Major League Baseball will hold its second annual Players’ Weekend this weekend in hopes of marketing their product to a wider-ranging audience.
From Aug. 23 to 26, players will have the opportunity to wear nickname jerseys and use custom-painted apparel like cleats, bats, and armbands. Essentially, it’s an opportunity for baseball players to show off more of their personality than usual. If this is the MLB’s attempt to reach younger fans because their average fan is more than 55 years old, it is certainly a start. However, more can be done to keep it going.
The nickname jerseys are certainly appealing because then fans get to hear about why each player chose their name; some of the vibrant bats, cleats, and promotion of the weekend can’t hurt either. That doesn’t mean it’s a cure-all by any means, but they deserve credit for trying.
The length of games and lapses of inactivity are still a major issue when it comes to attracting fans as opposed to faster-paced games like basketball and soccer. After all, players are working the count more than ever, and the average game is now 3 hours and 4 minutes. Forty years ago, it was 2 hours, 30 minutes. A pitch clock could help this cause, giving pitchers 20 seconds between pitches and if they don’t throw one, then it counts as a ball. This has been modestly effective in the Minor Leagues; in 2015, the New York Times reported that among the five Double-A and Triple-A leagues it was used in, games were 11.2 minutes shorter than before. Speaking of which, a slight expansion of the strike zone might not hurt either, forcing players to swing at more pitches.
Although eliminating the shift often comes up as an idea to improve the game, there’s no good reason for it. If fielders aren’t allowed to shift to a particular batter, then the teams will get more hits and the games will take longer. Plus, it’s hard to regulate exactly where fielders can stand and adding that to the game takes away from the value of a good manager versus a not-so-good one.
However, the league could certainly lift its image by doing a better job dealing with domestic violence issues. After all, in a JD Power poll survey conducted last year, 24 percent of respondents who said they watched less NFL games now than they did before said the NFL’s off-the-field image problem was the reason why and one of those problems was the league’s inaction on domestic violence. Come October, two of the top American League teams, the New York Yankees (Aroldis Chapman) and Houston Astros (Roberto Osuna), will have domestic abusers as their closers. Is that a family-friendly image? No. A zero tolerance policy to that sort of thing might put the league in better public standing.
There’s also a case to be made that if they want the best possible on-field product to entertain fans, they should stop worrying about performance-enhancing drug use. Oh yeah, and the prospect of a player being suspended for marijuana use is incredibly stupid. Sorry.
Online, eliminating some of the league’s restrictions could not hurt either. Major League Baseball has been known to take down viral videos of highlights from fan accounts on social media whereas NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has encouraged fans to do so, and sees it as a way to grow his league’s image. Plus, in an era of cord-cutting, the MLB’s blackout policy does not make a whole lot of sense. If a New Englander were to buy their MLB.tv package, they could watch any game except Boston Red Sox games. There are people who want to watch their hometown team without paying for cable. Maybe if the league allowed fans to watch their favorite team without having to also pay for MSNBC, CNN, and other channels they don’t care about, there would be more viewers.
There’s only so many times the MLB can do Players’ Weekend before it loses some luster. At some point, they must start looking at how they can make the sport of baseball more appealing for fans every game, not just for one weekend. If they do, listening to their fans for ideas will be key.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelancer writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
