Major League Baseball’s unwritten rules are “silly,” says Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, weighing in on a topic that’s careened around the league for years.
It grew new legs this week as San Diego’s Fernando Tatis, Jr., with a seven-run lead in the eighth, belted a 3-0 pitch for a grand slam , deemed a cardinal sin by both clubs’ managers.
Thou shalt not try to score with too largeth a lead, late.
“They’re silly,” Rizzo said of these unwritten commandments during a weekly appearance with The Sports Junkies, presented by Burke & Herbert Bank. “If you can’t swing 3-0, stop.”
“Unless you’re gonna tell me that you’re gonna stop scoring, we’re gonna try and keep scoring,” he said. “Because how many times do you have a seven-, eight-, 10-run lead early in games and then they start chipping away? You know, you’re not running, so you’re just kind of taking these at-bats because you’re up 10-to-nothing. All of a sudden it’s 10-6, and now you went from a very comfortable game to having to get your A bullpen up because you stopped scoring and you didn’t want to embarrass anybody anymore.”
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“I say respect the other team,” Rizzo said. “But to me, there’s no disrespect in when you have the bases loaded, and you walk two guys to get to the bases loaded, and you get 3-0 to a hot hitter, that you expect him – with a seven-run lead – to not try his hardest to get a hit. That’s silly in my book.”
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