Tom Glavine was one of the best pitchers in the league in his day. The Hall of Famer was a 10-time All-Star, won two NL Cy Young Awards, and was named the World Series MVP in 1995. He even picked up four Silver Slugger awards during his career.
The former Braves and Mets pitcher worked pretty quickly on the mound, especially with the bases empty.
While he lands more on the baseball purist side of things and doesn’t love the pitch clock, he thinks it was necessary for the product. However, he thinks there are some tweaks that could – and should – be made.
Glavine was a guest on “The Bret Boone Podcast” and talked about how the thinks the pitch clock will be used later in the season and into the playoffs.
“It’s going to be interesting to see, particularly as we get into September and playoff runs and pennant races and then into the postseason, what adjustments, if any, baseball makes,” Glavine said. “You don’t want to start seeing playoff games decided by pitch clock violations so my hunch is the umpires are going to be a little bit more tolerant on when they start the clock, giving some guys a little bit more time, be a little bit more lenient with some of those things that maybe start the clock over or don’t start the clock so quickly…
“I think there’s going to be a feeling-out process. I can’t imagine that baseball is going to be as stringent or as strict with it as they are right now come postseason.”
Glavine brought up the fact that every other major sport seems to have a different set of rules to play by, so to speak, in the playoffs. There are fewer penalties in hockey, fewer fouls in basketball, and football referees let the guys play a bit more.
He foresees something similar with the pitch clock in the MLB playoffs.
“I think that’s the one area where playoff baseball there’s going to have to be a feeling-out process because I think baseball has to be sensitive – and I think they are, I think they know this,” Glavine said. “They may not have the answer to how it’s going to play out but they know how important those games are, obviously, how much stress guys are under during those games and in those confrontations and all those things…
“I think they’re going to be mindful of that but I think most importantly they’re going to be mindful of the last thing they want is to have a playoff game or pennant race decided on a pitch clock violation. Nobody wants that and Major League Baseball doesn’t want it either so I think we’ll see some leniency as we get into the latter part, the more important part of the season, so to speak.”
It makes sense. Many players and pundits have speculated about MLB tweaking the pitch clock for a variety of reasons.
Perhaps they’ll end up adding a few seconds to the clock in general or only in certain situations. Or, as Glavine suggested, perhaps the umpires will just be a bit more lenient in big moments.
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