Within the existential crisis confronting Major League Baseball over the way the modern game is played, there was always one saving grace. If the games were going to feature more pitches, more strikeouts, more walks, more pitching changes, and more all-or-nothing swings but fewer balls in play than at any time in the game’s history – all of that could be tolerated, from a fan-experience perspective, as long as there were also tons of home runs.
You could take away bits of action from the margins of the game, as long as the ultimate action – the ball flying over the fence at ever-increasing rates – was the payoff.