MLB Spring Training: A possible experimental rule change?
This year in MLB spring training, teams may be trying new potential rule changes during games.
Real MLB baseball, as opposed to hand-wringing over your team’s chances of signing a big star, isn’t that far off. Well, at least MLB spring training is now on the horizon, and that’s real enough for many baseball fans. So, with some eagerness I checked out The Athletic’s piece on eight stories for the coming season by Cliff Corcoran.
Alas, too many of the stories still had little directly to do with what MLB teams will begin practicing in MLB spring training. Only about half of the eight items were arguably on point if the point is the game itself, but at least some of them were interesting. One involved the changes in pitching theories or staff-building. The item that caught my eye, however, came under the heading “February rules announcement.”
After noting that for the past five seasons, as spring training begins, MLB has instituted rules changes, Corcoran presents a fairly cynical take on the potential for a sixth season of changes come mid-February:
“So what will it be this year? Will [Commissioner] Manfred institute pitch clocks? Will he limit the shift? Is it possible he has seen the light and would rather solve a real problem, rather than an imagined one, by raising the lower limit of the strike zone? I won’t hold my breath.”
So what does Corcoran favor doing? Let’s start out with taking a look at three possible changes he might be in favor of trying out in MLB spring training…
Corcoran’s Three Possible Changes
Corcoran clearly favors raising the lower edge of the strike zone, but are the other two possibilities he allows also really possible – or advisable?
How about a pitch clock? In 2018, the Double and Triple-A levels of minor league baseball instituted a 15-second pitch clock with no runners on base. This was announced fairly late in spring training last winter. The reaction to that has been somewhat mixed and somewhat hidden by Mr. Google’s machine, but there is this statistic from IndyStar.com: Of the 628 pitchers who had made MLB appearances about halfway through the 2017 season, only about five percent got pitches off, on average, in under 20 seconds.
I see a hand in the back: What’s meant by that crack about Google, you say?
Before encountering any article actually on point in a search for “reactions to 2018 minor league pitch clock” by Google, one runs into an article on search page two in Golf Digest entitled “Is this ridiculous rules change in minor league baseball coming to the majors next?” And it’s not even about the pitch clock. It’s about the runner on second base in extra innings.
Indeed, on the day this writer searched, there was not one article on the first three Google pages for the search phrase above that was actually written after the 2018 season ended. There were a number of articles written during spring training in various seasons, though.
So, here’s an anecdote. (Don’t start with your “anecdotal evidence” arguments. Thanks.) I went to one Double-A game this season. It was rainy. I wasn’t aware of the pitch clock aside from seeing it run a couple of times on a scoreboard. The game ended with reasonable quickness. It was chilly.
Make what you will of that. I doubt the pitch clock is coming to MLB this season, but who knows? If it is, look for trouble if the mandated time is under 20 seconds.
OK, then, there’s the notion of limiting defensive shifts. Honestly, this one was shot down by Phillies announcer John Kruk recently, but I’m not sure when. At the time I wrote it down, but those notes have gone wherever after-the-fact reactions to the MiLB pitch-count rule went. When a broadcast booth-mate brought up the notion of keeping one foot on the infield or limiting the number of infielders on one side of second base, Kruk’s reaction went something like this: Well, what comes next? I can’t hit a slider, so you can’t throw a slider? Note: no quotation marks. You can Google it. Start with page four.
The Change That Seems Possible
Corcoran would clearly prefer at least an experiment in MLB spring training with a higher strike zone, getting rid of that bothersome business of the “lower level…at the hollow beneath the kneecap.” As Tom Verducci explained in early 2017, “The theory is that taking away the lowest of low strikes will reduce strikeouts and create more hittable pitches.”
The number of pitches taken by hitters has been going straight uphill for quite a while now, and obviously this has added to a general game-time increase. Raising the strike zone might help. Anyone who has ever played baseball will tell you leaning down to hit a pitch – especially a 95-mph pitch – lowers success rates. Indeed, Kris Bryant complained about that specific problem in the video interview published with the Sports Illustrated article by Verducci quoted above.
However, there is a major problem with raising the strike zone – and, by the way, raising it to where? The middle of the kneecap? The top of the kneecap? Mid-thigh? (Oh, hell, no.)
The problem is that MLB veteran pitchers — those making the most money, and therefore, most likely to have at least some sway with the MLB Players Association — are going to howl. They have been throwing to the same strike zone “forever.”
Next. Giants top 10 prospects. dark
Worse, the question remains: If the lower limit is moved up, shouldn’t the upper limit also move up? Uh-oh. The umpires haven’t called a high strike in about 35 years.
Still, it might be worth an MLB spring training experiment.