If you want to have some lucrative fun this summer, see if you can find a casino that takes this prop bet: Total batters hit by pitch, one season.
And the reason? The new mound visit limitations, at least in part, and at least if Houston pitcher Lance McCullers has anything to say about it.
McCullers was trapped watching a televised analysis of the new quarter-measures set out jointly between labor and management to speed up play, at least incrementally, and did what all the cool kids do – he reacted on Twitter.
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“Everyone wants to blame pace of play on mound visits or time in between pitches...” he typed after the talking heads referenced Game 7 of the World Series, which saw a parade of catcher visits to combat an apparent epidemic of sign-stealing. “Well MAYBE address the real issue at hand instead of trying to cover it up and (forcibly) insert rules that may affect the integrity of the game and alter the fairness of the game.
“You think I want to break rhythm and tempo during a game to talk about signs behind my glove? No, It’s a necessary reaction to an issue we, as pitchers and catchers, are facing. I guess enforcing the integrity by hitting batters is better than an extra 4 minutes to discuss signs.”
For “integrity,” autocorrect to “sign-stealing,” including the electronic methods, which apparently is now the scourge of the sport rather than a time-honored method of skullduggery. And the time-honored method for combatting that has been a fastball in the thigh . . . or ribs . . . or wherever the ball happens to go.
We make no claims re: the morality of this – only that it has always been used as the deterrent to brigandry of the strategic kind, and that it is likely to be the response of pitchers in the face of this new impingement on their right of between-pitches privacy.
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And McCullers is not exactly alone, let alone radical, in his thinking. Never mind that the rule won’t be uniformly enforced (they never are), let alone that they will combat the problem the rule was installed to address. Pitchers and catchers and managers will work around the rules to achieve their own desired result, and if that includes one in on the wrists from time to time, then it will include one in on the wrists from time to time . . .
. . . with the predictable reaction of the hitters, which will actually lengthen game times and make the entire rule an absurdity with bruises and mound-chargings.
Baseball has never been played at a slower pace (average time 3:08, and all teams averaging at least three hours for the first time ever), and more batters have been hit than ever, though much of that is accountable to the latest expansion in 1998 and the increase in games. Still, the average of 0.38 per game was the sixth highest since 1900, and when you add the decrease in control, the increase in velocity and now the reaction to sign-stealers, I think with any real application you could see the first 2,000-HBP season, with an increase in man-games lost to injury and money spent on inactive players.
Then you’ll find out just how quickly the powers that be return to the drawing board to shorten game times more sensibly and comprehensively. Probably within 3:08, I’d wager.