Our guy Tom Tango puts up a fascinating Twitterex Poll:
You can EASILY reduce the number of HR and increase the number of 2B+3B by raising fence heights across the board to be a min 12+ feet
This would eliminate all the HR-saving catches
What do you think?
— Tangotiger 🍁 (@tangotiger)
8:31 PM • May 28, 2025
Here’s what I think is so interesting about it: Many of us around baseball TALK about how we would love to see the game become more well-rounded — more doubles, more triples, fewer home runs, more action, let’s go!
But when you put it in stark terms — hey, you want more doubles and fewer home runs, all you have to do is raise the fences — people suddenly go “No, wait, I LIKE home runs.”
This gets to the heart, I think, of baseball’s challenge to find the right balance. In football, the goal is always more offense. Always. More touchdowns. More big plays. Sure, some football fans appreciate a good defensive struggle, but the lifeblood of the game is the big play, the dazzling catch, the head-spinning run, the two-minute drive. I suppose the football mavens could overshoot and make it too easy to score, but it hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Virtually every football rule for the last 50 years has sparked more offense, and the fans’ hunger for points seems pretty insatiable.
This is somewhat true for basketball, too. Yes, a lot of people are just OVER the three-point shot because it has become too ubiquitous, but in general, basketball fans can’t get enough scoring, enough triple-doubles, enough 40-point games, enough action.
But baseball must find the balance.
That’s why I say, “Baseball is the best it has been and the best it will ever be when you are 10 years old.” I was 10 years old in 1977, when ballplayers were rail-thin, and home runs were events, and Rod Carew hit .388, and George Foster absolutely blew our minds by hitting 52 home runs. I was 10 years old when starters finished what they started, and the best won 20 games, and you had to be Nolan Ryan to strike out a batter an inning. That’s my baseline. That’s my ideal version of the game. I can’t help it.
If I turned 10 in 1967 or 1987 or 2017, I’d feel differently, I’m sure.
So yeah, I think the game has too many home runs. And yeah, I want to see more doubles and triples. And yeah, I would like to see the incentives change so that hitters try harder to put the ball in play.
But … when I saw Tango’s poll about raising the fences, I thought: No, I don’t want that. OK, it might balance the game a bit more. It might even make baseball (on a surface level) look more like it did in 1977. But to artificially reduce homers? To just take away that sound, that moment of awe,* that glorious feeling of seeing your hometown guy run around the bases? Heck no! Who wants that?
*One flaw in Tango’s reasoning, I must say, is that while yes raising the fences takes away home runs and adds extra-base hits, it doesn’t do ANYTHING for the game in the aggregate. I think when people say they’d like to see more doubles and triples, I don’t think they mean "at the cost of home runs.” I think they mean they want to see MORE BALLS HIT INTO GAPS. They’re saying that they want to see the league hit better than .244. They’re saying they want to see more balls in play.
Also, there’s something phony about it. I’m all for Baseball changing rules to keep the game from spiraling — I don’t think they do that enough — but in the end, it’s up to the hitters to stop striking out so much and pitchers to stop giving up so many homers.
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