Proposed strike zone changes

[spinowner]

This is excerpted from Phil Miller's piece in today's StarTribune.

 

By Phil Miller Star Tribune  JUNE 4, 2016 — 8:08PM

ERIC CHRISTIAN SMITH, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Twins split on possible changes to strike zone

 

MLB's competition committee last month recommended eliminating the bottom 2-3 inches of the strike zone, sources told ESPN.com, raising the lower boundary from "the hollow beneath the kneecap," as the official rules currently state, to "the top of the hitter's knees." The electorate is divided, and their opinions are nonnegotiable. When the vote is finally held this November, one side is guaranteed to be unhappy.

 

Baseball’s strike zone, as it turns out, has a lot in common with Trump vs. ­Clinton. “It’s a split decision around here,” Joe Mauer said, “depending on who you ask.” It might not sound like a big change, but players know the difference could be profound.

 

Not surprisingly, hitters such as Joe Mauer favor a tightened strike zone while pitchers such as Tyler Duffey worry it will hurt their effectiveness. “It goes against everything I’ve ever learned — keep the ball down, so they can’t hit the ball out of the park,” Twins righthander Tyler Duffey said. “If I can’t pitch down there, I’m really in trouble. You won’t be talking to me, because I won’t be here anymore.”

Mauer, though, believes a tightening up of the strike zone would simply be a logical correction, a necessary reversal to a trend he says he has seen over the past five years or so. More low pitches are called strikes now than when his career began. But there are other changes to the game, too, that can’t be fixed with a rule change. The proliferation of pitchers throwing close to 100 miles per hour or more, the pitch limits and bullpen specialization that keeps relievers fresh, and the ability to induce even the fastest pitches to break as they approach the plate.

 

All those factors have contributed to an explosion of strikeouts — and a dramatic decline in the number of balls put in play.“With guys throwing as hard as they are now, and all the movement they have on it, [hitting is] not an easy thing,” Mauer said. He’d favor a change? “Absolutely.”

 

With all due respect to Duffey, so should baseball fans. The gradual lowering of the strike zone began when MLB began installing pitch-tracking systems: first QuesTec and eventually Pitchf/x, in ballparks 15 years ago to help rate umpires. The idea was to reduce the individuality of each umpire’s strike zone, but one effect was that more low pitches were called strikes.

 

“Low pitches are the hardest to make solid contact,” Brian Dozier said. “If pitches below the knees are strikes, you’re just going to have more strikeouts and more ground balls. … Of course, if you raise [the zone], you’ll have more walks, and that’s not very exciting, either.”

 

That could be the effect at first, but pitchers would adjust, and be forced to throw more hittable pitches, hopefully resulting in more action. The strikeout boom needs to be rolled back a bit. For the first time in history, an average game features more than eight whiffs per team this season, or nearly 30 percent of all outs. In 1981, the average was 9.5 — for both teams — a surge of 78 percent in outs that don’t require the ball be put in play. That’s a lot of non-action for a sport trying to market itself to young people drawn to football and basketball.

 

Still, Paul Molitor is skeptical. “I’ve seen attempts to change the strike zone in the past, and it gets heavy attention and a lot of emphasis usually that particular spring training,” said the Twins manager, trying to remain neutral. “But somehow it seems to wane, and umpires revert back to what they do.”

[spinowner]

I wasn't aware this was being considered. I can certainly understand how some higher-ups in baseball would want to reduce the number of strikeouts, but the other side of the double-edged sword is that this would increase the length of games.

[diehardtwinsfan]

I could care less about changing it.  Go ahead, change it or not.  I do care that it is called consistently.  What really needs to happen is automated strikes and balls.