Kenny Lofton is disturbed with how baseball has changed and heres his plan to fix it

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....