Posted on 05/22/2016 11:56:31 AM PDT by Mariner
According to ESPN's Jayson Stark, Major League Baseball is on the verge of making two rules changes that could only be described as ground-breaking.
In a report filed on Friday, Stark says that the league's competition committee reportedly agreed to alter the strike zone and eliminate the four-pitch intentional walk during their meetings with owners this week. Those two changes could be implemented as early as the 2017 season.
The strike zone is currently defined as the volume of space above home plate and between the batter's knees and the midpoint of their torso. Of course, if you asked most baseball fans what the strike zone is right now, most wouldn't be able to tell you. That's because there's long been inconsistency from umpire-to-umpire, and sometimes even pitch-to-pitch.
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They used to run about 2 hours.
Now 3+ hours is common.
Get rid of the constantly stepping out of the box, re-tightening batting gloves, etc.
The constant time outs just waste time and are stupid and boring.
Don Drysdale: “Why use four pitches to put someone on base intentionally when I can do it with one?”
Offensive pass interference was put in to make Michael Irving stop pushing off. And really getting rid of the pitches in an intentional walk helps the defense, it means they won’t face a wild pitch once every 4 years.
Yep. Don’t let the batters constantly call time out.
About any game you see highlights from, the stands are half empty.
And these are all modern, smaller parks than in the 70s, with capacities in the 40K range.
Football stadiums are almost completely full (well, for decent teams), with capacities of up to 100K.
I'm tried of umps having unique strike zones. I think the little box should be used to call strikes, and the ump gets a signal or sees a light signifying ball or strike and calls what the box tells him to call.
Getting rid of four pitches isn’t going to affect the length of games like raising the bottom of the strike zone will. As in you cut off 20 or 25 seconds for every automatic intentional but get how many more baserunners on hits and walks? More hits and baserunners mean longer innings and more pitches thrown to more batters which means today more pitching changes sooner. Raising the bottom of the zone, at least without bringing back the high strike will only make games longer, I mean how could it not?
Freegards
I never liked that, just like I never liked hitting a guy who swung too hard or hit a homer the time before.
Freegards
The innings might get longer, but they’re longer with stuff actually happening, people getting on base, getting in scoring position, maybe even scoring. Unlike the pitches for the intentional walk which are a whole lot of nothing.
The extra hour didn’t come from players going through their traditional mini rituals. It comes from added ad time and the universal use of specialized relief pitchers. And lately from lengthy replay reviews.
The pitches for walks is really no big deal to me, except for the rare time a pitcher is too amped and can’t do it.
There will be more stuff happening, like you say. But I think if they make the strike zone smaller, especially on the bottom where sinker baller guys work then you are going to probably have much longer games also because of how teams are going to treat their pitchers today. Pitch counts will go up, because there will be less weak contact down there. More pitchers will get used because no team is going to hurt these guys. That takes time within an inning where nothing else is going to be happening.
But I think probably no ump with time in is going to really care about the directive. We’ll see if pitch track makes a dent in them, but I doubt it.
Freegards
It’s just a waste of time. Made worse of course by the fact that it’s the big hitter. You get some anticipation for the big hitter annnnnnd now we gotta watch the pitcher throw 4 lobs to the side. It’ll still be anticlimactic when they signal an intentional walk, but at least it’s over quick.
Yeah the umps are the problem. Doesn’t really matter how they define the zone, each ump has their own. That’s why I think the real fix on the strike zones is mass firing and strict enforcement. Give me 2 seasons where the umps only call the zone that’s in the books and we’ll see if maybe we need to tweak it for more hitting.
It will interesting to see if averages for the next hitter who isn’t a pitcher after an intentional walk go up or down or neither. Ok, will it make a difference in the psychology of hitting if he doesn’t have to stand there as long thinking about how they are giving the guy in front of him a pass to get to him?
“Give me 2 seasons where the umps only call the zone that’s in the books and we’ll see if maybe we need to tweak it for more hitting.”
I wish we could do that. But the reality would be if it was just imposed next season 2 hour long 13 inning 1-0 games would be the norm. Relief pitching plus the legit high strike would make games short and ugly. It would take years for players to come up adjusted to it, and current players would take longer maybe. And teams are going to play their contracted players in the meantime.
I think besides the ump union, maybe the biggest reason they resist the legit electronic strike zone is it would kill offense for a long while and maybe permanent. The last time they had a more legit strike zone called by umps the relief pitchers weren’t used like they would be now.
Freegards
I don’t think actually calling the strike zone as written would damage the offense. For one thing everybody would actually know where the zone is, so batters would know better which pitches to watch and which to swing at. For another, it’s not like the umps’ zones are bigger, they’re just different, some call them a little more to one side or the other, some shrink the vertical, some grow it. It’s all pretty random. Consistency would help both sides, then the teams wouldn’t spend the first 3 innings figuring out this guys zone. Or studying tape on them, the league should have panicked when Schilling said he studied ump tapes to get a handle on their zone.
Many would disagree and that is why the younger people are not getting attracted to the sport. Too slow. We need more 11-7 slugfests and a lot more home runs. People like to see the home runs. Way up there in the upper decks.
a man after my own heart
I was blessed as a child/young teen to have seen Spahn, Ford, Drysdale, Koufax, Marichal and Gibson. Watching games with low scores was exciting.
“Why must they keep mucking with Baseball.”
Exactly.
I’ve been following baseball since the late fifties. Maybe if they stopped worrying about making sure the right percentage of the league had the right racial balance and they treated the fans to people that can actually hit the ball and not look like someone fabulous up there with sexy day old beards or real ones trying to set a standard, or hair down to their backs with hair styling, or form fit uniforms, and a decent priced seat that is almost always out of sight because they throw money around within the organizations a have to get it somewhere beside TV contracts, perhaps they wouldn’t have to protect their players from the boos because they can’t hit even though every player is a star and is sold that way to the fans.
Don’t change the strike zone, change the players.
red
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