Mound visits lessl mountain thant molehill
InI the past few seasons, yoyou’ve been able to read “War anand Peace” or watch “The Godfatfather” trilogy during your avererage baseball game. So the mamasters of baseball did someththing about the pace and length of the game and limited mound visvisits to six per team. IIn the first game of the seasoson Thursday at Citi Field, despspite Cardinals pitching that wowould have slowed down a rurunaway train, the gain was fofour minutes. Even with the MMets not needing to bat in the home ninth of their 9-4 victory over the Cardinals, the game lasted 3:01, although some innings by themselves seemed longer than that. Last season, the average major league game was 3 hours and 5 minutes. So with the electronic mound visits countdown sign next to the out-of-town scoreboard above the third deck in left keeping everyone aware, the Cards used four visits, along with two pitching changes (which don’t count). The Mets used one. “No effect on us and I don’t think it affected them at all,” Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki said of the new rules while not- ing the wristbands with signals designed to help in case mound visits were used up, never came into play either. “They still had two left. We had five. I went out to [Jeurys] Familia in the ninth after the Yadier Molina walk. I could see he wanted to talk, so I went to make sure he was good.”
From Triple Crown stats to WAR to mound visits. And Thursday, it wasn’t gatherings on the mound that often provided the pace of winter molasses.
It was Mets starter Noah Syndergaard striking out 10 in his 12th career double-digit strikeout game. It was Cards starter Carlos Martinez issuing six of the nine walks handed out by St. Louis pitchers and hitting another batter. And it was the Cardinals bullpen generally holding a meeting of Arsonists Anonymous, allowing four earned runs, eight hits, three walks and two wild pitches in 3 2/3 innings. That stuff doesn’t happen in a jiff, you know?
The Cards started their mound visit countdown on the electronic scoreboard sign in the first inning. By game’s end, Molina ended up going twice, same as pitching coach Mike Maddux — and there were the two pitching-change visits by manager Mike Matheny. And they did it all in 3:01.