Ed Puskas: Baseball is broken

Math has never been my strong suit. Maybe it could have been, but my approach to numbers was always that if they didn’t apply to sports, I simply wasn’t interested.

But if the numbers involved baseball, my interest was piqued.

There was a time I could recite the current and career statistics of just about any Cleveland Indians player.

Example: Outfielder Jim Norris — one of my early favorites — played three seasons (1977-79) with the Indians and one (1980) with the Texas Rangers. He also spoke at the Rock Creek Little League banquet in 1978, where one kid peppered him with questions during a Q-and-A.

How many questions? I don’t remember. But it was enough for him to remark that he might need to call on someone else for a change.

When I think of Norris, I think .283. That was his career-best batting average in a season (‘78). He hit two home runs, 27 RBIs and stole 12 bases.

But a deeper dive into the numbers showed he struck out just 20 times that season and that he never struck out more than he walked.

Norris finished with a career .264 average, seven home runs and 110 RBIs in 1,282 at-bats. He walked 173 times and struck out just 128.

It was a different time in baseball. A guy like Norris — 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds with decent speed and little power — would have trouble catching a scout’s eyes today.

Where am I going with this? The baseball I grew up watching is broken. The game’s emphasis on the long ball is annoying.

It really struck me when Bill Buckner — another of my favorite players — died a month ago and I stumbled upon an unbelievable statistic.

Buckner played 22 major league seasons — 2,517 games and 10,037 plate appearances — and never once struck out three times in a game.

In fact, he struck out just 453 times in 9,397 at-bats. Buckner also didn’t walk much (450 times from 1969-90), which means he put the bat on the ball a lot.

Buckner was never a power hitter. He never hit more than the 18 homers he had in ‘86 with the Red Sox. He drove in 100 runs just three times. He just hit line drives. Were it not for injuries, Buckner would easily have the Cooperstown magic number of 3,000 hits. Instead, he finished a vastly underrated career with 2,715 hits and a .289 average, including an NL batting title when he hit .324 with the Chicago Cubs in 1980.

In today’s game, weak hitters like Leonys Martin never shorten their swings with two strikes and if they happen to hit the ball the other way, it’s a happy accident. The hit-and-run is rare today because contact is a lost art. There aren’t more strikeouts today because the pitching is more dominant now. It’s because striking out is no longer frowned upon.

But some of us from the old-school, get-off-my-lawn brigade still think aren’t buying it.

Do people really want to watch utility infielders or fourth outfielders swinging from their heels?

All the resulting strikeouts? Those are numbers I can’t embrace.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.