The most important piece of the memo distributed Wednesday was the league changing replay review rules on potential violations of the infield shift ban. Here are the issues MLB is tweaking, with some comments from me: This should help eliminate the idea that a game could be decided on a timer violation, as it was on the first spring weekend in a Red Sox/Braves game. I would imagine there will be very few such violations once the regular season begins. This was expected to happen as players got more used to the timer.
Passan reports that pitch timer violations have dropped from 2.03 per game in the first week of spring games to 1.03 per game last week, which matches with the anecdotal evidence I have from having attended 14 spring games.
MLB, which has control over on-field rules, will continue with the parameters of the pitch clock that players have been using all spring: 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base, plus the hitter needing to be “alert” in the batter’s box with 8 seconds remaining. Today, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that there will in fact be some tweaks - but not for the pitch timer (also known as the “pitch clock”): Tuesday, we learned, via Evan Drellich of The Athletic, that Major League Baseball was considering tweaking some of the new rules instituted for the 2023 season.
0 kommentar(er)
