Tough week. Joe Tait passes and now we lose John and his drum, hopefully not forever. And next year...we lose the name after 107 years. Which means if the Tribe doesn't go all the way this year I will die without seeing the Indians win a World Series. Thank you, Jose Mesa.
But on the bright side, we should get 162 games this year and maybe more. Last year we got screwed out of 102 games by the virus, games that will never be made up. These weren't rainouts.
DirecTV lowered the price of its Season Ticket package by 50 bucks to $130. That means out of state fans like me can watch the Indians for about $0.80 per game, less than ten cents an inning. That's the best entertainment value I can think of unless you like parking your car near the airport and watching planes take off and land.
I'll be interested to see how all the new rule change experiments in the minors work out. In the last five years a full 16 minutes have been added to the length of games and not one second of it was action. They're determined to reverse that.
I can't see a 15 second pitch clock. That's crazy. What would happen is pitchers would instruct catchers to hold the ball for a few seconds after each pitch before throwing it back to delay starting the clock- that's my guess.
However, some pitchers like to pitch with a rhythm and already use less than 15 seconds with nobody on base. A pitch clock would force every pitcher to do that. They would be trained to do it starting with their first year in the minors. It wouldn't be that big a deal. Throw the pitch, get back on the rubber, catch the ball, tap the rubber twice, tug your cap, get the sign, throw the pitch. Adam Cimber wouldn't be able to lean over and search for worms before getting the sign. That would be a good thing.
The craziest idea IMO is making pitchers step off the rubber before attempting a pickoff. That would slow down pickoff throws significantly, allowing runners to take bigger leads. Combine that with bigger bases, which reduces the distance between bases by six inches, and it will become dramatically easier to steal. I think the impact on the game will be huge. Players with speed will become more valuable. On-base percentage would be more important. Pitchers would be far more reluctant to walk batters knowing they would likely end up on second base, resulting in better pitches to hit and more offense. There would be a shift away from hitters who hit home runs but strike out a lot to high OBP guys with speed.
Maybe that's not such a crazy idea after all. Anything to get away from pitchers taking forever to throw a pitch and batters who pile up strikeouts, walks, and home runs. I don't know which rule changes will eventually get adopted in the majors but before long we're going to see a faster paced game with more baserunners and more action. And no Cleveland Indians.