Welcome to October, the sport junkie’s favorite month, and the most nightmarish time of the year for those making dinner arrangements — especially on weekends.
If you are a “young old-timer,” as the late, great John Steadman was fond of calling those of the mature set, you remember when the four seasons were best known as baseball, football, basketball/hockey — and snow shoveling.
These days, things are not so neatly wrapped into one package — October and whatever you do between the Super Bowl and spring training. October is the month when all athletes receiving a paycheck (or NIL deal rewarding name, image and likeness) will be plying their wares, with visions of championships in the air.
With that in mind, let’s go on a romp around the calendar, taking a peek back while also looking ahead.
And what better way to dissect the new rules baseball will introduce in 2023 than to ask a pertinent question that will ultimately get answered and make a brilliant (my assessment) suggestion, which will be routinely ignored.
With pitch clocks to keep track of elapsed time between innings, pitches and at-bats, along with regulations limiting the number of throws to occupied bases and restricting defensive players to assigned positions, the obvious question is a simple one — who is going to do the bookkeeping? The answer, of course, is the umpires, who from now on will also be known as the enforcers.
It’s even tougher to digest than it is to dissect, but here are the changes for next year.
The penalty for pitchers (or catchers) exceeding the time limit is one ball added to the count; for the hitter, it would cost a strike. For excessive activity against a baserunner, the penalty is a balk, a one-base advance. If MLB has announced the penalty for infielders roaming into the outfield it has escaped me, but I don’t anticipate any delay-of-game penalties, because after all these measures are designed to speed up the game.
While on that subject, something else you should know is that the time between each half inning is being chopped by 15 seconds. By unofficial count that will reduce playing time one minute for every two innings. Every little bit helps.
It’s all kind of exhausting, so much so that I can envision an idea about an umpire being added to the crew just to keep track of things. That will get as much support as the one made many moons ago, suggesting umpires be rotated into the official scorer’s chair every fifth day — as though having the same guy call a player out on strikes one night and rule hit or error against him the next would create an ideal workplace.
Banning the defensive shift, of course, is the most drastic change. It is the competition committee’s solution for hitters who can’t hit to the opposite field, and that of course will not change. Going forward it should be known as the “left-handers rule,” as it is clearly designed to open up right field for those who hit from the left side of the plate.
Guarding the ground infielders walk on is a natural for umpires, who are routinely stationed in the outfield — except when there is a runner on second, when they generally move in to get a better look. Henceforth we can assume those calls will be made from an outfield angle.
All of this, you understand, is being done in an effort to juice up the offense — and if you’re asking how they’re going to speed up the game by increasing the number of runs, step to the head of the classroom. They claim tryouts in the minor leagues have reduced the average time of game by 29 minutes, but it remains to be seen how that translates to MLB.
In that regard, and in the best interest of the game of course, comes a bold suggestion to speed up the process by introducing the new shift rule to the largest audience at the earliest possible time. Unfortunately it comes too late for a fall ball tryout, and that really is too bad.
They could’ve called it the “Back to the Future” World Series. We could have had a World Series the way it used to be … and the way it will be.
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It’s very amusing that Houston left-hander Framber Valdez was credited with a major league record of 25 straight “quality starts,” considering that the vastly overrated quality start is not even an official statistic. At least not yet, and I wouldn’t bet against it somewhere along the line. Thanks to the patience of manager Dusty Baker, Valdez would have made it to 26 had he gotten one more out in his last start against the Orioles Sept. 24, even though the score was 7-7 at the time.
In case you missed it, a pitcher’s “start” is considered quality if he allows no more than three earned runs in at least six innings. And by the way, four earned in eight, though it equates to the same 4.50 ERA, is just another “attaboy,” or nice try in layman’s terms.
Just for fun, I googled “quality start” and got the information that it has effectively replaced complete games as an acceptable standard for starting pitchers. Yeesh, what in the name of Bert Blyleven and Jim Palmer is going on here?
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Crossing over the line with this one, which unfortunately the Ravens were unable to do against the Bills in early October, but I can’t resist the opportunity. It’s clear the analytical feedback is not the same in the two sports.
The routine ground ball to an unguarded area of the infield that drives in two runs but might otherwise result in a double play doesn’t seem to stir the nest like a failed decision to “go for it” on fourth-and-goal at the 2-yard line. Just ask John Harbaugh.
And, really, did anybody really think the Ravens would win that game with a field goal and four minutes left? OK, enough of that, I’ll get back where I belong.
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Speaking of pertinent questions, has Alex Rodriguez become the face of baseball?
I don’t know about commissioner Rob Manfred, who led the legal battle to expose A-Rod all those years ago, but count me among those who have seen him more than enough in the TV booth. It seems like he’s on the screen every time you turn around, and there’s no end in sight.
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Quick thought: I’m not sure what the Orioles plan to do with the $600 million that will eventually be earmarked for improvements at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, but I hope they save a few dollars for an improved sound system.
It’s the one area of OPACY that has needed improvement from Day One.
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It’s OK to tolerate a little white lie every now and again. That was my prevalent thought every time I watched a gracious Aaron Judge say he “hadn’t really given it much thought,” as he chased Roger Maris’ American League home run record. Of course he did. How could he not, especially as the chase dragged on near the end of the season?
But when the fan who caught the 62nd home run ball said “I haven’t thought about it” when he was asked what he was going to do with his very valuable souvenir … well, that was a bit more than a tiny tale. Even in only the brief minutes before he was escorted out of the building, he had to be thinking … and fast … as well he should.
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Here are a couple more Judge items (Judgements?). He isn’t the biggest runaway leader in the Yankees’ clubhouse. As impressive as his home run count was, it didn’t double the number of runner-up Mike Trout, who hit 40.
On the other hand, manager Aaron Boone managed to get thrown out of nine games, good enough to lap the field. If that doesn’t sound like a big number, it’s more than Earl Weaver ever posted when he led the league a whopping seven times. Makes you wonder what kind of numbers Boone could’ve posted without the replay system.
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One final (finally!) note: Neither Judge’s record, nor the one he broke that had been set by Roger Maris, carried an asterisk, as many seem to think. Although former commissioner Ford Frick had said the record would have to be set within the framework of the old 154-game schedule, there was never an official declaration, so 61 years after Maris hit his 61st home run in 1961, Judge hit his 62nd — with both records being set in the 161st game of each season.
Jim Henneman can be contacted at JimH@pressboxonline.com
Issue 277: October/November 2022
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox
Originally published Oct. 19, 2022