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Mar 11

Bill Ballou: Trying to make sense of MLB’s impending rule changes – Worcester Telegram

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Bill Ballou Telegram & Gazette Staff @BillBallouTG

Zero-based budgeting is one of those ideas that is so good nobody dares try it because it might work.

It is simple enough. Rather than assume that we have to spend 3 percent more money in 2017 than we did in 2016, we do a budget from scratch since it turns out we are not spending nearly as much on whale oil for our lamps as we did in 1845.

So it is for sports and rules.

Even golf is changing its rules, simplifying them for the first time since before a niblick was something you ordered with salsa. If golf can do it, so can baseball, and that is apparently what Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is thinking, too, because the games rules are changing this season.

The most obvious one is the intentional walk rule. No more lobs to the plate, just the old four-finger signal. This is to help speed up games. The Red Sox had 60 intentional walks in their 162 games last year, and figuring each one at 2 minutes from dugout to first base, that will save about 45 seconds a game.

Cutting commercials between innings by 30 seconds would save nine minutes, but try drumming up support for that.

Another new rule gives managers 30 seconds to challenge a call. Ten years ago, there were no challenges, so this is a newer rule to fix a new rule. How about no challenges? Calls even out over the course of a season you win some, you lose some, but you only remember the ones that cost you, not the ones that help you.

Those are the biggest changes, both designed to speed up the game. Its a start, anyway, and indicates that Manfred is serious about doing something. Of course, every new president is serious about balancing the budget, too, but whens the last time that happened?

There are many baseball rules that could incrementally save time, and many that have never made any sense, period.

Balks, for instance. Who knows what a balk is? The balk rule is like field hockey rules. If it looks odd, its a balk, and most times pitchers dont even know they did it. How about eliminating the balk unless the umpires deem it to be intentional? And if it is intentional, just call a ball on the batter dont award the runners an extra base.

Once a year or so, the winning run comes home via a balk. How ridiculous is that?

Somebody tell me why a pitcher can fake a throw to second base but not to first? Wheres the consistency in that? No more fake throws anywhere, anytime, OK? Also, no stepping off the rubber if a pitcher needs time to compose his thoughts. Once the foot is on the rubber, the pitcher must throw the ball or try a pickoff at first.

Cut down on the mound conferences, please. If you cant get your signals straight, thats your problem. Work on it between games or something. One conference an inning per pitcher, thats enough. And why so many exchanges of baseballs? If a ball is damaged, it has to go, no question. But if the pitcher just doesn't like the way it feels, thats life. We all go to work with a headache sometimes.

Finally, umpires are not required to call time out when asked. They shouldnt grant it unless there is a compelling reason, like a batter has something in his eye, a pitcher is swarmed by yellow jackets, or the shortstop sees one of those Quabbin Reservoir rattlesnakes slithering toward him.

A runner slides safely into second or third base and needs time out to brush off his baseball trousers? Too bad just stand on the bag and do it; nothing bad can happen when you stand on the base.

Baseball games get longer the same way we gain weight an ounce a week, 5 pounds a year, 50 pounds a decade. Games can get shorter the same way, too. A minute every year for 10 years will help, or the 45 seconds well get from the four-finger intentional walk.

Baseball Jeopardy

Answers:

1. He had the lowest batting average in the American League last season, among hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting race.

2. The last Red Sox batter to have the lowest average in the AL among qualifying hitters.

3. The last National League batter to hit 50 home runs in a season.

Questions below.

Umps retire

Perhaps lost amid the trades and free agent signings over the winter was the announcement that veteran umpire Jim Joyce joined John Hirschbeck, Tim Welke and Bob Davidson in retiring. Despite his mistake in the Armando Galarraga almost-perfect game, or maybe because of it, Joyce was one of the best umps in the sport. Also, he was one of the nicest people.

Joyce was the umpire who made the interference call on the Red Sox in the ninth inning of Game 3 in the 2013 World Series that led to the St. Louis Cardinals Allen Craig coming home with the winning run. Afterward, as I walked back to my car, I wound up waiting at the same crosswalk with Joyce and his wife, who were headed to dinner.

I told him that after a lot of review, just about everyone in the press box agreed with his call, to which he responded, I know I was right, but that doesnt change the fact that my hearts still beating about 1,000 times a minute.

WBC local connection

The World Baseball Classic already has had one classic game as Team Shrewsbury Street, known more formally as Team Italy, beat Mexico on Thursday night, 10-9. Italy was down, 9-5, heading into the bottom of the ninth and rallied for five runs with Shrewsbury native John Andreoli driving in the tying and winning runs with a single.

Milfords Chris Colabello had helped fuel the rally with a double. Both Colabello and Andreoli had two hits, one of them a home run.

Catching up with...

Wes Chamberlains Red Sox career was short, but dramatic. The powerful outfielder was with Boston for parts of the 1994 and 1995 seasons and had one highlight-reel moment each year.

At Fenway on July 8, 1994, he went up-and-over the bullpen wall in right to take a pinch homer away from Seattles Reggie Jefferson in the top of the ninth of a game Boston led, 4-3. Thanks to the catch, the Sox held on to win.

On May 9, 1995, Chamberlain came up as pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth of a 3-3 tie with the Baltimore Orioles and hit a pitch from Armando Benitez over the Green Monster to win it for Boston. It was the last homer of Chamberlains big-league career.

Reggie Jefferson came to us in 1995, Chamberlain, 50, remembered, and we were teammates. That catch was all we talked about in the clubhouse that year.

Chamberlain played on the Philadelphia Phillies team that lost the 1993 World Series to Toronto, and arrived in Boston when the Sox had a new GM in 1994, Dan Duquette, and then a new manager in 95 in Kevin Kennedy.

It was very transitional, the two years I was there, Chamberlain recalled, but you have to take the good with the bad and go with the flow. The fans in Boston are very intense, and they either love you or hate you. They loved me after the home run. Everybody has moments that break the ice.

Chamberlain played professionally until 2002, then returned to the Chicago area, where he grew up. He is an entrepreneur, a writer, has financial interests and gives private lessons in baseball and softball.

Im pretty content, he said. Those five or six years were the best of my life. Not everybody has a major league career, get to play in a World Series and experience what I did.

Jeopardy questions

1. Who is Alex Gordon? The Royals left fielder hit .220 in 2016.

2. Who is Rob Deer? Deer batted .210 in 1993, finishing the season with the Red Sox after starting it with the Tigers.

3. Who is Prince Fielder? He hit 50 home runs for the Brewers in 2007.

Contact Bill Ballou at william.ballou@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter at BillBallouTG.

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Bill Ballou: Trying to make sense of MLB's impending rule changes - Worcester Telegram

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