This rule change was made last offseason.The intentional walk change started this year I think.It is probably to speed up the game.
Baseball is a great game, but diluted talent (especially pitching), weekend night games, March start-up dates, late October/even into November World Series games, defensive shifts and the batters' inability or refusal to hit to the opposite field to counter shifts, walk-off celebrations by teams out of contention, the 3-5 hour rain delays, starting the season away from domed stadiums or southern cities, head first slides, the tedious righty-lefty matchups,and the diminishing reliance of bunting and the hit-and-run have made this game less fun to watch than 25 years ago and beyond.There’s baseball still being played somewhere?
It’s football season baby!![]()
The 20 second "pitch clock" is likely coming in 2020 (if not agreed to by the Union for next year); they've been doing it in the minors already and that will fix the batters constant need to step-out and adjust (strike assessed if they're out of the box with 5 seconds or less to go on the clock) and pitchers wandering around the mound and rubbing the ball (ball assessed if clock expires).Batters....quit stepping out of the box and adjusting your damn batting glove after every pitch.
Pitchers....throw the damn baseball.
This will speed up the game by at least 20 minutes.
Considering you're watching either a strikeout or home-run, not a ton of actual "ball in play" action going on. May as well just turn the games into actual home-run derby contests and be done with it. They're basically pretending to play actual games now. Completely unwatchable.You could literally watch an entire game while reading The Snows of Kilimanjaro completely.
I'm not as bothered as this as some people -- dumb shits are only hurting themselves (Machado's case). But in an otherwise boring ass game, a little flair doesn't bother me. And the "unwritten rules" are quite dumb IMO. Beaning someone in the earhole for showing excitement isn't reasonable. Bruised ego vs. bruised brain? Nah, no thanks.Here's another pet peeve:
Batters standing at home plate watching the flight of ball and not running it out.
Muncy's 18th inning walk-off homer had him standing at/near home plate watching his homer that barely cleared the wall.....and Machado's off the wall hit that netted only a single as he stood at home plate watching it.
Wish they would allow pitchers to follow the Don Drysdale-Bob Gibson way when they saw a batter showing them up.
Not talking about head shots, only brush-backs. Throwing at a batter's head should not be legal or tolerated. I listened to the games where Tony Conigliaro (1967) and Dickie Thon (1984) were beaned....and in both cases, a potential HOF career ended, but both went on to play at a much lesser level.I'm not as bothered as this as some people -- dumb shits are only hurting themselves (Machado's case). But in an otherwise boring ass game, a little flair doesn't bother me. And the "unwritten rules" are quite dumb IMO. Beaning someone in the earhole for showing excitement isn't reasonable. Bruised ego vs. bruised brain? Nah, no thanks.
Here's another pet peeve:
Batters standing at home plate watching the flight of ball and not running it out.
Muncy's 18th inning walk-off homer had him standing at/near home plate watching his homer that barely cleared the wall.....and Machado's off the wall hit that netted only a single as he stood at home plate watching it.
Wish they would allow pitchers to follow the Don Drysdale-Bob Gibson way when they saw a batter showing them up.