I suspect it’s nothing more than machismo. Safety bases are for little-leaguers! We don’t need those, we’re tough men!
Which is obviously not a good reason, so your point stands.
That was my guess as well. “They have those for softball!” being the other protest I’m sure we’ll hear.
Bigger bases makes a lot of sense to me. The bases they used in the minors last year were 3” wider and longer. That shrinks the base path by 6” - plenty of steal attempts would be dramatically different if you factor that in, AND give the runner a bigger target. The bases apparently are also lower, which allegedly helps prevent your foot from popping up, reducing those micro-second tags that are obnoxious on replay.
This is actually a rather clever idea.
I know I’m in the minority of baseball fans on this board when I say that those ticky-tacky “foot left the base for a second” tag outs doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m trying to unpack your post. But it looks like you’re OK with stopping the game for a review of “did he keep his foot on the bag?”
In theory, I don’t have a problem with it. I also don’t mind the “human” element of the game, where calls are missed by the umpires.
I guess I’m apathetic about this issue. I don’t mind the delay, but I’m okay with eliminating it.
I would actually like to eliminate instant replay in baseball. I think the little it adds is outweighed by how awful it is.
I am heavily in favor of batters stay in the box and pitchers have to throw the ball. This will do wonders to speed up the game.
I don’t care about the shifts. Eventually young hitters will come up having learned to hit into shifts and shifts don’t slow the game down.
I’m in favor of the computer calling balls and strikes. Get that up and running as fast as possible. But this is minor, not major.
It won’t happen, but removing 20-30 seconds between each half inning would do wonders for the game. Combined with other time savers above, we would really speed up the game a goodly amount.
I hate the expanded playoffs. I will be a grumpy old man about this crap forever. I would prefer less and not more playoff teams.
A safer base at 1st sounds good to me. I can’t argue against it.
I’ve seen too many egregious calls overturned to go back, but I would like to see a time limit. If the review umpire can’t make a decisive call in 30 or 45 seconds, the call on the field stands.
Also, any batter caught adjusting their gloves during an at-bat is automatically banned from wearing them for one year.
Somewhere, Nomar Garciaparra is glad that he retired before @BlankSlate became commissioner.
I agree on both counts.
Somewhere, Ted Williams is bemoaning the fact that the shift was not banned in time for the 1946 World Series.
Hehe! I never actually saw him play, but I remember playing games against the Cubs in MVP Baseball 2005, and Nomar would adjust his gloves after EVERY. GODDAMN. PITCH. Did he do that in real life?
Why not ban batting gloves? Make them bat hare handed like we all did as kids.
I always noticed Posada’s bare hands when he was hitting because there are very few players who don’t wear them. For those that do, they all buy defective gloves that don’t fit right. Solving this problem should be included in the CBA.
Per at-bat, you get one warning for stepping out of the box. In other words, a freebie in case you really need to step out to adjust your cup or wipe your eyes. After that, each step-out is a strike. If you already have 2 strikes and you step out, it’s a strikeout.
Agreed. Gloves will either get better really fast or will stop being worn.
When it comes to pace of play, if we want to get back to the 60’s in terms of duration then it looks like about 30 or so seconds per plate appearance needs get shaved off.
Yes. He did. It was even more annoying than you remember from the game.
Once again, the solution to pace of game is to eliminate at least 1/3 of the commercials. Until they do that, everything else is just theater.
If given the choice of eliminating 60 seconds/inning by either cutting commercials or speeding up pitches, I’d take speeding up pitches any day. With commercials, I can run to the fridge, take a leak, or browse my phone until coverage returns. But the extra time between each pitch is entirely time lost and does nothing but increase my boredom.
At least in Seattle, they don’t even need the whole break. The network usually has non-revenue filler between innings of upcoming shows on their own network. I doubt it would be so much of that if they had people willing to pay for the 30 seconds.
The only reason I don’t mind the commercials so much is that I start the game 30 minutes late and skip them. That’s harder to do with the delays for glove adjustments and such.