Change to strike zone, intentional walks

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: Even that second video in the link of the more modified version of Capps's delivery doesn't look like it should be legal to me.

me neither, but then, I'm not sure it was ever legal.

[Edgy MD]

Notable that they didn't touch the September roster expansion rules.

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy MD wrote: Notable that they didn't touch the September roster expansion rules.

Well these (relatively minor) changes are the ones MLB is apparently able to make without player union agreement.
More far-reaching stuff such as roster expansion, pitch clocks and the like are they ones they tried to negotiate but either couldn't come up with a specific change -- for instance apparently everyone agrees that something needs to be done about Sept rosters but there are a dozen or more proposals of how to do so with none approaching a majority -- or it's something the union is flat-out rejecting. It's these tabled changes/proposals that Manfred is threatening to impose unilaterally in a year's time if the union, in his view, continues to simply stonewall any and all changes.

[Diamond Dad]

Speed up the game?

1. Batter must keep one foot in the batter's box between pitches unless there has been a foul ball. He can step out with one foot to look for the sign, then get back in and hit. Ten second clock, then ump directs pitcher to pitch and if the batter is not back in the box then it's a strike regardless of the pitch location.

2. Pitcher must throw next pitch with nobody on base within 20 seconds of receiving the ball from catcher. (In other words, enforce the existing rule)

3. No more than one time out per half-inning for a conference -- one for each team. Doesn't matter if a coach/manager is involved or not. After first conference, any subsequent time out for a conference (not an injury) results in pitching change.

4. When there is a pitching change, start a 2 minute clock as soon as the manager makes the signal, or if it's the second mound visit, the ump makes the signal. Go to commercial, and as soon as you come out of commercial it's "play" and the batter steps into the box. If the reliever takes his sweet time strolling in from the bullpen, kicking dirt around the mound, and lobbing in warm-up pitches -- too bad. You have 2 minutes. Period. You were already warmed up in the bullpen, so you don't need to throw 8 pitches on the mound before you're ready.

5. Limit of two throws to first base per pitch. After the first throw to first, the next one could be a pitch or a pick-off, but after two, the pitcher is not allowed to throw to a base again until he has thrown to the plate. Yes, that allows the runner to go on first movement on the next pitch. It will, as a practical matter, limit the pitcher to one pick-off attempt per pitch to the plate, but every once-in-a-while a savvy pitcher will throw over a second time if he thinks the runner is going to get frisky. The strategy would be very interesting to watch, and steals would increase, which is fine. Pitcher can always pitch out. Would add extra layers of strategy while also speeding up play. (As commentators always say, nothing slows down the game more than speed.) And a fake throw to 2nd or 3rd counts as a "throw."

Average game time - 2:30

[Edgy MD]

I have no problem with throws to first.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I think they're tedious but I wouldn't want to artificially limit them.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I have to re-read the thread over the weekend but really this
speeding up the game thing (to me) is somewhat of a mirage
created by the marketing people at MLB that think they need to
make the game more attractive to people who don't like base-
ball as much as they'd like.

Stop fucking with the game. One of the beauties of baseball is
you really never know what you're in for. Some of the best
games are short pitchers duels, some are fourteen inning crazy-
ass games with three costly errors and football scores.

Ya wanna speed things up, don't let a team of off-the-field umps
bunkered in a studio sipping lattes take three minutes to not be
able to decide what their live colleague had to judge in 2/10's
of a second. If it takes more than two looks, move on...

[MFS62]

d'Kong76 wrote: I have to re-read the thread over the weekend but really this speeding up the game thing (to me) is somewhat of a mirage created by the marketing people at MLB that think they need to make the game more attractive to people who don't like base- ball as much as they'd like. Stop fucking with the game. .

Beautiful, man.
You could have stopped right there, and we would have stood up and saluted.
Later

[Frayed Knot]

Stop fucking with the game. One of the beauties of baseball is you really never know what you're in for. Some of the best games are short pitchers duels, some are fourteen inning crazy-ass games with three costly errors and football scores.

See here's the thing: I've been as vocal as anyone about wishing games were more often around 2-1/2 hours and less often 3+, but in no way do I want to go changing any basic rules involving strategy.
There's nothing wrong with a long game it just shouldn't be the norm even for low-scoring pitcher's duels that used to be under 2 hours.
So while I'd prefer not to see 14 man pitching staffs, teams that want to do that have made a risk/reward decision to weaken their bench by doing it and I'm willing to let them. Same with multiple changes
and throws to 1st, etc.
All I've ever been bitching about is getting rid of the dead time. It's not the length of the game it's what has caused it to get that way; it's what has caused us to go from 25% of games ending in under 2:30
to less than 4% just during the lifespan of of some of your teenage kids. And, yes, TV commercials are part of that but even they haven't increased in length any time recently so there are other culprits.

- stay in the fucking box. I once heard Tim McCarver describe Hank Aaron's hitting routine which involved him never leaving the box once he got in. And I may have to check the books on this one
but I think ol' Hank was kind of successful anyway. Now we've got .240 hitters who insist that without their "routine" they can't do their jobs. a) yes you can, and you may want to look into getting
a new routine cuz your existing one ain't working so well.

- pitch the fucking ball without going through a checklist of gyrations first. You only have four pitches and probably two of them suck anyway so you're choosing from a small menu here. I don't want
to see pitch clocks installed, but if football teams can get up from the pile, have a huddle, re-line-up, go through a set of signals then call a play in under 35 seconds (or whatever it is) then you should
be able to throw two to three pitches **NOT ONE** in that same amount of time. Go get some films of Jim Kaat and note that he won a few (hundred) games that way.

- I'd be for limiting mound conferences (I'm flexible as to the details) and if you want to claim that that's a change affecting strategy then I'd counter by saying that they need to get their strategies
straight before the game starts or between innings. There are too many damn time-outs in (ALL) American sports and I'd much prefer a game where the players who have been playing this game their entire
lives can be trusted to make on-field decisions. George Will once said that football combines the two worst aspects of American culture: violence and committee meetings. Baseball used to have little of
both, let's get back to that.

- if you want to keep unlimited pitching changes then make them quicker. There's no reason for eight additional warm-up pitches once you get to the mound, those are a holdover from days when
the bullpen mounds were either sub-standard or non-exsistent. Pitching change times can be cut in half and those breaks are NOT pre-paid ad time that would involve a make-good from the TV network.

- if you're going to have replays then I want a challenge inside 10 seconds or we play on. That would mean only the real bad calls get overturned and we don't wind up pouring over the replay like it's
the Zabruder film to determine whether the runner's toe came a 1/2 inch off the base for a 1/2 second during his pop-up slide and whether the fielder's glove was in contact with the runner's pant-leg
at that exact moment. And once we eliminate the piddling shit then the review itself goes quicker too.

- But as much as any rule or procedural change I think the sport just needs an attitude change that'll bring it back to the original intent where the ball is assumed to be live unless stated otherwise
rather than the other way around. I'm not quite sure how to accomplish this as it didn't come about overnight and it won't go away quickly either, but hopefully the changes they've put in at the minor
league level will produce a new generation of ballplayers who never develop the tics and routines that cause the next pitch or AB to happen "when I get around to it".

[Edgy MD]

Don't scream into the tornado, man. Send that shit to MLB headquarters.

[batmagadanleadoff]

To me, the causes for longer games aren't very complicated. Now the powers that be might turn the fixes into a boondoggle, but that's another story. Anyway, all you have to do to see what happened over the years is to watch video of any game from the 70's or earlier. The pitcher pitches. And if the pitch isn't hit, the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher. And then the next pitch usually comes in within no more than 15 seconds of the pitcher receiving the ball back from the catcher. And that's it in a nutshell. Now if you add just 10 seconds to that 15 seconds I mentioned, you're adding about another 45 minutes to an hour on average for each game.

[Frayed Knot]

Don't scream into the tornado, man. Send that shit to MLB headquarters.

I sent Selig a laundry list like the above several years ago.
Right now it seems to be more the player's assoc. who are dragging their feet so maybe they should be the target. Similar to their resistance and insistence twenty years ago that ANY steroid limitations
were a violation of civil rights and would result in a travesty of the game, I think Tony Clark is battling (with or against is hard to tell) the forces within the union who are insisting that they MUST have their
pre-pitch routines or their careers would be in jeopardy. Pitchers don't want a pitch clock because they think it'l give an edge to hitters, hitters think making them stay in the box is akin to capital punishment,
and catchers don't want robo-ump technology because they all see themselves as above average pitch-framers whose "skill" would suddenly be negated.

The pitcher pitches. And if the pitch isn't hit, the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher. And then the next pitch usually comes in within no more than 15 seconds of the pitcher receiving the ball back from the catcher. And that's it in a nutshell.

There are about 75 batters who come to the plate in an average game, so do the math as the kids like to say (do kids actually say that? ... I have no idea): for every four seconds shaved
off per AB -- not per pitch mind you but merely off each AB as a whole -- the game becomes five minutes shorter at the expense of nothing but empty air. That's FOUR SECONDS!!
folks, and I think they have the ability to do even better. Now combine that with quicker pitching changes, quicker replay, and a cap on mound visits and we'd be in business, I'd shut the fuck
up, and not one thing fans currently like about the game would be altered.

And that's the thing about this whole topic, that no one* is trying to change the game into something it isn't, nor are we pining for some version of the game as it was played during the
McKinley administration. Hell, I'd settle for the game as it was during say the Reagan years just so I wouldn't have to bitch at my TV because I saw just nine pitches of baseball over the
previous five minutes due various committee meetings breaking out on the field every few seconds.



* no one aside from those either advocating the silly beer-league softball rules which aren't intended for anything but the lowest level of the minors anyway, or the 'make it a seven-inning game' crowd who are generally
the ones who hate the game in the first place and wouldn't watch if you made it three innings.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Guest

[Edgy MD]

No, I think Tony Clark is battling on behalf of the union's right to have a say in any changes. Tony Clark specifically isn't battling pitch clocks. He's opposing the no-pitch walk. Some moves, like sending the Brewers to the AL, are just moves the league makes to demonstrate that they can, so they can establish a precedent for later. The union is right to draw the line here, as niggling as it seems.

But this initiative belongs to the league, and it's to the league that opposition must be directed.

[Frayed Knot]

Tony Clark specifically isn't battling pitch clocks. He's opposing the no-pitch walk.

No, the automatic IW is part of the changes going into effect this year because it was the one pace-of-play type proposal that the union DID agree to.

Where Manfred is getting his back up is that he feels the union has nixed the idea of even discussing other changes. At least part of this has to do with there being disagreements within the union on whether or how to move on these issues just as there were in the steroid era. Manfred's stance is that prior agreements give the league power to implement future changes without the players consent if no joint agreement can be reached so the players would do better to voice their views now rather than simply declare any change to be a non-starter and have something forced on them later.

[Diamond Dad]

For those of us who love the game as it is, making changes to speed up the pace of play is not a huge issue. But the reason it is being discussed at MLB headquarters is that they have market research suggesting that as a business (and it is sure as hell a business) there is an issue with attracting and retaining customers who buy tickets, jerseys, and beer and who watch the games on TV -- all of which affects the bottom line for the owners. The owners and commish think (rightly or not) that speeding up the pace of games will help them with their audience numbers.

there have been tweaks to the game over the years that now seem normal. The biggest were lowering the mound (to increase offense because the owners were worried that all the 1-0 games were too boring and that fans wanted to see more home runs) and the introduction of the DH (same reason). You could say that the introduction and tolerance of steriods was also a change to the game (same reason). It's all about keeping the fans happy and making sure that the next generation of fans get hooked on watching baseball, which does make sense.

A few adjustments now that keep the games moving and that will become part of the "standard" after a few years would not bother me a bit.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I think the problem isn't actually with the pace of the game (although that's a factor) but the time that the games end, especially in the post season.

I doubt that many people care what time a Wednesday night game in June ends. But in October, casual fans aren't watching the LCS and World Series games because they know that they'll have to go to bed before the game ends. The Super Bowl doesn't have this problem because it's a one-time event and it starts at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, 3 p.m. on the West Coast. I think much of this problem with baseball could be resolved by having post-season games start at 7 p.m. in the East. I know it would cause fans in the West to miss the beginning of some games, but I think viewers are more likely to watch a game where they see the last six innings than a game when they'll only see the first six.

[Edgy MD]

It's official. The Dominican Summer League, the Gulf Coast League, and the Arizona Fall League will all use the gift runner on second base in extra innings. At least, so sez John Norris of Baseball America.