Yankees: Controversy About The Pace Of Play Strikes Again

The Yankees and all of Major League Baseball are reacting to the newest rule to increase the pace of play and shorten the game: The intentional walk is now just a point of the finger.

The Yankees, as well as many others, are chiming in on a new rule in which the intentional four-pitch walk is discarded and replaced with a mere point of a finger.

Is the new rule going to be an actual selling point on behalf of lessening the time in a baseball game? In the past few days, it has been discussed across baseball for this season anyway. Eventually, this might just disappear, and the Men’s Slow Pitch Softball-style rule may eventually just become routine for players and viewers.

Commissioner Rob Manfred was disappointed in the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) when this was one of a few paces of play rules he wanted to implement. The MLBPA and Manfred could not come to agreements at least for the 2017 season.

Pitch Clock

Th e Triple-A and Double-A organizations have already implemented pitching clocks to speed up the pace per pitch, which may happen in 2018. For the first time a clock was seen in baseball, this should not be, Jon Lester does not like nor want it; it takes away from the genius in the pitchers along with the know-how of the runners and ability of the batter.

“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give them other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.”-Earl Weaver

The pitcher’s pause makes the runner worry and wonder; the batter must call a time out or stay up there wondering and waiting for a motion from the pitcher.

The game is based on thoughts, and for guys like Lester who do not throw over to first base, they hate this rule. He changes his delivery time to the plate almost every pitch; especially with men on base, throwing one pitch after 4 seconds of being set and throwing another after 8 seconds and so on throughout his start. If he is limited to a time frame, this could have an impact on the base runners ability to steal on him.

A strong case could be made that the great Earl Weaver would be in disagreement with Manfred’s alterations. “You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.”

A strong case could be made that Josh Beckett would hate pitching with a clock since his game relied on changing things up between every pitch. When a Beckett game was on it was guaranteed to last 3 hours if you were lucky. Make sure that when Beckett pitches there is nothing important to be doing because he will be there for awhile. Beckett’s style, though, is the genius of the game that will be banished when the game was not meant for speed, it was intended to be a marathon that is why there are 162 games.

More Rules

Other rules that might be implemented in 2018 are the mound visits being limited and a strike zone change. Manfred will make a strike just above the kneecap like in 1996 and previous. Manfred has also installed a new rule “more for the developmental leagues,” that will also be seen in the World Baseball Classic. A runner will start at second base in extra-innings. Hopefully, this rule does not find its way into the Majors.

The Intentional Walk

According to the newest rule of baseball, the intentional walk signal is to increase the speed of the game, but how much time does it take to throw four balls intentionally? Another problem is that the intentional walk has increasingly declined since 2006.

Fifteen players were walked intentionally 15 times or more in 2006; only six were intentionally walked that many times or more in 2016. In the past five years, the intentional walk has gone down per game every year, making 2016 the least amount of intentional walks per game, 0.38, since the statistic began being counted in 1955.

Last season Gary Sanchez was intentionally walked after hitting a home run earlier in the game and made contact with one of the pitches that made it to the warning track for a sac-fly. The newest addition to the Yankees, Matt Holliday said, “Those are one-in-a-million type deals. I don’t really think it affects the game.” He also feels that since it doesn’t happen that often and more in the National League that it won’t matter as much.

Difficulty in letting this rule slip through the fingertips is that at least the ball has to be delivered to home plate and make it to the catcher’s glove, which history has proven is not as a routine with all pitchers.

This rule might make the game faster by a minute or so, but then the catcher will still take a trip to the mound to go over the next at-bat, slowing it down the extra seconds that were just gained. Sanchez did not care one way or the other saying, “Regardless of what kind of rule is put in place, baseball will always be a game of fun. We just got to follow the rules.”

Yankees Joe Girardi On Rule Changes

Mound visit limitations, time to call for a replay review, changing the strike zone and installing 20-second pitch clocks will start to be implemented throughout the upcoming seasons. But this didn’t faze Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost who said, “Most of this stuff that they were talking about I don’t think it would have been a major adjustment for us.” If the pace of play was such a concern why pick on the intentional walk, Yankees manager Joe Girardi spoke out on the pace of the game alterations.

Girardi believes that if the pace of the game needs to be changed that it should be more like the NFL. He said, “I’m a big proponent of trying to introduce some type of communication through headphones like they do in the NFL. I think you could speed the game up that way in certain instances.”

He believes that the game would be much faster if the signals did not have to go from him to the third base coach then the batter or from him to the catcher then the pitcher. “The thing about signs, signs take time,” Girardi says. “It used to be five people giving signs, and there were dummy plays, and now they communicate through a headset.”

Manfred’s Rules: Faster or Slower?

The pace of play most of the time comes from the in between of the game, warming up between innings, warming up in the bullpen, coaches decisions, mound visits and now replay. Which is the newest edition and it made the games longer, forcing the hand of Manfred to make new rules to speed it back up.

Manfred believes that mound visits have no competitive impact on the game, but the pitching coach and some pitchers will argue that it helps. It is a strategic move that slows the batters down who just caught fire or helps the pitcher realize his mistakes and make adjustments. Manfred also might bring the strike zone back above the kneecap which will also increase the length of games decreasing the speed at which games are played, so if these rules are about speed why make the strike zone harder to find?

Next: Analysis: The Extra Innings Rule Change

The game is fundamentally sound, and the length of the games should not be determined by the commissioner, but how well the game is played on both sides of the ball; it should be defined by greatness or lack thereof, and play by both teams.

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