All-Star Game is a good time to evaluate MLB problems. And his problems are manageable.

To see the present more clearly, it is helpful to have a time machine that will take you back nearly half a century to discover what the past can teach

to. First in Washington in 49 years, was given to us at the perfect time to understand the current state of the MLB – its problems and, just as importantly, its size and scope.

The radical perspective of 1969 – when baseball was in true crisis – until 2018, when the game has troublesome faults but some insoluble problems, gives us a chance to unload our bucket of decimal points, breathe and to do what the All-Star games were meant for: Enjoy the sport a little more, Looking back, it's a shock to realize what a dangerous sporting baseball is the last time the Midsummer Clbadic was in DC The previous season, the average MLB game only produced 6.84 races – far below the century-long average sport of almost exactly nine r a game. MLB came to Washington DC in the process of To pull out his hair and look for solutions, such as lowering the mound or creating the designated hitter.

[2018 MLB All-Star Game live updates: Max Scherzer starts for the NL at Nationals Park]

Beneath the surface, MLB, another seven years after the Free Agency Revolution, was greedily preparing for a 25-year Labor War. In 1969, young Johnny Bench had already earned a nod and won a Gold Glove; he got an increase from $ 11,000 to $ 23,500. The same year, Hank Aaron, who started the season with 510 homers, earned $ 92,500

It's a sick sport with a dull product for sale and angry employees.

In 2018, baseball is far from traumatized. Considered across large swathes of time, there are probably only a few things that the sport will not cure by its own evolution and its own adjustments.

Baseball has always been criticized more than any other American sport. That's because baseball – its fans, players and media – likes to criticize itself. Everyone stacks up. Only baseball can turn too many races into "crisis" while football turns too many head injuries into "worry".

If Max Scherzer is the main problem of baseball, then what is the hurry to find a solution? this is wrong with baseball today – too many battleshoots, too few shots, not enough action games that require athletic defense and home batters – can be seen in their extreme form when Scherzer picks up the mound, as he did on Tuesday in the first round of the Star Match

No pitcher starting from the NL hits as many batters (12.2 by nine innings) or removes the batting averages ( .179) as well as Mad Max. No-hitters (two) and a 20-game rematch were his highlights with the Nationals – low-touch matches that, it should be noted, have not bothered Washington fans. Those who decry too many puffs and too many home runs have a valid aesthetic criticism. But they tend to forget that every homer and every strikeout make fans of a team do a crazy thing – they rejoice.

Scherzer's only flaw is worth having a mechanical glitch – what he calls "do not stay on top of the ball" as he releases it – his throws flatten, rather than diving, and he's giving up enough circuits that his ERA since joining the Nationals in 2015 is 2.70 .When Scherzer is down, he's almost always excellent, but the tension in his debut is between his mastery of the strikeout against his vulnerability to national circuits.

An exciting and exciting baseball depends on many factors. But it matters more than all the others: How many points are scored?

On the whole of the history of baseball history, the average remained very close to nine per game.Nobody can prove that it is the "good" or the best number.But when a sport flourishes at the highest level for almost 150 years, so its long-term standards need to do something It's good for customers to come back.

[Baseball commissioner, union chief clash over free agency, rules changes]

This year, despite all the badytical anguish – and my first dive in April 1978 in the Washington Post with Total Average – the AL scored 8.88 points per game while the NL, without the DH , averages 8.78.

This fact does not mean that baseball is close to an ideal balance. . This is not it. But, at least for the moment, the fact that the average game score is 5-4 probably means that the intensity of our panic attacks should be modulated.

There has never been a moment in the last 50 years when MLB was not fighting some aspects of aesthetic balance. Sometimes a league becomes a mess. In the 1980s, the Netherlands had so many turf pitches, with doubles and triples jumping on the walls, that the teams needed fast field players, which led to more stolen bases and fewer circuits. This created the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985, which flew 314 bases and won the pennant while only touching 87 circuits. The LN, crazy for speed, sank just eight points per game, while the AL, with older grbad, kept its balance.

When we forget – just ten years ago, sport makes a joke, with running records being broken by cheaters. This is a problem. What we have now is rather a period of adjustment.

More modern pitchers, with an emphasis on building the core strength and studying biomechanics, are more difficult to imagine than Willie Mays. In Sunday's game Futures, 18-year-old right-handed Hunter Greene, second overall pick in the 2017 Cincinnati Reds draft, shot 19 fast balls between 100 and 103 mph.

Yet, 21-year-old Luis Basabe shot 102-mph pitch halfway up the right bleachers. Nobody in the major leagues has reached a field as fast for a home race this year. The next hitter tattooed another 102 mph fastball in the left field for just one point.

"It was 102 – inside." And he lit. "Tilt my cap to this guy," said Greene, literally raising his hat. "It was very impressive."

[Commissioner Rob Manfred: MLB intends to ‘be bold’ in managing sport’s changes]

Each generation of hitters learns to manage their own generation of pitchers. Watch Juan Soto, 19, of the Nats, stifle and smear his position with two strikes to avoid strikes on strike and beat the shifts. Carter Kieboom, 20, watched Soto's success and developed his own two-step approach. "You get two swings" A ", so you fight," said Kieboom.

In 1968, the EER of the overall sport was 2.98. At the time of the 1969 All-Star Game, MLB reduced the mound by 15 inches to 10. According to Jim Palmer, a member of the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame, most throwers lost two to three miles per hour behind schedule. their fastball. "The tilt of all the breakout locations was less severe.Every pitcher was five inches shorter and less frightened – in the eyes of a batter.

Baseball in its ideal state – and I always look in vain for the season, just a year, when this perfect balance exists – would have fewer puffs, more simple, more defensive chances and hitters able to cope with shifts without forgetting that the shots extra goal win games, but all balls are scraps

Come back in another 49 years Bet baseball is still there A young fan, who was in the stands Tuesday night, can tell everyone how everyone these numbers from 2018 have worked.It probably will not conclude that Max Scherzer ruined baseball.

For more info by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.