Our National Baseball Laboratory

(bumped from fanposts. --eric)

So far as I know, no one in the sabermetric community has ever conducted a true baseball experiment.  All we ever do is observe, analyze, analyze, observe, model, observe, observe, analyze, zzzzzzZZzzZZzz.   

There's a simple reason for it, and it's the misapplication of government funds.  For just a portion of the cost of the $9 billion Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, a group of sabermetricians could buy a representative sample of major league baseball teams, build a compound with its own zip code, and finally get to work.

I'm not the man to engineer these fancy and important experiments, but I do have a few ideas...

Experiment #1: JUICE EM: An eight year trial where each team's 4 hitter is taken on and off steroids in alternating years.  All else same.

Experiment #2: THE MYSTICAL 90 FEET: One complete season in which there are 88 feet between the bases.  See if wild game-killing chaos ensues.

Experiment #3: POSITIONING SWAPPING: A three season run in which all center fielders play short stop, all shorts stops play first, and all second basemen play right.  How hard could it be?

Experiment #4: THE MAXIMUM BATTING AVERAGE: A three year run in which only fastballs down the middle may be thrown, like you used to do in video games sometimes.  A guy could hit, what, .600?  .550?

Experiment #5: DON'T STEP OUT OF THE FRICKIN BATTER'S BOX:  A two season experiment to see if hitters could possibly cope with this injunction.

Experiment #6: DO MANAGER'S MATTER?:  After some initial data collecting every team's manager is fired mid-season and replaced with a baseball scientist and his laptop.  The scientist promises not to intuit things.  Half-season manager, half-season nerd, full season nerd, full season manager, half-season manager, half-season nerd.

Experiment #7:  SECOND TIME THROUGH THE ORDER...:  For two seasons each batter is responsible for his whole half-inning of offense.  Leadoff man bats 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and maybe 4th or 5th, too, until there are three outs.  Running the bases is accomplished entirely through pinch-runners who stand at home plate and book it to first when the ball is in play.  (This is what I thought a pinch-runner did when I was little.)

Experiment #8: COMPLETE GAMES: Teams are warned five years in advance that the league will switch to allowing a max four man rotation and one pitcher per game, except in rare cases.  Another five seasons are given to determine how pitchers are able to make this work, presumably with different deliveries and strategies.

Experiment #9:  CHESS: All nine men must bat once before any man bats twice, but a manager gives no pre-set order and may change the order each time through the rotation on a batter-by-batter basis.  Man, we'd have a lot to talk about on gamethreads.

Experiment #10: THE DEAD BALL ERA:  An all throwback equipment league.  Heavy bats, dead balls, tiny gloves, starchy uniforms.  To control the variables you'd probably want to introduce them one at a time...  

Experiment #11: PITCHERS CAN ACTUALLY HIT: For one season only, anyone on the diamond other than the pitcher is permitted to pitch to the opposing team's pitcher.  See if that's any more fun.

Experiment #12: DEFENSIVE ALIGNMENTS:  The aforementioned baseball scientist spends three seasons fine-tuning defensive alignments for each individual batter faced.  Time is called before every at-bat and the nerd may decide to, say, play a four man outfield, or put his center fielder in left, or play a truly laughable shift, etc., to try to gain that slight advantage.  Like Disco Hayes was wondering about...

Experiment #13:  GRISSION: Huh, dunno.  What to do here?

Well, there are some ideas to start out with.  Most are not particularly scientific.  You could do a lot of more fruitful things, of course, introducing far tinier variables and seeing how they play out over long amounts of time with great big sample sizes.

Anyway, got anything you'd try in our limitless lab?