2023 MLB Season Thread

[Sport]

The pitch clock enforces a rule that was already on the books and was in desperate need of enforcing. I watched some of a game yesterday and it was really nice. Reminded me that during early quarantine, jeez, 3 years ago(!) I watched a lot of old baseball games on Youtube. Games in the 70's and 80's used to FLY even with players trying to steal more often and the pitch clock sort of resembles that again. The OCD gloves adjusting that Nomar elevated to an artform is a relatively new development to the game. The pitch clock also demands some level of actual physical conditioning as a 10 pitch AB will tire both batter and hitter more than if they were allowed to step out/off to take get more breathes. It'll be interesting to see if any injuries come as a result. 

[BBTV]

If you ever watch Roy  Halladay games, they were mostly over in 2:15.  Dude just got the ball back and pitched it again.  And again.  And again.  I'm pretty sure he had games that were nearly half as long as some other ones that went north of 4 hours.  I read a thing that said that his pace actually increased nearly each year of his career.  He and Greg Maddux were the fastest workers I can recall seeing.

 

According to this (which only goes back to 2010 - Halladay's last healthy year), Mark Buehrle was a godsdamned machine.  12  secs with no runners, 18 with runners. 

 

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-tempo?season_start=2010&season_end=2022&n=q&split=no&team=&type=Pit&with_team_only=1

[tBBP]

15 hours ago, BBTV said:

If you ever watch Roy  Halladay games, they were mostly over in 2:15.  Dude just got the ball back and pitched it again.  And again.  And again.  I'm pretty sure he had games that were nearly half as long as some other ones that went north of 4 hours.  I read a thing that said that his pace actually increased nearly each year of his career.  He and Greg Maddux were the fastest workers I can recall seeing.

 

According to this (which only goes back to 2010 - Halladay's last healthy year), Mark Buehrle was a godsdamned machine.  12  secs with no runners, 18 with runners. 

 

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-tempo?season_start=2010&season_end=2022&n=q&split=no&team=&type=Pit&with_team_only=1

 

I was about to mention about Buehrle...that perfect game he threw a few years back, didn't he get through that in a little over two hours or so? Probably the quickest perfect game on record.

[BBTV]

51 minutes ago, tBBP said:

 

I was about to mention about Buehrle...that perfect game he threw a few years back, didn't he get through that in a little over two hours or so? Probably the quickest perfect game on record.

halladay’s perfect game was 2:13. That’s about as good as it gets. 

[jmoe12]

30 minutes ago, BBTV said:

halladay’s perfect game was 2:13. That’s about as good as it gets. 

Buehrle got it done in 2:03 for his perfect game.

 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA200907230.shtml

[waltere]

I know it happened back when games actually were quick, but Sandy Koufax's perfect game was all over in just 1:43

 

https://baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196509090.shtml

[BBTV]

8 minutes ago, waltere said:

I know it happened back when games actually were quick, but Sandy Koufax's perfect game was all over in just 1:43

 

https://baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196509090.shtml

 

It also happened before there were three minutes of betting commercials between every half inning, and a new ball brought into play for nearly every pitch.   Also, they were likely smoking so many cigarettes in the dugouts that they were alert and ready to go at all times (until they died of lung cancer).

[Sport]

 

Some good early returns on the results of the pitch clock, shift ban, and Big Bases so far in spring training. 

[crashcarson15]

It’s wild how entrenched some baseball fans are against Rob Manfred that they’ll argue against literally anything MLB does these days. The pitch clock improves the in-stadium experience so much (speaking as a baseball guy) and I’ve come around on shift restrictions. Big bases are great.

 

At the end of the day, most sports have put rules in place over time to counteract “bad” tendencies that have entered the game — a shot clock and 3 seconds in basketball; illegal formations in football; offside and icing in hockey; etc. Hell, volleyball is only a couple decades removed from entirely changing how the sport is scored. The difference with baseball is it took like, 150 years for the game to evolve into a flawed meta.

[BBTV]

An unintended consequence of the pitch clock is there will be reduced food/beer/merch sales in the park.  It could be significant.  If the 7th inning is 100 mins into the game rather than 130 (I'm just making up times), that's way less time before beer sales are cut off and they clean up the food stands.  Also less time for people to wander around and buy random stuff while a pitcher is taking 45 seconds to scratch his balls in between pitches.

 

At some point, that reduced revenue will be passed onto the fans either in higher prices for food/beer or higher tickets.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, crashcarson15 said:

t’s wild how entrenched some baseball fans are against Rob Manfred that they’ll argue against literally anything MLB does these days. The pitch clock improves the in-stadium experience so much (speaking as a baseball guy) and I’ve come around on shift restrictions. Big bases are great.

 

What drives opposition is not so much an entrenched feeling about the commissioner as it is the principle.  The shift ban is wrong for the same reason that the rule about a pitcher having to face three hitters is wrong: namely, that a manager has to have the freedom to deploy his players in any way he sees fit.  The important point here is that no move by a manager confers an uncounterable advantage; every move brings with it a risk, a weakness that it's up to the opposition to exploit.  Employing the shift leaves huge undefended gaps in the infield; and swapping out pitchers after a hitter a piece leaves a team vulnerable to bad matchups after the opposition pinch-hits, and possibly to running out of pitchers in a long game. 

 

The justification for the pitch clock has a better foundation; unlike the shift ban, that rule doesn't inherently violate any principle.  But for the pitch clock to be so rigid as a play clock in football or a shot clock in basketball tends to undermines the competition.  No one is out there intentionally wasting time; both the pitcher and the hitter need time to think as the prevailing conditions change with each pitch.  Because this rule doesn't allow for any discretion (such as when a pitcher is intentionally gaming the rule), opposing this rule is reasonable.

 

Please allow me to address something that was not mentioned in this post:  the continuation of the most objectionable of all the new rules, the phantom runner.  This rule offends because it puts on base a runner who cannot be accounted for in the scoring of a game.  The result is the absurdity that a pitcher could throw a perfect game and lose, as the phantom runner could score on two sacrifice flies (or, if he is like Willie Wilson, on one sacrifice fly).  It's true that nowadays complete games are rare, and rarer still would be a starting pitcher pitching into extra innings.  But this type of loss will happen eventually, and the mere possibility tells us that the phantom runner is fundamentally contrary to the nature of the sport. 

 

The supposed rationale for the phantom runner is to avoid extremely long games.  A better means to accomplish this end can be borrowed from Japan:  just have draws.  In Japan a game goes down as a draw if it is tied after 12 innings; I'd even accept having no extra innings at all in the regular season, and recording a tie game as a draw after nine innings.  Save the extra innings for the postseason, where every game must have a winner.  From watching English football I have learnt that a draw is a perfectly legitimate result for a regular-season game.

 

I would agree with the philosophical underpinning of this post, which is that a blanket refusal to accept rule changes is an indefensible position to take.  We should always be open to modifications of the rules, if those modifications make sense.  For instance, the introduction of larger bases is a good idea, both for saftey's sake, and for the possibility that it might encourage stealing.  We also should remember that the pitcher's mound was lowered in the late 1960s, and that that was a necessary move.  Also, the introduction of the DH in 1973 was a positive change, despite what some goofballs will claim.  (The oft-heard argument that the DH "eliminates strategy" is patently false, as the DH actually facilitates moves such as pinch-hitting for players other than the pitcher, pinch-running, and making defensive replacements.  Still, I will say that I think the DH being in both leagues is unfortunate, and that the ideal scenario was having both versions of the game.)  

 

Looking to the future, an inevitable new rule that I am strongly in favour of is the automation of the calling of strikes and balls.  We can wax rhapsodic about the human element in umpiring; but that is just a polite way of framing the concept of bias.  I am reminded of an anecdote that Ron Luciano shared in one of his books.  Luciano says that he was umpiring behind the plate one day when Rod Carew came up.  After Luciano called the first pitch a ball, the catcher started complaining.  Luciano says that he calmly explained to the catcher that "If Mr. Carew doesn't swing, that means that it's a ball."  This is very amusing; but the excessive deference shown to veterans is not really something that we should want to see continued.  We can be sure that hitters of the calibre of Carew and Gwynn and Boggs and Brett would still have dominated if they had had to deal with a strike zone that was more consistent and more fair.

 

There are even a couple of longstanding traditional rules that I would like to see changed for the sake of consistency.  One is the non-applicability of the infield fly rule if there is only a runner on first, as the rationale of preventing an infielder from getting a cheap double play on a pop-up applies there just as it does in the first-and-second / bases loaded scenario.  The other is the non-awarding of an RBI on a double play, because if a ground out can result in an RBI, then a double play should be able to do so as well.

 

Finally, it probably would have been reasonable all along for a passed ball to be considered an error on the catcher, as, like an error, a passed ball renders a run scored unearned.  I suppose that the reasoning for the distinction would be that an error is a blown chance at an out, and so even if a run doesn't score on the error itself, any runner who moves up on the error will count as an unearned run if he eventually scores; whereas, a runner who moves up on a passed ball scores an earned run if he is knocked in on a hit, sacrifice, walk, or force out.  Still, this should have been consistent all along.

 

Anyway, the short version:  very few people are uniformly against all rule changes.

[Cujo]

MLB needs more of this energy!

 

[Cujo]

Welp. This'll be the last year you see star players allowed to play in this silly exhibition.

 

[See Red]

Would be a huge overreaction to what looks like a very flukey injury that could've happened in Spring Training or playing with his kid or walking down stairs.

[Cujo]

4 minutes ago, See Red said:

Would be a huge overreaction to what looks like a very flukey injury that could've happened in Spring Training

 

Give me one scenario where players are going to celebrate like that during Spring training. I'll wait.

[See Red]

18 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

Give me one scenario where players are going to celebrate like that during Spring training. I'll wait.

 

I'll give you THE METS doing it.

 

 

 

He's a professional athlete that got hurt jumping up and down two inches off of the ground.  It's a freak injury that could happen doing any number of things.  If there was a rash of pitchers needing Tommy John surgery because they overexerted themselves in higher leverage situations than they would otherwise be facing, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

[Cujo]

2 minutes ago, See Red said:

 

I'll give you THE METS doing it.

 

 

 

Nice sleuthing.

 

Still tho, that kinda horseplay on the team's watch. Far less outrage when the team holds some level of responsibility for a player's injury. To add, I seriously don't envision the Mets would pull players from team practice like can pull players from the WBC.

[TrueYankee26]

My heart broke for Edwin Diaz. Freak injury and it would be a damm shame if players do steer clear of the WBC because of this.

[TBGKon]

If you saw it live or replays, you'd see that Diaz was seemingly celebrating responsibly, so I presume he knew to keep it calm.  Watching it live, nothing looked excessive and then all of a sudden Diaz was sitting down on the turf.

 

It was a freak injury that could have happened in the dugout in Miami or on the field during spring training in Port St. Lucie.  Anyone who says or thinks this should stop the WBC is being a little overdramatic.  Stop grasping for straws because YOU don't like the tournament.

[Sport]

Injuries happen and that’s always a risk in international tournaments, but lots of players have been injured playing in pointless spring training games already this year. How’s this any different?