There are two outs in the bottom of the first inning and the manager has already seen enough. No runs have crossed the plate but bases are loaded and every metric and analytic and advanced statistic and Ouija Board and lucky rabbit’s foot says “go get this guy” and bring in a lefthander. And so that’s what he does.

Managers haven’t listened to their hearts or gone with their gut feeling since about 2014 … now they go strictly by The Book. General managers and mathematicians and experts on theoretical probability write The Book and every manager in Major League Baseball is essentially legally-obligated to memorize it, quote it chapter and verse and do exactly what it says in any one of dozens of baseball situations that call for extra-shrewd strategery.

The Book tells managers when to switch pitchers, when to put on the shift and the exact juxtaposition to second base where the shortstop should line up when the shift’s on against a lefthanded power hitter batting .236. The Book is some serious shit.

The Book doesn’t have a chapter on bunting or executing the hit-and-run; you won’t find any words in it about sacrificing or the double steal or how to teach a knucklehead how to throw a knuckleball. But there are 500 pages about launch angles (they’re virtual pages) and exit velocity and there’s a numeric matrix that if plotted on paper would cover the state Texas that describes the likelihood of a lefthanded pitcher getting out a righthanded batter when throwing a three-and-one four-seam fastball on a Thursday night at Coors Field in the third week of April.

Serious shit indeed. So serious in fact that this book of numbers and fractional comparisons and acronyms that don’t stand for anything you used to write on a scorecard, essentially governs every action taken in every MLB game here in the year 2025.

The only reason there’s something called a manager around at all is that you still need a person to walk out to the pitcher’s mound, take the ball from the pitcher and then pat him on the ass (it takes a certain human touch because you have to pretend that the pitcher gave a gutty little performance even though he gave up gopher balls to the first three batters he faced).

In 2025, there’s still a twenty-five man roster but only eight of them are position players. The thing that used to be known as the pinch hitter went the way of the Dodo Bird about five years ago. Yep, The Book now says teams need tons of pitchers. Teams decided that pitchers are more valuable than position players. Shit, most pinch hitters strike out anyway, so if you need a batsman in a pinch, just push one of your extra pitchers up there.

Another thing’s that changed in baseball in 2025 is that every pitch that is thrown is dictated by The Book. You know all that rigamarole of pitchers shaking off catchers? It’s all for show. All those signs the catcher wig-wags out to the pitcher using fingernails painted different colors? A ruse. Turns out catchers just like touching their athletic cups and wiggling their fingers around their crotch. The Book dictates every pitch based on a multi-dimensional algorithm that baffles most NASA scientists.

There’s no such thing as a “starting” pitcher in 2025. Of course, someone has to start the game, but it’s all decided by The Book and the matchups and the weather conditions and by which pitcher has the best stats against the opposing hitters he will face in the first inning. Even if he pitches well, the guy that starts the first inning usually won’t last long because, with seventeen pitchers on the team, The Book says you should use fifteen or so of them every game.

So The Book is completely obliterating the other book that baseball and its fans have cherished for so long – the record book. With no more starting pitchers, there are no more pitchers with twenty-win seasons; and no one will ever again come close to a 300-win career – two measurements that were once the gold-standard for hall-of-fame-worthy pitchers.

Of course, a player’s batting average is no longer of any importance either. The Book says its okay to bat .197 if you hit enough home runs and have other “measurables” like a big OPS and a great LMNOP (I made that one up). It totally reshapes how we once defined the best baseball players, that is, the pitchers with the most wins and the hitters with the best batting average. The Book essentially turns baseball into a game of home runs and strikeouts.

♦

In July 1859, Amherst played Williams in the first intercollegiate baseball game. Amherst won 73 to 32. I wonder what The Fuckin’ Book would say about the pitching in that game? A hundred runs in one game … Sounds like they were having a good time playing baseball way before the invention of The Book.

Photo on Best Running