John Feinstein’s latest column in the Washington Post railed against the notion of tweaking the pitch clock come the playoffs, an idea he calls “flat out stupid.”
And he doubled down on that when he joined the Sports Junkies for this week’s Feinstein Friday hit.
“Why would they change it? It has changed baseball for the good,” Feinstein said. “Everybody loves it. Go back and listen to all the seam-heads during the offseason talking about the players having trouble with it – now everyone is saying it’s good, and games are 25 minutes shorter. You actually have to pay attention because games are moving along; it’s a different game, and it’s a better game, so the notion to tweak the clock during the most important games of the year is absolutely ridiculous and flat out stupid.”
Are there issues that may pop up with the pitch clock that may be lamented? Sure, John agrees – but come October, you should be used to them by then.
“They’re saying to do it because they don’t want a game to end on a pitch clock violation – one game ended like that in early March, and we’re averaging less than one violation a game,” Feinstein said. “And I remember in 2006 when the NLCS ended with Carlos Beltran taking a called third strike – if a pitch is a strike, you call it, and that’s the rules. Players who have adapted to the rules will know that if it’s a 3-2 count in the bottom of the ninth, you better be in the box ready to hit or on the mound ready to pitch.”
Take a listen to all of Feinstein’s appearance above, which includes chat about his beloved Mets possibly trading Scherzer or Verlander, the Northwestern football controversy, and more!
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