Sunday Notes

David Laurila produces another great Sunday notes column. Here’s Larry Andersen on speeding up the game:

“This is all about speeding the game up, but I honestly don’t know who wants to speed the game up,” said a seemingly exasperated Andersen. “If it’s MLB, then why are they implementing all of these rules, and all of these things, that slow the game down? Why don’t they get umpires who’ll call strikes? We had a game… I won’t mention who the umpire was, but if you look it up on FanGraphs, there were six pitches in the first two innings that should have been strikes. One of them split the middle of the diagram, and it was called a ball.

“We’ve got replay, so why not get an electronic thing to put on the plate. Forget the home plate umpire. That would speed the game up as much as anything. If umpires would call strikes and force guys to swing the bat… if they would call the strike zone the strike zone, instead of from the knees to the bottom of the zipper — that’s the strike zone now. It’s not the belt. It’s not the letters. It’s not what the rule book says. To me, that’s the biggest thing that slows the game down, and I don’t know why they can’t see that.”

MLB decided they wanted more offense as well, and more offense means slower games.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2tAB6gQ