the first new MLB rules since '96

bring in a long jumper, have him start on second, hit the rubber on his last jump, deliver the ball from 38 feet

'subpar stuff, but his deceptive delivery really plays up'

After months of haggling over the final details of the new collective bargaining agreement, the document is completed and now in the hands of printers, sources said. This clears the way for the pace-of-action conversations between Major League Baseball and the players' association that are destined to have a lasting impact on a sport long celebrated for its timelessness.

Baseball officials and players may ultimately embrace -- or confront -- two words that seemed unimaginable even five or 10 years ago: pitch clock. And as the union and MLB exchange ideas in the months ahead, some players privately hope that part of the solution is the advent of an electronic strike zone, which they believe could serve to move the games along as much as a time limit between pitches.

http://www.espn.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post/_/id/16805/olney-baseball-keeps-getting-slower-but-change-will-come-by-2018

i am totally on-board with a pitch clock. automatic ball. plus actual enforcement of the batter's box rule ffs. an automatic strike if they step out. DONE. once players got used to it you'd forget it was there. imagine! an end to interminable fiddling with batting gloves, etc.

fuck an electronic strike zone though. a dramatic, physical punch-out from the ump to end an inning is one of the greatest things in baseball.

I'd be cool with a dramatic machine punch-out.

yeah i don't know if i'm ready for robo-umps

pitch clock is long overdue tho

i am wary of the "unintended consequences" of rule changes that Kevin Goldstein used to warn of on the BP podcast

(ie What Will Joe West Do)

you wouldn't be allowed to forget the pitch clock is there. mlb is obsessed with making big deals out of these things. remember when they implemented replay and treated it like a major news event every time a manager made a challenge?

if there's a pitch clock they'd force every stadium to stick a big countdown right behind the batter

there's been a pitch clock in AAA and AA for a couple years now and it's not a problem -- it almost never comes up, in fact. it's just a tool, not a revolution

I feel like the proposed mound-meeting rules unfairly target Willson Contreras, who stands to lose much from his primary form of interpersonal communication

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) January 19, 2018

icymi...Brisbee

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/1/23/16923186/mlb-pitch-clock-proposal-pace-of-play

yeah bring on the pitch clock obviously

so this was weird

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/2/1/16961470/mlb-pitch-clock-rob-manfred-players

there's gonna be a lot of weird maneuvering like this as we edge toward CBA armageddon

i'm sure that manfred and management do indeed want the games to be shorter -- also pretty sure that they'd gladly jettison it as a bargaining chip for something that would save them money

CBA is low in my stack of Armageddons

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-announces-pace-of-play-initiatives/c-266718664

• Mound visits: Mound visits will be limited to six per team per nine innings. Teams will receive an additional visit for every extra inning played. Any manager, coach or player visit to the mound will count as a mound visit. Visits to the mound to clean cleats in rainy weather, to check on an injury or potential injury or after the announcement of an offensive substitution are excepted. Also, normal communication between player and pitcher that do not require either to vacate their position on the field do not count as a visit. If a team is out of visits, the umpire will have discretion to grant a visit at the catcher's request if he believes there has been a cross-up between the pitcher and catcher.

i don't have the stats handy but how often do teams typically visit the mound per 9 innings anyway? 6 per team doesn't really seem like it's going to change anything.

they do it a ton when games get close and into the later innings

sometimes jetes just needs to get everybody on the same page

i think i'm ok with this? i don't care about "pace of play" but it's pretty annoying when the catcher goes up after ever other pitch. i might have limited it differently but i'm ok with reducing mound visits in general.

i don't care about "pace of play" but it's pretty annoying when the catcher goes up after ever other pitch.

I think this is going to kill Julio Teheran.

Catchers Willson Contreras and Martin Maldonado are...ABOVE THE LAW

Catchers Willson Contreras and Martin Maldonado have already said they won’t follow the new mound-visit rule. Specifically, they said they are willing to pay fines rather than comply if the game is on the line.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-mound-visit-rule-might-have-an-enforcement-problem/

clearly the catcher should be ejected

The #MLB proposed a three-batter minimum while the MLB Players Association wants a universal designated hitter in the National League https://t.co/o9kTr78lrK pic.twitter.com/y0fPf0P73h

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) February 6, 2019

A reminder:
MLB pitchers hit .115/.144/.149 in 2018, all-time lows in all 3 slash categories.
42.2 K%, higher than A.Chapman's record as a pitcher.
They had a wRC+ of -25! And they've always been terrible. The last time they had a wRC+ better than 2018 Chris Davis (46) was 1902. pic.twitter.com/h6u95tsJ78

— James Smyth (@JamesSmyth621) February 6, 2019

how do you all feel about a three-batter minimum rule (pitchers must face at least 3 batters before being removed; intended to speed up the game by having fewer pitching changes)?

in favor tbh

yeah i think it's a good idea? seems like if teams wanted to get around it they could have pitchers feign injury after a batter or two. so now we're bringing flopping into the world of baseball. but that's probably not a huge concern.

those were exactly my first reactions, too, but i haven't really thought about it much or heard arguments to the contrary.

i guess there is a genuine health concern argument you could make about forcing pitchers to pitch a certain amount

it's amazing how baseball has convinced itself that it's impossible to make players actually play the game faster so instead they come up with shit like this.

yeaaaah...it does seem possible that someone could come in and have a terrible day *cough greg holland, cough*, throw 10 pitches to the first guy, 8 to the next, 9 to the third, or whatever. and you'd not only be forced to watch greg holland suck for 3 batters in a row, but also throw way too many pitches in the process?

or an old schooler like Tony Larussa might just visit the mound and tell him to hit the next 2 batters on the first pitch and gtfo?

opposed to 3-batter min

i don't like the endless pitching changes, but unintended consequences will likely be worse

kinda like term limits

and whoever tweets for NBC Sports, it's not "the MLB" you savage

if that got out of hand it wouldn't be difficult to institute a rule that if a pitcher is removed for an injury he has to sit for x games (like if you do an injury roster replacement in the playoffs)

i don't really get why relievers need eight warmup pitches -- that's what the bullpen is for. come in, throw two or three to get the feel of the mound, and get going

i'm out on anything that takes strategy out of the game and again, they could just.....execute pitching changes faster? like maybe the tubby manager doesn't have to stroll out to the mound to "take the ball?" maybe the new pitcher doesn't need a dozen warmup throws off the mound after having fully warmed up in the bullpen?

it doesn't take strategy out of the game, it just changes the strategy. you could argue it requires more strategic thinking to plan by batches of three batters instead of being able to swap out pitchers for each batter.

you could, but i wouldn't

i'm out on anything that takes strategy out of the game and again, they could just.....execute pitching changes faster? like maybe the tubby manager doesn't have to stroll out to the mound to "take the ball?" maybe the new pitcher doesn't need a dozen warmup throws off the mound after having fully warmed up in the bullpen?

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, February 6, 2019 11:57 AM (eleven minutes ago

right, or enforce a damn pitch clock!

i think they should just implemented this rule in the minor leagues so that it can work there and then never be properly implemented and enforced in the major leagues, several years later

xp lol

Even though I hate the glacial pace-of-play and the sheer pointlessness of many pitching changes--cf. my whining about the Brewers in last years NL playoff thread--my instinctive reaction to the three-batter idea is no. That seems to be an overly drastic and artificial intervention...I'd have to give it some thought to explain better.

the endless dance of trying to get/avoid hand-on-hand matchups is 'strategy' that isn't very interesting to me

Found this James tweet pretty illuminating:

In 1958 there were 11 major league games in which a starting pitcher was removed before pitching 5 innings or allowing a run to score.

In 1968 there were 11; in 1978, still 11. In 1988 there were 15; in 1998, still 15.

In 2008 there were 32.

In 2018 there were 125.

honestly that still doesn't seem like very much as a proportion of all games played, just over 5% right?

yeah it's an arbitrary stat, the point is that there are a lot of pitching changes and games are taking too long

If you just focus on the increase from 1998 to 2018, you're looking at the same number of games (no expansion since then, right?). That seems like a huge jump to me (and an exponential jump; twice as many by 2008, eight times as many by 2018), and not arbitrary. It shows that needless pitching changes are happening at both ends of the game.