Major League Baseball, sometimes despite its best efforts, is in the best place that it’s been in decades.
Attendance has grown each year for the past several seasons, with some teams, like the White Sox, Blue Jays and Mariners seeing huge increases in 2026. Ratings are up, with the 2025 World Series being the most watched domestically since 2017 and Game 7 drawing a whopping 51 million viewers between the US, Canada and Japan.
National television broadcasts have seen significant increases, pace-of-play is up, the new ABS challenge system has been mostly well-received and small market teams are outperforming big spending clubs through the first half of the season, undermining parity concerns.
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Highlight reels are dominated by exceptional athletes doing exceptional things. Jacob Misiorowski hit 105 mph as a starting pitcher. Shohei Ohtani is dominating as a hitter and a pitcher, something virtually unprecedented over such a lengthy time frame. Kyle Schwarber is threatening home run records, even as pitching continues to improve. Mason Miller has been virtually unhittable. Young stars in small markets, like Jackson Chourio, Konnor Griffin, Bobby Witt Jr., Jackson Merrill, Kevin McGonigle, Colt Emerson and Samuel Basallo, are locked up for most of their primes, ensuring fans can go years without worrying over free agency.
But if you ask football commentator Kirk Herbstreit, baseball is dying. Because there aren’t enough athletes, apparently.
In response to a complaint from former Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, Herbstreit posted a lengthy diatribe on X completely misunderstanding the modern game.
“THANK YOU!!!!! Where did the athletic ability go?,” he said. “Clutch hitting in the 8th and 9th inning? Starting pitching that goes 8 or 9 innings? Base stealing-hell just good base running and SPEED?!? Sac bunts-moving runners over late in a game? Where’s Tony Gwynn? Rod Carew? Wade Boggs? Ichiro? Those guys wouldn’t exist in today’s ridiculous HR or K ‘launch angle’ game! The game has been dying with the youth of America for YEARS and now is losing the core fanbase as well with this ridiculous product we’ve had to digest for the last 7-10 years. Bring back Small Ball and athleticism…this s*** dreadful!!!”
There’s just one problem; virtually all of this is wrong.
Athleticism in baseball has never been higher, which is why you see pitchers like Misiorowski and Mason Miller sitting well over 100 mph. And why hitters are still able to be successful when facing an average fastball velocity that’s steadily increased year-over-year.
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As recently as 2008, average fastball velocity was just 90.4 mph. Today? It’s roughly 95mph. That increase is because pitchers have become more athletic thanks to improvements in training, nutrition, and biomechanical development. It’s harder to hit now than it’s ever been, yet Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and others have had historically successful offensive seasons. So that’s wrong.
Pitchers don’t go eight or nine innings because, over time, after analyzing years of data, it became clear that as pitchers tire and face the same hitters more times, they become less effective. That’s regardless of their pitch mix, velocities, or athletic ability. The “third time through the order penalty” is very real, and has always been real, as hitters adjust to what they see, and front offices and managers realized that their best chance of winning games was to bring in fresh relievers instead of letting exhausted pitchers continue to prove some sort of point.
Despite catchers specifically trying to optimize “pop times,” stolen bases are also up. In 2024, there were 3,617 stolen bases league-wide. The most in any year during the 1980s was 3,585. But, to be fair, slightly larger bases have helped. Teams, though, have again realized that stolen bases are only valuable if you don’t get caught. Take 1986, for example. That season, there were 3,312 stolen bases and 1,620 runners caught stealing. That’s an atrocious 67% success rate. In 2024, the success rate was 80%. Teams in the 1980s gave away outs at an astonishing rate.
Herbstreit is also wrong about the 1980s stars, too. Those types of players are still enormously valuable because many of their skills are always valuable. Boggs’ career on base percentage is .415. Gwynn had a .388 OBP and .459 career slugging percentage. That’s an .847 OPS, over his entire career, which would put Gwynn ahead of Witt Jr., Pete Alonso, Cody Bellinger, Ketel Marte and Elly De La Cruz this season. Along with many other stars. Does Herbstreit think a player who hit .370/.447/.511 with 56 stolen bases, as Gwynn did in 1987, wouldn’t have a job in 2026? Because they absolutely would. They’d probably win an MVP, in fact.
The issue is that hitting now is harder than it’s ever been because pitchers are better than they’ve ever been. And teams have realized that home runs are more valuable than other types of hits because they guarantee that runs score. Sacrificing some singles is worth it because home runs create more runs.
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In 1989, the time period Herbstreit lionizes, the league averaged 8.26 runs per game. Thus far in 2026, the league is averaging 9 runs per game. So scoring is up, athleticism is up, prior era stars would still be valuable today, small ball doesn’t lead to more runs and baseball is not losing fans, but gaining them. Other than that, he nailed it.
Ironically, the product that’s actually tough to watch is the modern NFL, which Herbstreit broadcasts. Quarterbacks are protected to an absurd degree, to the point that late-hit penalties on Patrick Mahomes have become a running joke among fans. There’s 10-11 minutes of in-game action over a 185-190 minute broadcast. Teams averaged 353 yards per game in 2015. In 2025? Just 326.6. Why doesn’t the NFL lose fans? Gambling.
Herbstreit going full “old man yells at cloud” is one thing, but do it at the NFL. Nobody ever will, though, because that league is somehow above criticism despite its clear and obvious decline in excitement.
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