Theo Epstein: Baseball “is the greatest game in the world, … but there are some threats to it because of the way the game is evolving, and I take some responsibility for that because the executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game.”
I think Theo is correct, as well I might, because I wrote an essay about this very thing a couple of years ago. After half a century of being a pretty serious baseball fan, I haven’t watched a game since I wrote that essay — and, to my own ongoing surprise and puzzlement, I haven’t missed baseball at all.