BVSA Sports Show: Episode 19

Joe – Alright, we’re live, BVSA Sports Show episode 19. We have Matt, we have Virg. It’s kind of in a way Christmas Eve for all of us right now. Let me explain why. It’s March 1st, which means we can officially talk baseball. It’s March 1st, so it’s getting closer and closer to the golf season for you. Oh, and I leave for Las Vegas tomorrow, so something going for each of us. I feel like every time we get on the show now, I’m like a day or two away from going on some kind of gambling trip, but I swear it’s all warranted. Mohegan was work. Vegas is a bachelor party, and then next week we’re going golfing. Just happens to be a casino in Atlantic City, yeah, for March Madness too. So all national holidays. Alright, so last time we were on the show with Gio, we talked football. That was kind of the last of it until something happens, until a piece falls, whether that’s Rodgers or Carr, etc. I guess I can be happy and say Carson Wentz has been released. 

Virg – Also could be a trade at the first pick.

Joe – We saw today that the number one pick, the Georgia guy, is now involved in that whole crash and everything, so his draft stock is going like this. So more to come from that. But today is about baseball. Matt wants his 30-second segment at the end about golf, and that’s all we’re going to do today. The World Baseball Classic starts next Tuesday. Let’s start with MLB, and then segue into the World Baseball Classic towards the back end. I feel like we have to start with this new pitch clock, hitters’ clock, whatever they call it, the new rules implemented this year. We’re seeing it in spring training. We saw it happen with LSU first, I believe, or like the game ended on some kind of violation, and then it happened in the Red Sox game with a hitter who literally just shrugs his shoulders, and he thought he was right, right? So, like, that dramatic effect, I guess, for a second of, like, “Oh, is it me, or was it the pitcher?” kind of thing. I hate it, and I’ll leave it at that for now. Virg, I’d love to hear your… You’re on the clock. 

Virg – I’m on the clock. Yeah, I’ll make sure I’m looking at you at what, eight seconds? The hitter has to look at you. 

Joe – Go ahead, take it away. 

Virg – It’s taking everything away from the hitters. This is now squarely pitcher benefit. I’m going to work at my pace. The hitter can’t adjust too. I just threw him a 1-1 slider, and now he doesn’t know what I’m coming back with. He’s got to be in the box. He’s got to be ready. The pitchers that work slow, they’ll speed up naturally. But think about all the great moments in history. The batter steps out of the box. It’s a deep breath. It’s like finding yourself. Everything that these guys have done their entire career, it’s like that’s now changed, where the pitchers, for someone like Scherzer, who we saw the other day calling his own game, he said, “You know, he was following it, but when I had a feeling, I pressed buttons and told my cather what I wanted” Why? What location? But for him, we’re going to watch him just run through a lineup in two hours. For hitters, they have no time to adjust. No time to think. You can’t think about the scouting report that they take hours upon hours to review. It’s… It’s going to go through a really weird phase where… I don’t want to completely jump down it. Much like any other rule, there will be adjustments, but I think playoffs will see either no clock or extend the clock. We’ll see some things down the road. But this first month of spring training, month of the season, once staple hits may be off. It’s going to be weird. It’s going to be an odd time in baseball. 

Matt – So, I’ll take a different angle because you more so would know about it from the game aspect. But when I went to school, we actually talked about this in one of my classes because I went for sports, right? Like we had stuff like this come up. We were talking about how fans of the game, it was tougher to watch because of blackouts and all that stuff. So, they wanted to speed up the game. They felt like people would enjoy it more if there was that aspect to it because people think it takes too long. It’s boring, blah, blah. Obviously, we all love it, right? We all enjoy watching baseball. It’s just part of our lives. But you have so many people that won’t tune in because they’re going to watch three pitches and now it’s like a 2-1 count. Like, all right, man, I’m bored. Like, nothing’s happening. What are we doing? I don’t feel like that is going to change much. I don’t think you’re going to get the younger fans that they’re looking to get. They’re looking for something that’s fast-paced, that’s got action all the time. Now, of course, you’re going to have the people that are growing up with baseball and parents teaching them about it that they’re going to get into it, I’m sure. But I don’t think you’re going to gain new fans. I don’t think it’s going to be bringing in anyone new. It’s just going to be the same core fan base that you’ve had that I feel like, I don’t know. I don’t think the speeding up is going to change that.

Virg – I completely agree. The lot, the shift, the non-shifts will go for more offense, get more fans, not the other way around. I definitely don’t think that’s going to have more of an effect on who watches and who stays too, because all three of us know the amount of information that has to go through a 2-1 count. Yeah, it could be endless depending on the situation. Oh, yeah, the rest of the field. But we are all football fans. A lot of people that watch this are football fans. A 15-minute quarter isn’t 15 minutes. And now the things that happen in a 15-minute quarter, but because people are getting hit or there’s a deep ball, there’s always something. For baseball if you watch three straight full counts and one ends in a walk, one ends in a strikeout, then you’re hoping someone puts the ball in play. Yeah, more likely to end in shifts. We’ll do what the pitch clock is right now being geared towards. 

Joe – I have 15 different thoughts in my head trying to figure out how to organize them all as you guys are talking. But what you just said about the shift and tied in with the bigger bases, which now it’s four and a half inches closer, and you said it’s going to lead to more stolen bases. So those two things are going to fix it where there’s more offense. I’m all for it. But isn’t it like, I’m pretty sure it’s a stat. I don’t know. I’m sure it fluctuates year to year, but it’s something along the lines of eight minutes of action in a baseball game, call it 10. Whatever this isn’t going to increase that. The pitch clocks and stuff all it’s going to do is deduct the final number by a half hour, right? We’re seeing now games or spring training games are two hours and 30 minutes instead of three. But every sport we watch, you guys watch football, college football especially, basketball, hockey, they’re all three-hour games or more. College football championship goes four hours, right? The last two minutes of a basketball game takes 30 minutes sometimes. Right, it’s what we sign up for. It’s what we, I don’t say we like or don’t like, but it’s part of the sport that we love. So there’s an extreme where we’re seeing, I always botch the guy’s name, the video that’s been going out with Jose Altuve’s inside the park home run from a wild card game like years ago. Pedro strope apparently in between two pitches, Jose Altuve hits an inside the park home run like seven times. So for me, that’s extreme that’s got to go in this game. 

Virg – It wasn’t that I haven’t seen the video to say that, but wasn’t that the playoff video we were talking about? 

Joe – Yeah, it was a playoff video. Batter steps out. It’s like a cat and mouse game. 

Matt – Pitchers mental game to it, right? 

Joe – So to me, that is extreme, and that’s got to go. In this game, it wasn’t that I haven’t seen the video to say that, but wasn’t that the playoff video we were talking about? Yeah, it was a playoff video. Batter steps out. It’s like a cat and mouse game, mental game to it, right? So to me, that is extreme, and that’s got to go. In this game, but this, to me, is silly, right? We watched it in spring training already. We’re going to watch it in a big game in the regular season where a game ends because, you know, that dream, I think you were talking about the other day, that dream scenario that every kid goes in the batter’s box. Oh, full count, bases loaded, two outs, World Series game seven. This, right? Imagine that game ends because of the clock. 

Joe – Yeah, and then you have to look at the umpire and see which way is it going. Is it pitcher or is it hitter? And it’s just… I think it’s a really bad look. And Virg, to your point, I watched one of my buddies send out a thing of, you know, all these new rules over the last 20 years and how everyone had the same exact reaction. Oh, this is going to ruin baseball. I think they said it with like the universal DH or interleague play or whatever. Every rule. So we’ll give it a chance and hopefully they tweak. But it sounds to me like the no shift and it sounds to me like the bigger bases can be good and lead to offense. With this one, I’m not seeing it.

Virg –  The one rule I want to get rid of still is the extra innings runner at second. I will never get behind that for ending the game sooner or more offense, whatever it is. It’s artificial. It’s more towards not real baseball than anything else. Yeah, I’ll go for robot umps with strike zones before I go for pulling a guy who made the last out the last inning to second base. 

Matt – Yeah, that’s funny too. Like you say that too because last year I went to a game and it went 13 innings with someone on second every single time. And it didn’t matter. We were there forever. And there was a guy on second every inning. 

Virg – Brian Kennedy wrote a book of like all the situations and the odds on scoring runs depending on outs and where the runner is. There’s one way to win that game if you’re the away team and one way to win that game if you’re the home team in the 10th inning. If you just followed what that book said, tendency leads that you’ll win that game. Yeah, or you’ll at leasy score that run and they might score in the bottom. Teams don’t do that. So, it’s not even like they’re being efficient with the fact that they start the run exciting days. So, we want to talk about getting rid of a rule. Let the pitch clock play out for half a season. We’ve seen how stupid the runner at second base has been. Houston-Seattle went 18 innings. Did not matter. 

Joe – I remember there are a lot of people like us that love that. So, for us, that idea of free baseball, right? When the game goes into extra innings, whether you’re at the ballpark or you’re home, like, we live for that. And we’re staying in our seats. We stay to the final out.

For more information and our opinions on the MLB rule changes click the video below!