Tag Archives: Jim Small

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The WBC challenge

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The joy and intensity on the field and in the stands this week has been palpable.

The South Korea vs Taiwan game, the Japan vs Australia clash, and the Australia vs South Korea contest that decided second place in Pool C and a trip to Miami for the quarterfinals, were gut-wrenching and spectacular.

Yet, there are people who don’t get the World Baseball Classic, and that’s to be expected. It’s not because there are blowouts, mercy-rule finishes, and strict pitch limits, but because every thing about this tournament challenges their strongly held assumptions about professional baseball.

The first challenge is the timing. In most of the northern hemisphere, Cuba being a notable exception, spring baseball means preparing for the season, not playing meaningful games. In that mental framework, early-March games are, by definition, exhibitions.

If that’s your mindset, the thought of players getting pumped for exhibitions is incongruous.

The second challenge has to do with the nature of the competition. A pro baseball season is a grind, and the early spring is traditionally about keeping an eye on that prize, on being able to do one’s best when it matters most.

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Japan’s pitch-clock allergy

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For decades, Nippon Professional Baseball has been urging players to pick up the pace in order to counteract the small-ball anal-retentive slow pace that its overlords have come to embrace. So when MLB adopted a pitch timer, Japan became interested.

Despite the promise of faster games, the idea of pitch timers in Japanese baseball would slash a gaping hole in the control-oriented micro-managed baseball Japan espouses. The more NPB looked at what MLB was up to, the stronger its allergic reaction to a pitch timer in Japan became.

But this week, the pitch timer is back in the news from a couple of different angles that tell us a lot about Japanese baseball.

Last year, Japan’s rules committee, which is largely influenced – but not controlled by — Nippon Professional Baseball, declined to adopt a pitch timer, the excuse given was that it was not necessary, because the only thing needed to make games snappily played was adherence to the 30-second rule giving the pitcher and batter that much time between plate appearances.

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