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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Ball Twelve

Gary Peterson of the Contra Costa Times/Mercury News expounds upon the new rules of baseball, as they apply to Barry Bonds.
The incessant walking of Bonds is no longer a strategic ploy. Strategy is when you intentionally walk him with a base open in the eighth inning of a one-run game. Bonds has been walked 208 times this season -- he'll carry a 14-game walk streak into tonight's game against San Diego -- and only 42 have come in what are statistically described as "close and late" situations.

Less than half (101) have come with runners in scoring position. Only 58 have come with runners in scoring position and two out.

Walking Bonds is no longer a strategy. It is a methodology. It has become reflexive. Worse, it has become the coward's fall-back position.
It would be difficult to support a rule change, as some (many) have said, because how can you differentiate between the intentional-unintentional (four just deliberately out of the zone) and four bad pitches? Do you require that every batter be delivered at least one hanging slider right down the middle? There's room in game strategy for the intentional walk. Just not the way it's currently being applied.
|| Andrew, 2:49 PM || ||

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