MLB introduces an awful fourth “true outcome”: Goo checks

A number of Major League Baseball observers have been writing about the “three true outcomes” of the current game for a while now – in other words, the action-drain from MLB. For those unfamiliar with this term, it has been fairly obvious that walks, strikeouts, and home runs have come to dominate the game formerly known as America’s pastime.

Now, however, MLB has found a new and most horrible way to slow down high-level baseball just when the organization should be trying to speed things up – the umpire’s check for foreign substances being used by pitchers.

The umpire checks at the ends of innings and at managers’ requests have become the “fourth true outcome” of modern MLB play in record time, and it is entirely awful.

The checks for pitchers cheating with goo are awful, but is this just an MLB home office error?

Oh, the total umpire checks in a typical MLB game probably won’t outnumber strikeouts, but they have instantly outnumbered home runs in a number of games. (No, I haven’t counted, but bet me.) They likely have also outnumbered walks in some games, and all three of these statements will remain true for a while unless something changes.

Let’s take the obnoxious display put on at Citizens Bank Park June 22, when a “baseball game” was allegedly played between the Nationals and Phillies. This contest featured two home runs, 23 strikeouts, and six walks.

And when I abandoned the annoying snoozefest after the sixth inning, I had counted six substance checks featuring three petulant displays by Washington’s Max Scherzer with an especially petulant performance after Phillies manager Joe Girardi asked for a check on him in the fourth inning. Moreover, I wasn’t even paying close attention. The substance check total probably reached ten or eleven if the umpires’ practice continued in the innings I refused to watch.

So, the MLB plan to inject offense into their game after widespread reports of cheating to increase pitch spin rates (and general control) seems to have backfired. The sample size is only one, but the final score of the Nats-Phils game was 3-2.

The teams involved went 4-for-20 together with runners in scoring position.

There was one stolen base and one double play.

And four childish displays, three by Scherzer, one of the game’s great pitchers, and one by Girardi, one of the game’s respected managers, who was ejected when he appeared to be challenging Scherzer to either debate or fight after Scherzer stared at him too long.

As the fictional Ricky Ricardo – not the sportscaster, but Lucy’s husband – might have said: “MLB’s got some ’splainin’ to do.” More simply – there are way too many checks.

But the players and team management groups need to be assigned some blame here as well, not that anything like that will happen.

If you begin to play a game dominated by inaction because a computer tells you to do that, and then make that worse by cheating – promoting even poorer hitting – you can’t act like a bunch of babies when MLB tries to adjust.