The biggest difference between the notariety that players had in the 90s vs. now is that people stopped caring about baseball stats and awards. The NFL, NBA, and MLB all had their own way in terms of how they have traditionally marketed their players to a national audience. The NFL markets the league because at the end of the day NFL schedule is the biggest reason for its success because it allows people to come together for gatherings and have events. It makes it a convenient sport to gamble on and it brings casuals to its fantasy games more than any other sport because the commitment isn't as big. The NFL has stars but their a byproduct of a league thats popular due to its scheduling format. The NBA has always been star driven and not just because of the fact that they get the most endorsements. The NBA is star driven because the individual player is held accountable for winning championships and their pursuit of rings are integral to their legacies and creates national narratives. MLB was start driven but in a different way than the NBA has been. Baseball players gained notariety based on their stats. Back in the day part of the national conversation during the baseball season was who would win the mvp (which used to be the most prestigious mvp in all of sports) who would win the batting title, the cy young, who lead the league in stolen bases and in hits. The sports media today stopped having those conversations and discussing baseball stats has gotten lost in the culture. I think this happened for three particular reasons:
1. The death of newspapers: Back in the day people depended largely on newspapers to get their stats and if you turned the page in the stats section you'd be well briefed on who was leading MLB in all the key stats and that kept you up to date with what was going on. Yea you can get these stats online but there's a big difference between getting stats online vs. in newspapers. When you look for stats online you really have to go and look for the stats meaning their was an initial interest in finding the stats. With newspapers you may not have been looking for stats but in the course of turning pages you stumble on the stats page and see whats going on and I think that makes a big difference in terms of providing a more mainstream audience with awareness about what players are doing in the league.
2. The sabermetrics movement: I'm not anti-sabermetrics but I think that the sabermetrics movement has done a lot to kill the discussions on statistical debates in baseball. Even though there are more stats today than ever before, only a niche audience actually knows what some of these new sabermetric stats mean. In turn, the sabermetrics movement has rendered all these old stats that mainstream audience were familiar with like RBI's and batting average as insignificant. Its also lessened the value of the stolen base which was another stat people were familiar with.
3. The steroid era: The aftermath of the steroid era caused baseball's audience and the general sport's media to look at any statistical accomplishment since then with a grain of salt. Because of the skepticism towards the league, a lot of the general sport's media I felt didn't give certain statistical accomplishments the same level of coverage because people didn't know whether to look at anything as a legitimate accomplishment anymore. I first began to notice this in 2012 when Miguel Cabrera hit for the triple crown and Mike Trout had the best statistical first year possibly of all time and no coverage was given. Even though I think PED"s aren't the big issue in the MLB anymore I feel that the general sport media has never gone back towards fully convering and giving the credit that some of these young players are doing today because the culture of discussing statistics in the sport has faded.
I'd do two things to make stats matter in baseball:
1. Expand awareness of sabermetrics stats: I hope old school stats like batting average and rbi's make a come back cuz I think they still have significance in the game but these sabermetric stats also have value so baseball should try to make some of these new stats part of the mainstream culture. They should showcase stuff like WAR, FIP, and other new age stats in the graphics when players step up to the plate. Right now they still display batting average, rbis, and home runs even though the sport stop valuing two out of those three stats years ago.
2. One rule in each league: More than likely it'd be the DH in both leagues since the union isn't gonna give that up. The main reason why I would go to one rule is because I think league should stop giving a personal award to a player in each league and instead just have one person in either league mvp, cy young, batting champ, gold glove etc. This would mean that you'd have all the best players competing for the individual awards each year. At this present time Bryce Harper and Mike Trout can't compete for an mvp award cuz their in different leagues. This is stupid. Get all the biggest stars in your sport to compete and you spark more debate about who actually means more to their team.
