Zaidi dreams of 7-inning games
SCOTTSDALE, » Major League Baseball is determined to fix its pace of play issue.
Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has an idea for how to help, but one he knows won’t sit well with most fans.
“Last year, when the conversation started about the season and us having to play doubleheaders, maybe frequent doubleheaders with games having to go seven innings, my thought was, why don’t we just make all games seven innings?” Zaidi said on KNBR last week.
Forget a pitch clock. Forget requiring hitters to stand in the batter’s box throughout an atbat. Forget most of the ideas the league is toying with that don’t address the real problem.
The only way games are going to be shorter is if they’re ... actually shorter.
“This is just me talking, I’m not speaking on behalf of Major League Baseball or the San Francisco Giants organization, but I kind of enjoyed those seven-inning games,” Zaidi said. “You kind of just got to the late innings and the drama built up really quickly.”
The Giants were awful in doubleheaders last season, going 1-5 in the six seven-inning games they played. That doesn’t change Zaidi’s enthusiasm for the concept, however, because he sees benefits in shortening the games so they last as long as nine-inning games from decades ago.
“If you go back to the late ’70s, the average game was two and a half hours long,” Zaidi said. “Mid20th century, games were like two hours long. The question is why do games take so much longer now and I really think it’s because of the athleticism involved in baseball now. You go back to a game from the ’80s and pitchers were just playing catch and commanding, hitting spots, now every pitch is like an athletic feat. These guys are throwing 100 miles per hour and we just can’t do that every five seconds.”
The concept of shortening games from nine innings to seven isn’t something that’s believed to be a serious topic of discussion in the commissioner’s office, but Zaidi isn’t necessarily a fan of the methods the league has taken to address pace of play in recent years.
He also realizes most people won’t be a fan of his method, either.
“The seven-inning game, maybe that’s something we should take a closer look at,” Zaidi said. “I can’t even imagine the reaction from people and the traditionalists at that kind of an idea, but that might be the out-ofthe-box thinking that we need.”
Down on the farm
The Giants made a statement by keeping 21-yearold outfield prospect Heliot Ramos past the first round of spring cuts, but the time finally came for the 2017 first-round draft pick to be reassigned to minor league camp on Saturday.
Giants manager Gabe Kapler said at the time the club wanted to reward Ramos for his performance this spring, but it remained clear the organization hasn’t had him in the Opening Day plans. After Ramos’ reassignment, Kapler noted there’s “no denying his talent and his physical tools.”
Kapler added that the Giants think Ramos will need 250-to-300 at-bats at the “upper levels” of the minor leagues to continue refining his game, but it may not be long before the power-hitting outfielder is a major contributor to the team’s lineup.
One of the primary questions about Ramos’ future is whether he’ll be athletic enough and rangy enough to stay in center field. With his work in the outfield this spring, Ramos — listed by the Giants as 6-foot-1, 188 pounds — made a strong impression.
“I actually think he can (play center field),” Zaidi said on KNBR. “He’s an explosive athlete, he’s got speed, you wouldn’t guess it just looking at him with the body type, but he does have that twitch and explosiveness.”
The most impressive aspect of Ramos’ play during spring training is how comfortable he’s looked against quality pitchers. Despite having fewer than 100 career plate appearances above High-A, Ramos hasn’t appeared overmatched and has consistently made solid contact.
Zaidi said Ramos will enter the 2021 season in a similar place to catcher Joey Bart, who debuted in the majors last season out of necessity after Buster Posey elected to sit out the year. Bart is also ticketed for upper-level minor league action this year, but it’s conceivable that both players could be appearing in the same lineups at Oracle Park by the end of the summer.
On Tuesday in Glendale, Ramos opened the eighth inning by ripping a single into left-center field before Bart drilled a single to right-center field. It wasn’t a preview of what fans should expect in April, but the former first-round draft picks aren’t all that far from having the chance to become mainstays in San Francisco.