Bonds Hits Number 70

ESPN ^ | 10/1/01 | gopno1

[gopno1]

Barry Bonds sent a shot to deep right field to tie Mark McGwire's home run record. The Houston crowd went wild. I couldn't believe how much they were booing their own team. Of course, the play of the Astros wasn't much to cheer about. At least someone finally pitched to him. Three straight fastballs, and he was definitely going for the fence. Congratulations, Barry.

[supercat]

At least someone finally pitched to him.

Yeah, intentional walks can get sorta boring and frustrating. To be sure, any changes to the rules of a 100-plus-year-old game should be done cautiously (and intentional walks are definitely a part of modern strategy). If one wanted to eliminate intentional walks without disrupting the rest of the game, however, I think I have an idea for a rule that would have that effect. Note that I'm not advocating actually implenting this rule, but I'm curious what the effects would be.

A batter who gets four balls (or hit-by-pitch) has the option of either accepting the walk or declining it. If the batter declines the walk, he starts again from a 0-0 count; the declined walk would have no effect unless the batter got four balls (or HP) again. In that case, he could either accept a double-walk or decline it; if he declines and gets yet another four balls (or HP), he'd have the option of either accepting a triple-walk or declining yet again. If he declines a triple-walk and gets yet another four balls (or HP), the batter would be awarded an automatic home-run.

While it would be extremely boring to actually watch a pitcher throw 16 consecutive balls, I doubt that would ever happen even with this rule in place. Indeed, I would think that the only times a batter would want to decline a walk would be times that--under the current rules--a pitcher would have thrown an intentional walk. Since under the proposed rule, however, a pitcher would gain nothing from an intentional walk, I would expect walks in such circumstances to be very rare.

What do others here think would happen if such a rule were in effect?

[gopno1]

That's interesting. The only drawback is the length of time that it could add to a game. Although, pitchers try to keep their pitch counts down, so I couldn't imagine a guy wanting to throw 16 pitches to one guy. It would probably work after thinking about it.