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Former baseball great Kenny Lofton isn’t shy about sharing his feelings on the state of the game or his displeasure with the current focus on the long ball.
Lofton, a career .299 hitter with an on-base percentage of .372, believes he got “lost in the shuffle” during his playing days because he was never the home run hitter that others morphed into — and he’s disappointed in the continued direction that the MLB has gone.
“I think with this day and age right now, it’s all about long ball and it’s sad to see these young kids come up and talk about exit velocity, launch angle and all of that,” Lofton told The Post recently in a phone conversation. “The problem is that’s all only talking about home runs. And it’s sad to where if we had a guy in the ’90s talking about, ‘oh, he had 100 strikeouts,’ they’d say, ‘man, you gotta cut that down.’ Now guys are getting 200 strikeouts, but if he gets 30 home runs they say, ‘oh yeah, you’re an All-Star.’
“Man, that is the craziest thing to see. You have that many plate appearances and not putting the ball in play and the opportunity for your team to make things happen on the field. That’s just sad to see.”
Lofton’s passion for the game was evident during the roughly 16-minute conversation with the outfielder, who registered 2,428 hits and 622 stolen bases during his 18-year career that spanned time in Cleveland, Houston, Atlanta, both Chicago teams, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Texas and the Yankees.
He expressed his displeasure with MLB’s attempts to “manipulate” the game and increase base stealing and situational hitting.
“It’s like now you’re trying to manufacture small ball by giving people an incentive to steal,” Lofton said. “So what are you gonna do next? Send a batter to hit a home run by you putting the ball on the tee and just let him swing and see how far he can hit it? I mean, come on people. This game needs to change and go back to way it was. And look at the guys who were having a high average as more important than just the guy hitting home runs.”
Part of that feeling is what drove Lofton to get involved with a burgeoning project called Sluggball, which was co-founded by former Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro and his brother, David, and puts a focus on situational hitting rather than home runs.
The concept has been billed as the baseball version of Topgolf and teams of 4-6 players can register for Sluggball tournaments being held across the United States this year. Those teams go up against each other in situational hitting challenges with no fielding or running involved.
Sluggball will officially launch on May 10 at Trenton Thunder Ballpark in Trenton, N.J. and comes to the New York metropolitan area on Sept. 13 for an event at SIUH Community Park in Staten Island, with the winning team taking home a cash prize during each tournament.
“I think my excitement for Sluggball was the fact that it wasn’t all about home runs. It was about situational hitting and having fun for the game,” Lofton said. “Bringing the game back to the fans, to the people. … It’s like small ball and manufacturing runs and having fun with the game, and that disappeared. So this is something that can show people this is also a part of baseball.
“It shouldn’t get lost and situational hitting shouldn’t get lost in the game of baseball.”
Outside of Sluggball, given the chance by The Post to play MLB commissioner for the day, Lofton said the emphasis needs to start in the lower levels of the sport — high school and minor leagues — that situational hitting or hitting for average was just as important as hitting home runs.
The other part Lofton mentioned was the fact that power numbers are often what get players paid these days — and that’s something that needed to change as well.
“The sad part about it is the kids are not wanting to hit [for] average because that’s not getting them paid,” Lofton said. “So if you start to show an example of a guy who hit .340 — what, that only happened six or seven players throughout the year now that’s hitting .300 — but if you have one of those guys that’ll hit a high average and you start getting him $20 million-$30 million a year, it’s gonna start changing. But right now, only home run guys get that amount of money.”
