LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Major League Baseball is discussing multiple ways to speed the pace of games, and so far the players’ union has agreed to just one: It was announced Tuesday the four-pitch intentional walk will be replaced by a mere signal from the dugout.
That specific change and the quicken-the-game initiative in general were met with a figurative roll of the eyes and vocal disapproval from the Braves’ best player, Freddie Freeman. He doesn’t see logic in making significant changes to save only a minute or two (i.e., eliminating intentional-walk pitches) when the flawed replay system can add several minutes to a typical game.
“My thoughts are, I’m a young guy, but I like old-school baseball,” Freeman said. “I don’t think we should have instant replay, I don’t think we should be changing the game at all. It’s a beautiful game the way it is. They’re always talking about pace of play, but I think instant replay made the game longer. They keep trying to make rules to make the game faster, but they’ve already made one rule that makes the game longer. So I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to make up that time (added for replay rulings).
“Taking away 10 seconds (for each pitch in an intentional walk) — they’re still going to have instant replay take five minutes when we’re just standing around. It (intentional walk) is part of the game. I’ve seen a lot of people score on wild pitches on intentional walks. You just took a chance away from a team to score right there. A lot of people take that for granted right there, but when you’re throwing 95 and all of a sudden you’ve got to throw 70 miles an hour — that’s usually what they do — you don’t know where that ball’s going to go.
“I think the more rules they change, they’re just changing baseball, and baseball was perfect the way it was.”
He added, “I think instant replay makes the game so much longer. Even if you aren’t challenging, you’re still going to stall for a minute-and-a-half to see if there is (reason to).”
One possible rule change that Freeman would fully support is a reduction in the size of expanded rosters in September. Rather than allow teams to use any player on the 40-man roster in all games in September, Freeman said it would make sense to restrict the roster size to only a few extra players per game. Many others in baseball have said the same thing, pointing out how little sense it makes to play important games so differently with expanded bullpens and such in September, when many teams are in the heat of playoff races, than baseball is played during the first five months of the season.
“That’s when it gets ridiculous, because you can have 40 guys on a team and that’s when you can say, ‘Oh, lefty up, let’s get a new lefty (reliever),’ and have seven lefties, use the whole pen. September can get long. Limit (rosters) to, like 28 guys. That’s where I think you can save some time.
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