NEW YORK — Wade Miley hears the talk about lifting the bottom of the strike zone in an effort to spark offense and insists there has been too much tinkering already.

“I don’t know why they just can’t leave the game alone,” the Seattle pitcher said. “Can’t we just go play and try to get three outs and go from there?”

Concerned about the drop in offense in recent years, Major League Baseball has studied whether to restore the lower edge of the strike zone from just beneath the kneecap to its pre-1996 level – at the top of the kneecap. Any change for 2017 would require an agreement with the players’ association, which is skeptical. Membership is split.

“I think it’s kind of outrageous what they’re trying to do with the strike zone,” Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood said. “Obviously, I’m biased. I’m a pitcher. But at the same time, it’s shrunk drastically, maybe even in the last five or six years.”

Baseball people talk about the strike zone the way most discuss the weather: constant complaints about hard-to-fathom change.

Wood threw 11.9 percent of his pitches last year at the bottom of the strike zone, according to Fangraphs, which defined the lowest portion as between 1.5 and 1.75 feet off the ground. That was the highest-percentage in the major leagues, just ahead of Minnesota’s Kyle Gibson at 11.3 percent and Miley’s 11 percent.

When the strike zone was last changed, umpires took years to adjust.

MLB has used computer software to track umpires’ strike zones since 2001, which has helped bring the umpiring staff into closer alignment on balls and strikes. Umpires receive a grade now after every game worked behind the plate, and that has resulted in an expansion of the strike zone over much of the past decade.

Any adjustment to a new rule-book definition would take time.

“They’d have to start in the minor leagues. I think for some of the guys to try to adjust to a new strike zone is going to be chaotic,” said umpire Bob Davidson, who worked his first big league game in 1982. “I hope they just leave it the way it is. I think we call it now the way the rule book states.”

Offense has increased this season. Through Thursday’s games, the big league batting average is .256, the highest for a first half since 2010, and teams have combined for 2.31 homers per game, the most in the first half since 2000.

But one trend remains constant: strikeouts.

Teams combined to average 15.95 strikeouts per game in June, the third-highest month in major league history behind September 2015 (15.96) and April 2016 (16.26), according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The last 28 months dating to September 2011 are the highest-strikeout 28 months in big league history.

IF BASEBALL players want to shorten the schedule, management says they should accept a reduction in pay.

Tired from travel in an era that frequently has quick turnarounds following overnight flights, players are seeking changes in collective bargaining. The regular-season schedule increased from 154 games to 162 in the American League in 1961 and the National League the following year, and playing 162 games in 183 days has left little flexibility.

“There are ways to produce more off days in the schedule. Some of those have very significant economic ramifications,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “If in fact we are going to go down those roads, those economic ramifications are going to have to be shared by all of the relevant parties. You want to work less, usually you get paid less.”

Union head Tony Clark, a former All-Star first baseman, says the sport currently is “not putting players or giving the clubs and their players the best opportunity to play every day at a high level throughout the course of the season.”

AS MAJOR League Baseball prepares for talks about the 2020 Olympics, Manfred said “from a calendar prospective, the dates of the Tokyo Games are not ideal.”

The International Olympic Committee executive board voted last month to support a six-nation tournament that year in both baseball and women’s softball, and the full IOC is to vote in August on the inclusion of the World Baseball Softball Confederation for the Tokyo Games, which are scheduled from July 24-Aug. 9.

Baseball was dropped for the 2012 London Games and won’t be played next month in Rio de Janeiro. MLB is reluctant to stop its season for the Olympics, and players are reticent to play anywhere other than big league stadiums.

“We’re going to have some meetings with the international baseball and softball federation to fully understand what the program is going to be in Tokyo in terms of how long, how many, before we have any final decision on that issue,” Manfred said Tuesday. “We like the idea of baseball being in the Olympics. We’re supportive of baseball being in the Olympics.”

MAJOR LEAGUE baseball announced before the All-Star Game that the AL batting title would be named the Rod Carew Award, and the NL title the Tony Gwynn Award.

Carew, who is awaiting a heart transplant, saluted the crowd as the announcement was made.