3-Batter Minimum
Joe Madden didn’t like it.
He felt it was the league interfering with manager options and decisions.
The rule is interesting – pitchers must now face a minimum of three batters, but you can use one pitcher for one batter if it is the third out of the inning.
Playoff Changes
The rule change that people are flipping out on most is a proposed new playoff format. It looks interesting on the surface but there are lots of problems.
The top team gets a bye.
Then six remaining teams do a best of three, where the top teams get to select a bottom team (who they think they line-up best against),
and the top team with the bye then picks any of the winning teams to face.
Trevor Bauer thinks the top team having so much time off is detrimental to the 6 month routine…
A pitcher may end up going 10 days off before first play-off game.
Say a pitcher plays game 158 ( so 159-162 you are off), if you are the top team and the best-of-three goes three games with a day-off on both ends…
Electronic Strike Zone
More people should be talking about the electronic strike zone.
We are envisioning some very confusing moments for pitchers, batters, and managers alike when umps are off on the zone.
The worst will be when the first inning has zone problems with the strikes.
Yikes!
The starting pitchers freak out.
(lip reading): “So that was not a strike – but the last one was. Right? No? It was outside? So that one is high? Was it high? No. But the last one was good…? Right? Looked good to me. OK. It’s high.”
Meanwhile, the batter is working on their Oscar performance to get out of the way of an inside or high pitch, or takes a strike and just starts walking toward first base as the catcher is picking the ball up off the dirt and holding it the middle of the plate.
Veins in the umpire’s neck are bulging out – and we are only ten minutes into a game.
Yuck.
