I got a kick out of the Twitter frenzy last night when it became apparent that MLB was doing away with traditional four-pitch intentional walks. There aren’t many more amusing things than Twitter overreactions over anything and everything.
I am completely indifferent on this subject. Sure, we won’t
have the blooper-reel staple of a pitcher airmailing a slow pitchout. I guess
we’ll just have to live with the bat hitting Tommy Lasorda and the ball
bouncing off of Jose Canseco’s head to get out laughs in between those long
commercial breaks at the ballpark.
And sure, we’ll also miss the very rare instance when a
player hits a pitch meant to be a deliberate ball. Gary Sanchez did this last
year, nearly hitting a HR. He wound up with the deep sac fly, and was
immortalized on a Topps NOW card. Unfortunately, Topps zoomed in on the photo
to ungodly levels. A nice, wide shot from center field would have been a much
cooler way to capture the feat than a waist up shot that looks like any old
swing from this man child.
The above examples aside, I literally do not care and will
not miss intentional walks for a second. We all know it’s coming anyways, and
~99.9% of the time, the guy takes his base uneventfully. I don’t live for the 0.1%
chance that something wacky will happen. Take your base and let’s move on.
It has nothing to do with game flow or speeding up the game.
I just don’t care. It’s not going to stop me from watching baseball. It’s not
going to turn me away from the sport. It’s not going to keep me away from the
ballpark. The high ticket prices already do that.
I’m sure we’ll see many more rule changes over the next few
seasons…some as minor as this, others a bit more extreme. Regardless, it’s
going to take a lot more than this to upset my fandom.
Like putting a runner on second base in extra innings.
"It’s not going to keep me away from the ballpark. The high ticket prices already do that." Preach on.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the new intentional walk rule itself that is why people get upset (or why I get upset), it's the "what else are they going to pull" idea of the whole thing. If they do this ... then what? That's why people flip out.
ReplyDeleteI could care less about the intentional walk and it being gone, but it really doesn't do much for the problem at hand which is to speed up the game. Maybe try these...
ReplyDelete1. go back two years and start enforcing the batter staying in the box.
2. limit mound visits. Baseball is the only sport with unlimited time outs.
3. fix the manager replay system. The whole close play and then stare into the dugout for 5 minutes waiting to see in the manager wants to review is stupid.
4. The big one will be some type of pitch clock, but it will be hard to enforce when runners are on base.
People overreact on Twitter? Lol... I guess you can add to another reason I don't really use my Twitter account. As for the automatic intentional walk rule... I'm not a fan. It doesn't save that much time and although nothing usually happens 99% of the time... there's always a chance something could happen. But do I care enough to start a Twitter battle? Nah. I'll just grumble in people's blog comments ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm good with the new rule. To me it is tedious watching the 4 pitches. I can't recall ever seeing anything odd happen. I would be more against something that significantly altered stats. Other than lessening the pitch count a little this rule change does nothing so I'm good.
ReplyDelete