1. Pickler to Grossman: "Go stand where I told you, about 5 to 10 feet from the foul line, and only chase balls towards the line. Don't chase anything hit further into the field of play." Sounds about right. I think it can work.

2. Makes too much sense. If the bat barrel (or any of the bat) enters the strike zone, call it a swing. Perfectly fair. I think there would be many more check swing strikes. My gut sense tells me that batters get more leeway than they deserve. Maybe more strikes means faster games, for the "make games faster" crowd.

3. Ugly

4. Unfortunate.

Wasn't there a fifth? Asking for a friend.

5. Personal to Chief: Were you born cranky, or did you have to work at it?

(Expecting the reply from him to be "yes.")

I thought I heard someone say on air that the rulebook doesn't really clearly call out how a "checked swing" works.. it can be the wrists, it can be the bat head crossing the plate, it can be the bat breaking the parallel with the front of the plate..

I did a quick scan of the rules and didn't find any detail.

I thought I heard someone say on air that the rulebook doesn't really clearly call out how a "checked swing" works.. it can be the wrists, it can be the bat head crossing the plate, it can be the bat breaking the parallel with the front of the plate..

 

I did a quick scan of the rules and didn't find any detail.

Fun question. Closest I can come is (2017 version) "Rule 8.02[c] Comment". It makes repeated use of the term "half swing". This term shows up nowhere else in the rules. Lacking any specific definition, common sense would tell me that a line perpendicular to the batter should be imagined, and if the bat goes beyond this, then it's a swing. Since the batter normally is squared away and is astride the plate, this would have the bat cross no more than half the plate. But if the stance is different, the bat might cross or not cross the plate at the halfway point.

Stew Thornley is not an MLB ump, of course, but he checked the case book for me and "there is stuff on appealing a half swing but nothing on what a half swing is. So the best answer is, "I know it when I see it,"