to the catcher. Ramos was easily safe, and Devers made it safely to second base. The next batter, Wilmer Flores, lined a single to right field that scored Devers.
Carroll is responsible for Devers’ scoring on Flores’ hit because Devers never should have been able to advance to second base. In high school baseball, we learned to throw the ball from the outfield on a line, aiming for the head of the cut-off man. It’s unbelievable to me that Carroll is unaware of this fundamental.
In 2018, in a game between the Mets and the Phillies, Philadelphia’s Rod Barajas was on second base with one out and nobody on first base when Gary Matthews Jr. hit a grounder to short. Barajas, a catcher who doesn’t run well to begin with, took off for third and was thrown out by 20 feet. As an 18-year-old shortstop on my Connie Mack team, I once caught a runner committing the same cardinal sin. But this is the big leagues. So, how does Barajas make a mistake like that?
That same year, Ichiro Suzuki was on third base for the Mariners, and Eric Byrnes was at bat. Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu called for a suicide squeeze play. The pitcher wound up, delivered the ball, and Suzuki lit out for home. Byrnes presented to bunt, then pulled his bat back, and Suzuki was a dead duck. What was Byrnes thinking? The Mariners released him two days later.
Joshua Rodrigues: “One of the most persistent complaints from teams and coaches is the fading grasp of fundamentals. The pressure to reach the big leagues faster than ever means teams prioritize rapid adaptation over deep understanding. With how quickly players are being pushed through the system, the traditional model of development—where fundamentals are refined in the minors before players are ‘ready’ for the big leagues—no longer fits.”
When I interviewed Joe DiMaggio in 1974, the Yankee Clipper told me, “There were only eight teams in each league when I was playing. Today, you have 12, and I believe that’s diluted the talent a bit. Also, they’re bringing young ballplayers along too quickly, so they come out of the minor leagues unrefined. I remember when I was coaching for Oakland, Reggie Jackson first arrived. He couldn’t catch a fly ball. We’d hit it to him, he’d pound the glove a few times, and the ball would drop 20 feet behind him. I’m not kidding.”
Hank Aaron (photo courtesy The Ringer)
In 2010, Hank Aaron bemoaned a trend that has since grown exponentially worse. Aaron said of the players at that time, “I don’t think they understand the role of what they need to be doing. I’m not saying all of them, but I think some players need to understand that they’re never going to hit 50 home runs or 45 home runs [a year]. They’ve got to learn how to hit the ball to the opposite field and do the little things to help their ballclub win championships.”
In today’s sabermetric culture, the acceptable three outcomes are home run, strikeout, or walk. Strikeouts are accepted as collateral damage.
Aaron, who remembers when starters threw into the seventh and eighth innings and even completed games, pointed out another trend that has now become the norm. “Pitching has changed,” he said. “I think that if you talked to the average manager and want to know what his philosophy is as far as pitching, he’ll tell most of his pitchers before the season starts, ‘You give me five good innings and I can bring somebody out there to relieve you.’”
As Phil Mushnick wrote in the New York Post, “How many big-price-tag pitchers are now lost for months, the season or forever because they knew they had no chance to throw beyond the fifth or sixth, as per new-age, find-a-way-to-lose preordained ‘strategies,’ so they tried to throw 100 mph on every pitch?”
Unfortunately, baseball schools are grooming pitchers the same way. As former Cincinnati Reds scout Owen Kelly wrote, “I recently saw videos of so-called baseball academies where kids lined up, one after another, throwing the ball as hard as they could against a wall while instructors stood by, checking velocity. This isn’t development, it’s a clown show. It’s also a fast track to a rotator cuff injury.”
Owen Kelly, former scout, Cincinnati Reds: “I’ve seen some truly bad baseball. Young players are unable to field, struggling to hit, and even high school varsity athletes have an embarrassingly low baseball IQ. Worse yet, I’ve seen college players who don’t know the fundamentals of the game. It all starts with bad coaching and instructors.”
Mushnick summed things up: “Every MLB team now does it the same: five, six innings at the most from starters, leave the rest to a transient phalanx of half-inning-only relievers even if they were signed as starters. Winning fundamentals, from bunting to base running, are abandoned. It’s parity based on a foolish fad.”
