Baseball season is back with pitchers and catchers reporting this week. Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Matt Strahm has always been a bit opinionated and made headlines last year for criticizing MLB’s changing policy on beer sales.
Strahm joined Rob Bradford on the Audacy original podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” and once again brought up some great points about how batters will now have an extra advantage over relief pitchers late in games.
“The new batting machine thing that hitters are now allowed to use during games,” Strahm said (21:40 in player above). “Essentially it’s a virtual pitching machine that will mimic a pitcher’s pitches, mechanics, everything. So if you’re on the bench, you can sit there for the first seven innings and take 12 at-bats against (Jose) Alvarado before you know you’re going to pinch hit against him in the ninth.”
Pitching machines are no longer just the run-of-the-mill ones you may know from Little League or batting practice. The technology has evolved and now players can use them during games this upcoming season.
“It used to be where MLB would shut them off an hour before the game,” said Strahm, “but now this year they’re going to be allowed to use it the entire game.”
It would make sense if pitchers had something similar that they could use, or even any sort of technology to help them warm up. But that’s not the case.
“What’s even crazier is us pitchers asked if we can use trackman in the bullpen for when we warm up to track how we warm up. They just said no,” Strahm said. “There is instant feedback, but it’s not like it’s going to tell me how to throw to J.D. Martinez. It’s just my pitches, my stuff. Where the hitting thing is literally Matt Strahm is on the screen going through his mechanics and the ball is shooting out of my release point with my spin, my angle, everything.”
The Phillies reliever didn’t even find out about the change until pitching coach Caleb Cotham told him.
“It is what it is,” he said. “But again, that’s one thing that I feel like should be publicized and out there just because they need to understand that a reliever now has already been faced before he’s facing anybody.”
Strahm understands that the league wants to squeeze out as much offense as possible, but there needs to be some transparency and publicity about what’s happening.
“Again, it’s about getting the needle more towards the offense, and even if like sunscreen with rosin, it dips the needle just a little bit too much back towards the pitchers so they eliminate it,” he said. “Which, again, I understand offense is what people want to see so they’re going to do all these things to create more offense but just be public about it.”
Don’t be too surprised if we see a sudden uptick in late-inning offense with pinch hitters now being able to prepare against an exact replica of the reliever they’ll be facing.