WASHINGTON — The world’s greatest baseball players gathered at Nationals Park Tuesday for the All-Star Game, the annual midsummer celebration. But behind all the ceremony, Major League Baseball is struggling to process just how those players are doing their jobs, and stinging from a lack of cooperation in solving the problems facing the sport.
The convergence of power pitchers, power hitters and analytics has slowed the game, with strikeout rates at an all-time high and batting averages at a 46-year low. Yet with the players’ association still furious about the slow pace of last winter’s free agent market, the sides have held no substantive talks on how — or if — to modify the on-field product.