When the MLB season starts at the end of March, it will feature several rule changes. One of the most impactful of those is sure to be the new pitch clock, which requires pitchers to deliver a pitch in a set amount of time and batters to be ready to face it. On Saturday, the rule lead to a game ending after an automatic strike was assessed to a slow batter for Atlanta.

It was the situation that every child growing up playing baseball dreams of. Game tied at 6, bottom of the ninth inning, bases loaded and a 3-2 count. Atlanta infielder Cal Conley was at the plate, facing Boston relief pitcher Robert Kwiatkowski. Kwiatkowski started in for the sign from his catcher and came set to throw a critical pitch on a full count.

Conley was charged an automatic strike for not being ready in time under the new pitch clock rules, and the strike out was called.

…

Not…exactly how kids dreamed of that situation unfolding when playing in the backyard growing up, but this is the new normal in MLB. Thankfully everyone has spring training to get adjusted before this happens in the regular season.

This particular incident is extra silly because spring training games don’t have extra innings, and thus the game simply ended in a tie.

Despite this foolishness, I’m quite excited about the pitch clock. I expect it will speed up game times significantly, particularly given what we saw last seasons in the minor leagues:

To people familiar with the myriad rule changes MLB officials tested in recent years, the pitch clock has long felt like the most foolproof way to rejuvenate the sport. In its first year in use across the minor leagues, it has reduced the average game time from 3 hours 4 minutes in 2021 to 2:36 in 2022, according to MLB data through Sunday. MLB matchups have not averaged a game time that brief since the early 1980s.

Substantially shorter games will be a boon for the sport. I just hope players adapt quickly, so these penalties don’t wind up playing a critical role in big moments.

The Williamsport Crosscutters, a minor league baseball team, recently rebranded for one night. Their temporary new name was “The Potato Capers”.

[Image courtesy of the Williamsport Crosscutters]

Why? Well, it was the 35th anniversary of what is perhaps the single most ridiculous pranks I can recall hearing of in (semi-)professional sports.

Baseball has all manner of statistics to track the performance of players. You might have heard of the unfortunately ever-more-rare “quality start”, wherein a pitcher goes 6+ innings and gives up 3 or fewer runs. Today, you can learn about its opposite, the “quantity shart”.

As most folks know, in baseball, it’s one, two, three strikes and you’re out. A strikeout is a fairly common way for an at bat to end, occurring many times each game. Striking out the side is a rarer event, wherein a pitcher strikes out all three batters they face in an inning.¹ Much, much rarer still is an “immaculate inning”, which occurs when a pitcher throws nine straight strikes and strikes out all three batters. In Major League Baseball’s history of millions of innings, just over 100 of them have been immaculate.

Earlier this week, the Houston Astros managed not one, but two, immaculate innings in one game. Hapless Texas Rangers Nathaniel Lowe, Ezequiel Duran, and Brad Miller went down on nine straight strikes in the second inning, for the 107th immaculate inning of all time. Then, incredibly, the very same batters did the same in the seventh for the 108th, and most recent, immaculate inning.

They say that every time you go to the ballpark, you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before. If you were a Rangers fan at the game on June 15, 2022, you saw something no one’s ever seen before, and it wasn’t great for you.

Footnotes:

1. Wikipedia states: “There is a disagreement as to the exact definition of striking out the side. Some feel a pitcher should be credited with striking out the side when all three outs in the inning were obtained via the strikeout, regardless of what other hitters that the pitcher has faced have done.” Those people are wrong.↩︎

Last night, before the Red Sox defeated the Houston Astros, heir to the Benihana fortune (and also some sort of musician, apparently) Steve Aoki threw out a ceremonial first pitch. It was…not great. In fact, it was so airmailed that if not for the netting above the stands behind home plate, the ball would’ve landed quite deep in the crowd.

If only was Max Scherzer had been there when Steve Aoki needed him.

Baseball is back, and this season, a whole lot has changed. From a universal designated hitter to mic’ed up umpires, it’s a brave new world. Perhaps the most intriguing change is the addition of a new system called PitchCom, which uses wireless transmitters to allow pitchers and catchers to determine what pitch will be thrown. Technology is finally being used to prevent sign-stealing, rather than just enabling it.

USA Today has a story on the new system, which offers several intriguing details, including this origin story:

ProMystic, a company that creates and designs similar technologies for performing magicians and mentalists, developed PitchCom. Company co-founder John Hankins said he was inspired by the fallout of the Houston Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal, which used an instantaneous video-replay system to decode catchers’ finger signs in real time, to create a technology that protected the game’s integrity.

Hankins, an attorney in addition to his credentials as a technical engineer, filed the patent paperwork within a week of his idea in late 2019. He challenged Craig Filicetti, his fellow co-founder, to develop a prototype that they tested one month later in the early part of 2020.

For years, I idly suggested that baseball ought to use technology to allow pitchers and catchers to communicate. Frankly, I envisioned something pretty much exactly like this. The only problem, of course, is that I didn’t actually do anything with that idea.