The issue for me with the ABS has always been how awful it is at actually calling balls and strikes. It might be a good pitch, but if it quite literally isn't on the plate, it should be a ball. What became annoying was umpires rewarding pitchers by giving them pitches off the plate. I could tell you when a pitch was a strike, and I could tell when a pitch was 2 inches off the plate. I stepped into the batter’s box thousands of times over the course of my career. If the ball touches a corner, it’s a strike. Like it or not, an automatic strike zone is coming to Major League Baseball eventually. I understand this is taking the human element out of the game, but it seems like more and more umpires are letting their egos become part of the game, and that just can’t happen.Īt the end of the day, there is a home plate. With this ABS implementation, the league states, "It will be used to assist home plate umpires in calling balls and strikes." That makes it seem that the system will not be the end-all, be-all when it comes to what is a ball and what is a strike. In the Atlantic League, the automatic strike zone was the definitive voice in determining balls and strikes. There will still be an umpire standing behind home plate. Now it is time to bring it to the minor leagues. The automatic ball/strike system (ABS) has been implemented in the Atlantic League, an independent professional baseball league, and tested in the Arizona Fall League. I got to experience this rule when I played in the minor leagues, and I thought it worked pretty smoothly. That said, pitching changes can take forever, and some pitchers take way too long between pitches. I have no problem, as I stated earlier, with baseball games taking a while. More potential regulations could be added. The timers will be used between innings to make sure the first pitch of each inning is thrown by a certain time, between pitches and during pitching changes. With this change, there will be one timer in the outfield and two behind home plate between the dugouts. My thoughts: I don’t love this rule and don’t see it making its way to the big leagues.įollowing successful pace-of-play rule changes in the Florida State League (high-A) in 2019, the league is continuing to experiment. With this change, the process of picking off will take a lot longer, leading to larger leads off of bases and more stolen base attempts. Essentially, the pitcher can jump and turn at the same time and quickly get the runner scurrying back to the base. In the event that a pitcher fails to comply, the penalty will be a balk.Ĭurrently, when a pitcher is on the mound, he doesn't have to step off the rubber before attempting to pick off a batter. With this rule, pitchers are required to disengage from the rubber on the mound prior to throwing to any base. When a defense sees that a batter hits the ball in one area 90% of the time, why shouldn't they be allowed to put extra defenders there? If a pitcher is allowed to look at a scouting report and see that I can’t hit a slider (which I couldn’t), that pitcher will throw me 90% sliders (which they did). You get eight defenders in the field, and their one and only job is to make sure they defend the baseball so that the other team doesn’t score runs. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say I love the shift, but I also don’t hate it. Depending on how that goes, the rule could also make it mandatory to have two players on each side of second base. To start, it states that the defensive team must have four players in the infield, and each must have both feet in the dirt within the outer boundary of the infield. This one has been talked about for the past few years: the defensive shifts rule. I think we could see some cool things if this rule ends up sticking. I also like this because I think it allows runners more ways to get creative when diving into bases. If this rule results in more stolen base attempts and, more importantly, fewer injuries, count me in. It won’t make the biggest difference in terms of infield singles and stolen bases, but with the base 3 inches closer to the runner, we will see more of both. My thoughts: This rule makes complete sense to me. Injuries aside, it is expected that larger bases will result in a few more infield hits and stolen bases. When running full-speed down the line to first base, there isn’t always a lot of room for the runner to touch the base with the first baseman’s foot right there on the edge. This is first and foremost to reduce injuries and collisions.
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