Have you ever watched every game your favorite baseball team played in a season? Odds are you haven’t, and you’re not alone. Freshman Bennett Reed claimed, “There are too many games to keep track of,” and sophomore Adam Sklar added, “Being invested in most games is too much of a time commitment.” The harsh truth is that the Major League Baseball season lasts far too long. Almost 5,000 games are played from April to September, which provokes many issues for players and fans and hinders a league that needs a major boost.
The MLB must make baseball easier to follow. A shorter season is the ideal first step — cutting the prolonged season would bring in more fans, and the American pastime is in dire need of fans right now. An article from Boston University states, “Last season, 70 million fans attended games, 9 million less than in 2007…TV viewership is also down. The 2023 World Series was the least watched on record, with viewership under 10 million, a staggering 23 percent drop from the prior season.” Connect the dots, and you’ll find that the season, and its unnecessary length “deters many casual fans from watching the game,” according to senior Theo Raden. Raden continued, “For teams like the White Sox and the Angels, [the season] drags on.” To bring excitement, a shorter season may do the trick. It is easier to follow, and each game brings more enthusiasm because the value of the game’s outcome increases. “A shorter season would create more excitement for the fans because then they have more to look forward to,” said freshman Declan Scales. “When games would be ‘big games’ worth more value, fans would look forward to them.”
When baseball is compared with other sports and their leagues, we can see that more games do not correlate with more money. According to reports from Heavy and The Sporting News, the NFL made a billion dollars more than the MLB in 2023, despite having almost ten times fewer games in the regular season than the MLB. Going into the MLB Championship Series’ this year, ESPN reported an average of 3.56 million viewers across 18 games. Last year, 17.9 million fans watched each regular season game of the NFL on average. That is over 5 times as much, with fewer games than the MLB postseason as well.
However, viewership is much less of a problem than health is in baseball. Since 2008, the average pitch speed has increased by nearly 3 miles an hour, causing injuries to players — pitchers in particular — who are now consistently throwing fastballs near 100mph. “These guys are very susceptible to overuse,” sophomore Sam Kalil stated. “They’re throwing way more innings than most other people in the world.” This desire for increased speed is wearing down players, especially in their shoulders and elbows. For example, UCL tears have become scarily common — so common that over 30 percent of current Major League baseball players have undergone an operation, known as Tommy John surgery, because of this injury. In addition, because high throwing velocity is an important attribute of baseball players honored by the MLB, internal and external pressure to throw at faster speeds increases. “The increased spin rates and trying to throw harder at a younger age causes increased stress on the elbow,” Raden noted. That’s why Tommy John surgery is so common: pitchers are overworking themselves. A reduced schedule would give players longer breaks, leading to more healing time.
A shorter MLB season would improve the current schedule in all aspects. It would benefit viewership, which is currently decreasing, and it would make players healthier. Despite this, we still have far too many games. The season must be shortened to bring baseball back to its former glory.
