Tom Verducci took a look back at another delayed season in MLB history. In 1981, the league was fraught with distrust between players and owners which led to the players holding out until August with a strike.
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00:00When Major League Baseball returns, who will have the upper hand? The pitchers or the hitters?
00:12Be prepared to hear a lot of opinions on that subject, but here's the truth. We just don't
00:19know. Go back to 1981, which is probably the most analogous situation to what we have this
00:25year. Players, because of the strike, were out for two months and they came back in August.
00:31What happened to run scoring? Well, they scored 8.19 runs per game in August. The regular season
00:38average in 81? 8.00. So runs went up two percent. That's essentially within the margin of error,
00:48no change. Now here's one difference. Back in 1981, they played with the same 25-man rosters
00:55even after being out for two months. This year, we're likely to see 30-man rosters and 20-man
01:02taxi squads. So that means you're liable to see even more pitching changes than we normally see
01:09these days in Major League Baseball. Bottom line, we just don't know.