Bookshelf Review: How to Beat a Broken Game

How to Beat a Broken Game: The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink, by Pedro Moura.

People have been complaining about baseball for as long as there’s been baseball. In doing research for any number of projects, one can look at the archives of local newspapers or The Sporting News or other publications and find amazing similarities in gripes: the games take too long, the players are paid too much, they’re being coddled too much, owners are cheap, etc.

There was a trend in books in the mid-to-late 90s where journalists, broadcasters, and former players took a swipe at baseball, bemoaning what was happening to “our game.” Bottom line: the authors were right, the modern players/owners/fans were wrong.

How to Beat a Broken Game would seem to follow that theme. Pedro Moura, a national baseball writer for FOX Sports and former senior writer at The Athletic as well as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and other print and online outlets, brings up some interesting points. But although earnest in his efforts, he fails to define and determine exactly how the game is “broken.”

Moura follows the Dodgers and a handful of their players in the years immediately before and during the pandemic, when the world — let alone professional sports — was trying to figure out how to keep calm and carry on. He focuses on the franchise and how they scouted, signed, and developed players while at the same time exploring the free agent market, leading up to their World Championship in 2020.

Much of the book looks at the revolution in new metrics such as launch angle and exit velocity for hitters and spin rate for pitchers to evaluate players, Moneyball 2.0 if you will. The original threw out the “conventional wisdom” of the scouting system in favor of stats. Is this how the game is broken?

Ownership is also to blame by fiddling with the way they handle prospects, keeping them in the minors in order to manipulate service time, thereby maximizing control and minimizing salaries as long as possible. Yet the Dodgers still had one the highest payrolls in baseball. Is this how the game is broken?

Then there’s the case of Trevor Bauer, a coveted pitcher who enjoyed success on the field while at the same time coming off as a wretched human being. Accused of sexual crimes, he was put on administrative leave by the Dodgers and MLB, pulling down a substantial salary as charges continued to fly and his case went to court. Just as MLB and front offices looked the other way when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were “saving” baseball with their home run race in 1998 following the disastrous strike in 1994-95, they were doing so again, or at least trying to, if it meant a high-profile star could help them make money. The manner in which the Dodgers and other teams tried to use the “nobody’s perfect” defense can make anyone who’s not 100 percent in the tank for Bauer and other “heroes” reconsider their attachment to the game.

Selfishness and entitlement was exemplified to a different degree by the Dodgers’ Justin Turner in that 2020 Series. Despite all the protocols and living in a postseason “bubble,” he tested positive during the final game and was pulled from the field. Rather than being isolated — and regard the number of excuses over who should have been monitoring him — he came back from the clubhouse to celebrate with his teammates after the final out, at one point removing his mask for a photo op, eschewing common sense in a dire situation. To say he was caught up in the moment is no excuse when millions of people around the world were dying from this disease. Is this how to beat a broken game? By ignoring common sense and propriety?

So do all these ingredients go into the mix of breaking the game? Or do they just join the long list of teeth-gnashing over how baseball was more simple in the good old days?

One final thought: Why is it a “league on the brink?” On the brink of what? And was it just the NL that was experiencing problems? There’s little mention of the Houston Astros — an American League team –cheating scandal. Perhaps a “sport on the brink” might have been a more appropriate subtitle.