Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
Last Thursday, Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber, one of my favorite players, came to the plate with a chance to hit his fifth home run in the game. That would’ve been an MLB record, as Schwarber had tied 21 other players with a four-homer game. Unfortunately, he didn’t homer. Probably equally as unfortunate, the at-bat came against a position player (Vidal Brujan of the Braves). That means even if Schwarber had hit a fifth homer, the accomplishment would’ve been at least a little bit marred.
It’s still difficult to hit a home run, of course, but look at this nonsense Brujan was throwing up there.
That was 57.4 mph. Brujan also threw a pitch 37.6 mph that inning.
I’m not blaming him personally. That’s just what we’ve come to. Teams don’t want position players throwing even remotely hard in fear of them injuring their arms, so the guys tasked with mop-up duty are instructed to lob the ball up there. It’s pathetic to watch.
It wasn’t that long ago it was at least a little fun. Here’s Anthony Rizzo throwing in the 70s and having a hell of a time in doing so agaist Freddie Freeman.
Now we get end-of-the-bench guys most fans haven’t heard of just going through the motions up there. It isn’t entertaining, it’s excruciating. It’s playing out the string in a formality. The stats shouldn’t even count. We might as well just end the game with a forfeit at this point. There’s nothing competitive up there at all.
Thankfully, MLB did put some rules in place to tamp down on what had become a major problem. Teams can’t use position players on the mound unless the game is in extra innings or a team trails by at least eight runs or leads by at least 10 runs. That was a good start.
Still, what used to be a fun little anomaly has become a complete nuisance.
I’d be good with outlawing the practice altogether. Those marathon extra-inning games that bleed into the late teens or even 20 innings? They’re mostly a thing of the past due to the runner-on-second rule, so this is mostly an issue in blowouts. Teams in the course of being blown out would just have to find a pitcher or two to «wear it» and pitch through a bunch of allowed runs in the interest of absorbing outs and not burning other pitchers. Then the team who got blown out would need to utilize the minor-league teams in order to figure things out with the pitching staff in the aftermath. If you don’t like it, stop getting blown out.
At the bare minimum, could we outlaw it in September once rosters are allowed to expand? The teams worried about not having enough bullpen arms can use the extra roster spots on relievers and, again, there are minor-league players with options who could also help.
Whatever the solution, position players on the mound has lost all its luster. It’s been done to death and what we see now isn’t even fun. It’s just a blatant white flag from a team going through the motions just to end the game. If you want to stop playing so badly, we all want to stop watching. Put us all out of our misery and stop it.
