Giants’ Verlander frustrated with ‘lack of communication’ from MLB on strike zone
One of the most tenured players in Major League Baseball has had some critiques about the state of the game and is markedly frustrated.
One of the most tenured players in Major League Baseball has had some critiques about the state of the game and is markedly frustrated.
San Francisco Giants righty Justin Verlander recently voiced some issues to Justice delos Santos of Mercury News, expressing displeasure that a newly implemented change in umpire grading has consequently shrunk the strike zone.
According to an earlier report from The Athletic, MLB instituted a change on umpires’ “buffer zones,” an area two inches around the strike zone that gave them leeway on how accurately they were able to judge strikes and balls.
MLB recently decreased the two-inch zone to only three-quarters of an inch off the strike zone as part of a new labour agreement between the league and the Major League Umpires Association. It was changed as a way to more accurately evaluate umpires and keep them in line with the true definition of the strike zone.
However, according to Verlander, players and teams were not accurately briefed on the adjustment.
“There’s a lack of trust and a lack of communication,” Verlander told delos Santos. “Rob Manfred runs around every spring training saying, ‘It’s not us. We’re open. We want to talk. We want to have a great relationship with you guys.’ Then, they do everything behind closed doors and don’t include us in anything – in the game that we play and make our livelihood doing.”
In The Athletic’s earlier report, 15 players and more than a dozen coaches, executives and analysts were polled, none of whom remebered being informed about the change to umpiring despite the league stating that they briefed all 30 managers about it in December at the Winter Meetings.
“We saw that story,” Verlander explained, about The Athletic’s report. “The league said they notified everybody, and everybody said, ‘We never heard anything.’ They talked to all the people that were supposed to be notified, and none of them had heard anything. So, somebody’s lying.”
While the way umpires have been graded has changed, the actual strike zone, per the MLB rulebook, has not actually changed. The issue players have voiced is more so in how strikes and balls are being called.
Per The Athletic, ball-strike accuracy is the highest it’s ever been since Statcast being tracking pitching in 2015.
However, Verlander believes the change has further incentivized teams to move away from control-based pitchers and focus more on high-velocity hurlers.
“We’ll take the guy that throws 101 with a good breaking ball and have the catcher set up right down the middle and throw as hard as you can and go two times through the lineup, and then we’re on to the next guy that throws 100 out of the bullpen,” the 42-year-old three-imte Cy Young winner said. “That, to me, is not the game of baseball that I know and love, and I don’t think that’s the game the fans want.”
