Simeon Woods Richardson, starting pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, was preparing to throw his 108th pitch of the evening Monday night when something went wrong. Before we get there, I'd just like to say that this was gutsy, heroic shit from Woods Richardson, who had only once before topped 100 pitches in a major-league appearance. He was not having a particularly good time Tuesday night, having allowed 12 baserunners and four runs, but the Twins are playing like crap, and their bullpen is pretty well shredded. Baseball tradition sometimes makes it the job of a starting pitcher to climb back up the mound, at or past the best-if-used-by date of their throwing arm, and guile their way to another out or two, not to win a game but simply to bring a game that much closer to completion, while sparing some teammates. To me this is Ace Shit, and when it is done by Not An Ace, it is Hero Shit.
So there he was, facing a full count against Jonathan India of the Kansas City Royals, a tough batter who'd touched him for a double and scored a run back in the first inning. Woods Richardson was on the rubber with about 12 seconds left on the pitch clock, India was dug in, and Twins catcher Christian Vázquez was pecking away at the PitchCom device above his knee. In Woods Richardson's telling, he soon realized that Vázquez's pitch selection wasn't making it to the little receiver in his own hat. At the seven-second mark Woods Richardson stepped off the mound and gestured that he was having PitchCom troubles, expecting that the pitch clock would stop and that he would be given time to fix or replace the little malfunctioning doohickey. Instead, everyone just kind of stared at him for a couple seconds. Vázquez, who continued to punch the controller instead of calling for time, gave his pitcher a little hurry-up gesture. Somewhere in there the PitchCom woke up—in the replay you can see Woods Richardson nod quickly at his catcher—and Woods Richardson, having been denied a PitchCom break, stepped back onto the rubber and hurried into his throwing motion, with two seconds to spare.
Not so fast! Home-plate umpire Nic Lentz suddenly leapt out from behind the plate, not to grant the Twins battery the troubleshooting session you might have expected, but to smash Woods Richardson with a pitch clock violation, the consequence of which delivered India to first base with a free pass. All of Woods Richardson, Vázquez, and India looked puzzled, and Twins manager Rocco Baldelli burst out of the dugout wagging a Dikembe Mutombo finger, but for severe disapproval.
There's lots going on here. First, why wasn't the pitch clock paused when Woods Richardson disengaged? Aha! You see, under baseball's new pace of play rules, the pitch clock is only stopped for pitcher disengagements if there is a runner on base. With the bases empty, the pitching team can only stop the pitch clock with a mound visit, and teams only have five of those before the ninth inning. But if you've watched baseball over the past couple seasons, you know there is an exception for PitchCom malfunctions, PitchCom after all being the way that catchers and pitchers now communicate pitch selections. When Woods Richardson stepped off and gestured at his ear, this told everyone that he wanted a pause to address the comms.
Here I would like to note that action does not always proceed with much concern for the reliability of comms doohickies. Back when I was an agent for the Impossible Mission Force, and we were doing a complicated and dangerous operation in Prague to stop a rogue agent from selling our NOC list to an international arms dealer, our comms went dead at a very bad moment, leaving me shouting "Abort" fruitlessly into my wrist from a bridge while a dear colleague was stabbed to death. Did I plead for a timeout so that I could jiggle the on-off button on my gizmo? Or did I bravely run down there so that I could cradle my colleague as she exhaled her dying breath? Sometimes you have to roll with it. Anyway now I am a blogger.
Still, you would like to see Lentz give Woods Richardson the break that was denied my deceased coworker, this being the game of baseball and not international espionage. Perhaps what was missing in this moment was an understanding between pitcher and catcher; certainly matters could not have been hurt by Vázquez jumping up and using a mound visit, which would've paused the action and given Lentz a chance to assess the situation and deem it a PitchCom stoppage. Instead, Vázquez was focused on brute-forcing the gizmo. "I couldn’t hear the pitch call, so I stepped off," explained Woods Richardson, after the game. "Vazky spamming it, it got back in the signal. I got it with seconds left, got back on."
Which leaves the question of why Woods Richardson was hit with a pitch clock violation with two seconds still remaining on the pitch clock. This one is pretty straightforward: When the pitcher disengaged, India relaxed and glanced back at Lentz, probably expecting a pause. When Woods Richardson hurriedly retook the rubber, he did not give India time to get ready in the box before launching into his throwing motion. India was still looking back and forth in a state of confusion as Woods Richardson went into his windup. This was when Lentz finally jumped up and stopped the action. The failure of the Twins to formally ask for a timeout put the umpire in a tough spot: The pitcher disengaged with no runners on, the catcher did not indicate a mound visit, and then the pitcher re-engaged seconds later, but without giving the batter a chance to get ready. Though Woods Richardson was probably not trying to pull a fast one on India, a pitch thrown in those circumstances would've indeed constituted a fast one, even if it was a slow one.
By the book, that's a violation, albeit a complicated one. "The home plate umpire deemed the sequence an attempted circumvention of the Pitch Timer regulations by the pitcher," reads a statement issued by MLB. "Disengaging while gesturing about a potential PitchCom issue, and then re-engaging late in an attempt to deliver a pitch prior to the expiration of the Pitch Timer, did not allow the hitter the ability to remain alert and ready."
Baldelli, of course, was furious. "I was a strong 'no' on the call as it stood. They were given a free base where it’s just not the right call. We got the wrong call pulled on Simeon. Simeon was on his 107th pitch of the outing. He’s clearly not out there trying to manipulate the pitch clock or anything," argued Baldelli. This has the ring of truth; it seems unlikely that Woods Richardson planned a late PitchCom gesture as a weapon of misdirection. "He has seven seconds left. He can’t get the sign or can’t hear the sign. Vazky was pushing the button, but couldn’t get it. He stepped off, pointed to his ear. Didn’t get any response from Nic. He got back on the mound and tried to make a pitch. What else is he going to do? He was forced to do that with two seconds left. He’s trying to make a pitch on the mound, and he gets a pitch clock violation called on him, and the clock hadn’t even expired."
Probably there are good reasons for umpires not to automatically intervene when pitchers indicate PitchCom issues. The rules do allow umpires to "provide extra time if warranted by special circumstances," but it's easy to imagine teams exploiting gizmo reliability for more time. If you are a supporter of baseball's new pace-of-play priorities, probably you will agree that it would be better if umpire interventions of this sort are viewed as a last resort. In this case, Vázquez continuing to punch away at his buttons would've reasonably indicated to the umpire that he and his pitcher were still doing signals. I expect that Baldelli has already told his pitchers and catchers that if any one of them is having a PitchCom issue late in a pitch clock, to use a freakin' mound visit instead of mashing the buttons.
