Great read. Personally I am not a fan of the strikeout obsession or the fact that hitters don't seem to care if they strikeout anymore. The ball being in play and starting pitchers needing to figure out how to navigate around a line up 3 or 4 times is baseball to me.

I do think the rules changes last year helped put more emphasis on pace and running and contact but optimizing for the best possible result (strike out on pithers side and home run on batters side) does not always make the most entertaining game. Just like if we were all on SN every day trying to optimize for the most zaps and rewards, would that make for a better or worse experience overall? I would argue worse.

But baseball is an industry and there is big money involved not a few thousand sats here or there so I get why everyone is optimizing.