Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic <\/p>\n
Former baseball great Kenny Lofton isn\u2019t shy about sharing his feelings on the state of the game or his displeasure with the current focus on the long ball.<\/p>\n
Lofton, a career .299 hitter with an on-base percentage of .372, believes he got \u201clost in the shuffle\u201d during his playing days because he was never the home run hitter that others morphed into \u2014 and he\u2019s disappointed in the continued direction that the MLB has gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think with this day and age right now, it\u2019s all about long ball and it\u2019s sad to see these young kids come up and talk about exit velocity, launch angle and all of that,\u201d Lofton told The Post recently in a phone conversation. \u201cThe problem is that\u2019s all only talking about home runs. And it\u2019s sad to where if we had a guy in the \u201990s talking about, \u2018oh, he had 100 strikeouts,\u2019 they\u2019d say, \u2018man, you gotta cut that down.\u2019 Now guys are getting 200 strikeouts, but if he gets 30 home runs they say, \u2018oh yeah, you\u2019re an All-Star.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, 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\u2019s just sad to see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lofton\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
He expressed his displeasure with MLB\u2019s attempts to \u201cmanipulate\u201d the game and increase base stealing and situational hitting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like now you\u2019re trying to manufacture small ball by giving people an incentive to steal,\u201d Lofton said. \u201cSo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my excitement for Sluggball was the fact that it wasn\u2019t all about home runs. It was about situational hitting and having fun for the game,\u201d Lofton said. \u201cBringing the game back to the fans, to the people. \u2026 It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t get lost and situational hitting shouldn\u2019t get lost in the game of baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 high school and minor leagues \u2014 that situational hitting or hitting for average was just as important as hitting home runs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other part Lofton mentioned was the fact that power numbers are often what get players paid these days \u2014\u00a0and that\u2019s something that needed to change as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sad part about it is the kids are not wanting to hit [for] average because that\u2019s not getting them paid,\u201d Lofton said. \u201cSo if you start to show an example of a guy who hit .340 \u2014 what, that only happened six or seven players throughout the year now that\u2019s hitting .300 \u2014 but if you have one of those guys that\u2019ll hit a high average and you start getting him $20 million-$30 million a year, it\u2019s gonna start changing. But right now, only home run guys get that amount of money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Former baseball great Kenny Lofton isn\u2019t 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 \u201clost in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246854,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246852\/revisions\/246854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}