SoSH.com on the latest possible rule changes

Darnell's Son

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Cuzittt wrote about the proposal made by MLB's competition committee to alter the intentional walk on the .com today.

An intentional walk may take upwards of 30 seconds to execute properly. Or, about the time one pitch gets executed in a normal circumstance with runners on base. Or, the same time it took for Bartolo Colon to get around the bases on his magnificent home run earlier this season. Or, approximately 400% less time than it takes Clay Buchholz to throw to the plate with a runner on first.
Tomorrow we'll have an article by iayork on the proposed change to the strike zone.
 

geoduck no quahog

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Good job, Cuz. There's so much wrong with this unnecessary proposal.

Also...

What about pitching carefully to a hitter, going to 2-0...do you then say "take 1st base" instead of doing 2 pitch-outs?

I don't know if this has ever happened: Say Burns is standing on 2nd and an intentional walk is called...has a runner ever tried to steal a base during an intentional walk?

If intentional walks hadn't already been in baseball for 1,000 years - the only change I'd like to see is one that forces the catcher to stay in his crouch until the pitch is thrown (making intentional walks substantially more risky)...but given the tradition, I don't see the need for any rule changes.

Is there a single person on SoSH that thinks getting rid of the intentional walk is a good idea?

{BTW, I'm sometimes curious why a particularly hot batter, or one who owns the pitcher, doesn't swing at 1 or 2 of the pitch-outs to get the pitcher to an advantageous count, hoping to get 1 pitch to swing at. This of course depends wholly on the situation...maybe it has occurred}
 

moondog80

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Is there a single person on SoSH that thinks getting rid of the intentional walk is a good idea?
Yes. I just don't think the weird result happens often enough to justify the monotony of throwing the 4 pitches. I realize it's not a huge amount of time saved, but there's no one thing that's going to get game times down, it's going to be a bunch of little things. Moreover, intentional walks generally occur at a relatively critical moment in the game, and I find them to be tension killing, they same way it is with every close basketball game now having at least one stoppage with all the refs huddled around a monitor. Are people really going to watch a pitcher point a runner to first base and feel like they missed out on something?
 

SumnerH

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JimBoSox9

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Good job, Cuz. There's so much wrong with this unnecessary proposal.

Also...

What about pitching carefully to a hitter, going to 2-0...do you then say "take 1st base" instead of doing 2 pitch-outs?
My own idea is that the pitcher should indicate the IBB at any time by executing a formal, full-90-degree bow towards the batter after ritually placing his glove on the mound. That would clear up any confusion regardless of scenario.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Moreover, intentional walks generally occur at a relatively critical moment in the game, and I find them to be tension killing, they same way it is with every close basketball game now having at least one stoppage with all the refs huddled around a monitor.
Of course for the defensive team, that might be more feature than bug. I've often wondered if teams don't use IBBs for the momentum-breaking potential of that 30 seconds of tedium as much as anything.
 

Darnell's Son

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iayork tackled the proposed strike zone today

A survey of sonsofsamhorn.com writers and editors at sonsofsamhorn.com – all of whom, it goes without saying, are above average in every way – suggests that this would raise the bottom of the strike zone between roughly 3 and 4.5 inches from its present location. For this analysis, let’s assume that the bottom of the zone would be four inches higher.
 

ALiveH

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I really wish they had raised the top of the strike zone by the same # of inches to keep it the same size. I am very skeptical that shrinking the strike zone results in more balls in play. I think it results in hitters being much more selective, less SOs, more walks and more hard hit balls but probably the same roughly % of balls in play..
 

geoduck no quahog

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I was wondering what the penalty was for exceeding the new 30-second mound visit rule.

I found out.

None. Not even community service.
 

geoduck no quahog

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Watching today's game (Baltimore), it occurred to me how simple and obvious it would be to establish 2 permanent foul ball cameras at each stadium...run by MLB.

All you'd need is a fixed camera shooting straight down each foul line, with the foul pole centered. The view would include a permanent vertical line re-calibrated to the foul line (Home Plate -> 1st or 3rd base -> foul pole) before each game - and the camera would have a lens that kept everything in its field of vision - from the bottom of the foul pole up, say, 75 degrees (or whatever) above the horizon.

For the 1st base foul camera, a ball going over the foul pole to the right of that line is not a home run. It sounds so obvious (and inexpensive) that I must be missing something.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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Watching today's game (Baltimore), it occurred to me how simple and obvious it would be to establish 2 permanent foul ball cameras at each stadium...run by MLB.

All you'd need is a fixed camera shooting straight down each foul line, with the foul pole centered. The view would include a permanent vertical line re-calibrated to the foul line (Home Plate -> 1st or 3rd base -> foul pole) before each game - and the camera would have a lens that kept everything in its field of vision - from the bottom of the foul pole up, say, 75 degrees (or whatever) above the horizon.

For the 1st base foul camera, a ball going over the foul pole to the right of that line is not a home run. It sounds so obvious (and inexpensive) that I must be missing something.
Ironically Baltimore once had this exact setup - two cameras behind the plate pointing down both lines. I don't know what happened to them but it was a feature of Oriole broadcasts that I always appreciated. Perhaps this didn't make the migration from Memorial Stadium to Camden Yards.