154 or Bust

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Too many injuries. Too many position players pitching. Too many minor league pitchers not taught how to get through five innings in a game.

Too many hitters not understanding the importance of making contact. Too many strikeouts, ie: Yankees and Braves “hitters’’ struck out 26 times on Friday night at Yankee Stadium’s Strikefest and then 23 times on Sunday in the Braves’ 2-1 win.

Too many postseason teams in the bloated playoffs. Too many postseason series. Too many pitchers not understanding the importance of pitching to contact. Too many players not understanding how to play the game. Too many replays. Too many ABS challenges. Too many gambling advertisements. Too many cold nights with the early starting season – next March 24, 2027, if there is a season. And too many World Series ending in November, nine to be exact, including Game 7 of the Dodgers and Blue Jays World Series last year.

The first World Series I really paid attention to was in 1960, the seven game classic between the Pirates and the Yankees that ended with Bill Mazeroski’s legendary home run at 3:36 pm local time on October 13. How things have changed. Game 1 of the NLCS was played last October 13. The World Series did not start until October 24th, lucky there was the Blue Jays’ dome in Toronto and the good weather of Southern California for the Dodgers.

Too many Nerds, not enough real coaching and real scouting. Too many front offices with the exact same game plan.

“They run off the same blueprint,’’ one of the game’s top evaluators told BallNine. “Roster flexibility. Super utility players and optional relief pitchers. Teams have plenty of Jack of All Trades who are Masters of None. Meanwhile, the best teams had about seven guys where their names were written in the same spot in the lineup every day for about 150 games a year.’’

True dat.

The baseball season needs to be shorter. It is time to ditch the 162-game schedule and go back to the 154-game schedule that MLB used from 1904 through 1960.

All of the above is a brief description of what Major League Baseball has become in 2026. The product has suffered greatly.

And it is only going to get worse with coming expansion, most likely to Nashville and Salt Lake City. The owners with exorbitant expansion fees will get much richer. Are you ready for about 70 more minor leaguers being promoted to the major leagues where they need to be developed into major league players? Are you ready for two new entire pitching staffs to be developed at the major league level? Are you ready for the constant shuttling of relief pitchers up and down.

I’m not. And neither is our talent evaluator.

Here is what these teams fail to learn when they treat so many players like widgets.

“Those pitchers get so pissed off because of every time they get optioned, every time, they pitch two innings in a big-league game they get sent back down, they never get in a head space where they can be as good as they can be. It used to be you get to the big leagues, and you are a bleeping big leaguer. Not a shuttle bleeping pitcher. You have to pack your whole life up.’’

That is such a great baseball point made by a baseball man who understands what it takes and what it feels like, not some Ivy Leaguer who has no clue. “They don’t treat them like human beings,’’ our man said.

Again, take all this into account and there is no way out for baseball as the product continues to get worse. But here at BallNine we don’t just complain, we offer solutions, and I am about to say something I never thought I would say.

The baseball season needs to be shorter. It is time to ditch the 162-game schedule and go back to the 154-game schedule that MLB used from 1904 through 1960.

In 1960, the Yankees finished on top of the AL with a 97-57 mark. The Pirates won the NL pennant with a 95-69 record. That was the last season both leagues played 154 games.

The next season, 1961, the American League added two new teams, the Los Angeles Angels, who still stink, and the expansion version of the Washington Senators, a team of misfits who replaced the original Senators who had moved to Minnesota to become the Twins. The AL went to the 162-game schedule, that was the year with all the talk of an asterisk because Roger Maris with 61 home runs broke Babe Ruth’s home run record of 60 home runs in that expanded schedule. Roger, a two-time MVP, played in 161 games and also led in RBI (141) and runs scored (132). The Yankees finished first in the AL with 109 wins and 53 losses while the Reds won the NL pennant with a 93-61 mark.

The following season, 1962, was bonkers as the Yankees again won the AL pennant with a 96-66 record and the San Francisco Giants won the NL pennant with a 103-62 mark, and that meant they played 165 games. The Dodgers and Giants finished tied and a final best-of-three playoff series was added with the Giants winning two of the three games with all events in the series added to regular season statistics.

Since that season it has been 162 games, except for strike seasons and the antics of 2020, go ask Dr. Fauci. He might take the fifth.

The reason I am agreeing to switch back to a 154-game season is because there is just so much bad baseball being played.

Less is more.

The fact that so many position players are winding up pitching in so many games is proof enough the season is too long, plus all the injuries, plus everything mentioned above.

And back when they began that 162-game schedule, of course, there were not multiple layers of playoffs. There was one winner in the AL and one in the NL and if two teams happened to tie at the end of 162, there was a best of three playoffs.

Now it is a slog. Especially during the never-ending season.

Now there is too much of everything thanks to Rob Manfred and his minions, especially crappy playoff teams. Just look at the AL Central where there is only one team barely above .500, the Chicago White Sox. The Twins, Guardians and Tigers are all under .500 but are in the mix in the lowering of the bar AL Central. Playoff fever! Catch it! The pathetic Mets just went into Cleveland and swept the team that used to be known as the Indians in a three-game series, outscoring the Guardians, 25-13. The Mets are 25th in batting average at .235 but those in-the-mix Guardians are even worse at 27th, batting .233.

Yes, much too low of team batting averages is yet another reason to drop some games. I can live with a few less strikeouts in my life. If there was more contact and if games were more exciting – remember hit and runs, real stolen bases, no Fake Runners in extra innings, real baseball strategy – I would not push for fewer games.

Quite a product there, Manfred & Nerds.

With all these extra layers of what I call the “Oprah” playoffs: “You get a playoff team! You get a playoff team! And you get a playoff team!” – starting pitchers who can’t go five innings are everywhere and will have to make more and more starts. Spare me. Make it make sense, and this goes directly back to the Nerds as well, because as I have been chronicling here for years, pitchers are no longer challenged in the minors to learn how to pitch deep into games. They are on a once a week starting schedule in the minors and their number of pitches are closely monitored. So, they wind up getting to the majors and suddenly they find themselves starting every five days. They can’t do it. A’s manager Mark Kotsay has publicly addressed the problem and good for him.

“There is a learning curve for these young starters,’’ he said. “How to set up hitters, how to finish off hitters. They get in that moment, whether it’s lack of execution or a pitch selection.’’

In other words, they don’t know how to pitch … something that Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and especially Tim Hudson learned how to do from proper coaching and development — but they were barely mentioned in Moneyball. Moneyball spawned the analytic revolution, a revolution that has tossed aside real coaching and real development.

These 2026 Athletics, by the way, are 29th in ERA at 5.42 and 29th in starter’s ERA at 5.30. The only team worse is the Rockies, now run by Mr. Original Moneyball Paul DePodesta, basically the Peter Brand character in Moneyball.

DePodesta, though, just got to the Rockies as president of baseball operations in November, so you cannot hold his feet to the fire for that longterm Colorado problem. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

The Tigers are No. 1 in starter’s ERA at 3.35 so naturally in a Nerd move they traded their top two starters Tarik Skubal (Dodgers) and Casey Mize (Padres).

The bottom line is that there are way too many bad teams in baseball and pitchers who no longer even consider, as they said in Field of Dreams, to “Go the distance.’’

It is time to shorten the distance.

Baseball needs to go back to a 154-game schedule. History needs to repeat itself. Time for 154 games or bust.