Kenley Jansen bristles at the proposed pace of play rules. He blames batters who swing for the fences and untested pitchers for the slow down in the game:
“Hitters are different now, because there’s no contact hitters anymore,” Jansen said. “Everybody wants to swing for the fences. There’s a lot more strikeouts. A lot of walks. Because pitchers don’t command now. Because organizations take guys — ‘Oh, this guy throws 99 mph in low-A, let’s bump him up to double-A. Oh, he did a little bit well. Let’s put him in the big leagues.'”
However, Jansen may just be trying to protest himself:
Jansen is one of baseball’s more deliberate pitchers. He averaged 29 seconds between pitches in 2017, which tied for 14th-slowest among the 355 pitchers who threw at least 50 innings, according to FanGraphs. The Dodgers, of course, employ the sport’s most obvious offender: Pedro Baez, who led the sport at 31.1 seconds between pitches last season.
Note that being a closer, and an extremely good closer, Jansen tends to pitch with the bases empty. In 2017, he faced 163 batters with the bases empty, 94 with men on. He works with no one on 63% of the time, yet is still one of the slowest pitchers in the game.
Jansen might argue that working slowly makes him good and helps him earn more money. Which again, is why I believe that MLB should pay players to move the game along. If you believe Jansen’s criticism above is valid, encouraging contact would be another way of accomplishing the goal. That might mean deadening the ball, lowering the mound to reduce the speed of pitches, and moving all fences back to reduce home runs.
Maybe MLB, instead of expanding, could set up a competitive AAAA league that tested faster play. This league could experiment with equipment, field dimensions, playing rules, etc., to see what the fans like and don’t like. It would be baseball’s version of mixed doubles curling.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2Cny6oK
No comments:
Post a Comment