MLB's Push to Speed up Games

Correction…it was the first out of the inning, not to end the inning. My bad.

Stand in the box and take your cuts. And pitchers, don’t paw around behind the rubber or throw to first when the runner is a big, fat DH. When people say baseball games take too long, they don’t mean commercial breaks, they mean there’s no flow—the action stops and starts too much to build momentum or intensity or excitement. It wasn’t always like that.

This is at least the second example this season where an umpire has failed to use common sense.

Here the umpire shifted as if he were going to call time, then didn’t. He certainly isn’t required to grant time out, but once he makes a motion that could confuse the batter into believing he is going to do so, he should go ahead and grant the time out.

There would be nothing to prevent him from calling both managers out - or merely yelling to each bench - to inform them such time outs may not be granted in the future. In fact, the umpires should have mentioned it when the lineup cards were handed in.

But no umpire wants to unfairly affect the outcome of a game, and it sounds as if the lack of common sense affected this one.

It would also seem that MLB should have contacted the managers directly to spread the word. Not merely via e-mail or other memo, but by telephone.

Incidentally, the other episode that comes to mind is one in which Tim Lincecum started his windup as Bengie Molina jumped up out of his crouch raising his arms and requesting time. Umpire Gary Darling also raised his own arms in the traditional “time out” gesture, but instead of calling time out, called a balk.

Lincecum had stopped his motion when Molina jumped up, which would indeed be a balk if time out hadn’t been called. But since Lincecum didn’t deliver the pitch, there was no reason for Darling to himself make the “time out” motion if he wished to call a balk instead of calling time out.

At best, Darling committed his own balk on the play. Once again, common sense didn’t prevail. If Darling was confused into committing a “balk,” wasn’t it reasonable to assume that the confusion also had something to do with Lincecum’s “balk?” If the action confused Darling, why didn’t he just call time out and start anew?

Oh, and today Lincecum’s last out was a strike out on which the batter didn’t even come CLOSE to going around, yet was called for a swinging strike three by Bill Welke, the home plate umpire. One of the worst calls I’ve ever seen.

Maybe the protocol doesn’t allow for the home plate umpire to ask another umpire for help when he himself DOES call it a strike. But as today’s case indicated, it most certainly SHOULD. Keep in mind that no one roots harder for Lincecum than I do, but I don’t want him to receive an unfair advantage, and this was a horribly egregious example of a situation in which he did.

The thing I would ask the umpires is, isn’t the object to get the call RIGHT? That is a rhetorical question, of course, but while the umpires do consult more than they used to, they still don’t consult enough.

By far the most important factor in officiating is ANGLE—and the guy with the primary responsibility for the call doesn’t always have it. If that is the case, why SHOULDN’T he consult with his fellow umpires? Are they out there merely to pick their noses if the call is in another umpire’s “area?”

Get the call RIGHT, guys. The more often you do so, the less the need for instant replay. Baseball is really a comparitively simple game to officiate. Almost all decisions are made at the four bases—and a high percentage are made at the plate.

The decision made at the plate today wasn’t correct. Nor was the one in Lincecum’s last start where the go-ahead run was called safe at the plate even though replays showed that Ivan Rodriguez had been tagged on the shirt before touching home plate.

On that play, the home plate umpire tried to come out from behind the plate to get the proper angle, but he was late in reading the play and got caught just where he didn’t want to be—both blocked and moving. Naturally he didn’t want to get caught in either situation, but he actually got caught in both.

This got me to thinking: On plays at the plate on throws from the outfield, why not have the first base umpire move in to bracket the plate. Between them, the home plate and first base umpires should be able to get a good angle.

I realize baseball doesn’t think this way. IN fact, sometimes I wonder if they truly think. But if you’re going to stick the umpire behind the plate on plays there as baseball does, you’ve got to teach your umpires how to read plays better so they can get the proper angle.

Or how about this for a novel approach? Why not have the umpire move to the spot - probably at a 90 degree angle to the front edge of home plate, just slightly down the third-base line - where he thinks the play is most likely to grant the best angle, and an angle that he can easily adjust as he reads the play, rather than having to come all the way out from behind the plate?

IMO baseball umpires have among the easiest jobs among the officials in the various sports—and yet they seem to make far more mistakes than they should. Part of the problem seems to me that they don’t work hard enough for angles and that they don’t work together well enough as a TEAM.

Whenever I myself officiate a sport, it is my goal that my partner(s) and I form the best team on the field. In the major leagues, that far too often isn’t the case.