TIME WILL COME SOON
MLB warns hitters against drawing quick pitch violations
Last Saturday St. Louis Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras took advantage of a quirk in MLB’s new pitch clock rules to goad Kenley Jansen into a pair of quick pitch violations, drawing a walk to help the Cardinals mount their eventual comeback win.
Jansen took responsibility for not understanding the rules better, but he also suggested Contreras got away with gamesmanship. MLB apparently agreed.
According to an Associated Press report, MLB recently sent a memo to clubs warning hitters against trying to trick pitchers into committing quick pitch violations. The memo essentially calls out Contreras for appearing ready to hit while also keeping one foot out of the batter’s box and says similar attempts by players in the future could result in a warning, an automatic strike or potentially even club discipline.
“We have advised umpires that conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position early — including pretending to be in the batter’s box and alert to the pitcher — constitutes circumvention under the pace of game regulations,” the memo reads, according to the AP.
The new pitch clock rules dictate that a batter must be alert to the pitcher and have both feet in the batter’s box by the time there is eight seconds left on the timer, but before that point pitchers must also wait until the batter has both feet in the box and is alert before they can deliver the next pitch.
Going forward if any similar incidents as last week’s Jansen-Contreras affair take place, umpires won’t call a quick pitch violation and an automatic ball but will instead issue a warning to the batter. Additional attempts could lead to an automatic strike, and the memo said clubs with multiple players engaging in such conduct would be subject to penalties.
Judge on a tear once more
Don’t look now, but Aaron Judge is at it again.
Despite missing 11 days with a hip strain in late April and early May, the New York Yankees slugger still ranks among the American League leaders in home runs. Entering Saturday Judge was up to 13 on the season, including seven in his last seven games entering Saturday.
Judge is currently one behind Texas’ Adolis Garcia (14) for the AL lead and is tied for second with Rafael Devers (13), this despite the fact that he’s only played 36 games compared to Garcia’s 43 and Devers’ 44.
Devers, who had led the AL in homers for much of the season, was mired in a bit of a power outage the past few weeks. Heading into Friday Devers only had one home run in the month of May, a grand slam back on May 4 against Toronto, and followed that up with a 12-game drought. He broke out in a big way against San Diego though, going deep twice in Boston’s 6-1 win.
Vasil dominating Double-A
Wellesley’s Mike Vasil, a former BC High and University of Virginia star, has gotten off to a tremendous start since being promoted to Double-A to start the season.
Through his first seven starts the New York Mets prospect is 1-1 with a 2.19 ERA and a remarkable 46 strikeouts against just six walks over 37.0 innings for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. His 0.70 walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP) leads the Eastern League and he also ranks first in the league in walk rate (4.3%) and second in strikeout rate (33.3%), first in opponent’s batting average (.153) and first in batting average on balls in play (.198).
The only other pitcher in the Eastern League with remotely comparable numbers was Red Sox prospect Shane Drohan, who unsurprisingly was just promoted to TripleA and made his Worcester Red Sox debut on Thursday. Drohan had a 1.32 ERA over his first six starts in Portland but met a rude welcome in Worcester, where he allowed five runs on three walks and three home runs but also struck out six over five innings of work.
Send us your mailbag questions!
With the season approaching the two-month mark we’ve seen enough to have a decent idea of where the Red Sox and everyone else stands. That being the case, now feels like as good a time as any to take some reader questions for an upcoming Red Sox mailbag.
Please submit your Red Sox related questions to mcerullo@bostonherald.com or by Twitter direct message at @MacCerullo. We’ll look to answer as many as we can in next Sunday’s MLB column.