FanPost

Intentional Walk Rule Change

I did a little work using Baseball Reference and Excel to see how much time this new rule is really going to save on a nightly (or daily) basis. Here is a chart of how often each team was intentionally walked, shown next to how many games they played in 2016:

Team I.B.B Games Played Walks/Game
ATL 60 161 0.37
WSN 49 162 0.30
CHC 45 162 0.28
ARI 43 162 0.27
NYM 43 162 0.27
SFG 43 162 0.27
MIA 40 161 0.25
PIT 39 162 0.24
CIN 37 162 0.23
COL 35 162 0.22
BOS 34 162 0.21
MIL 34 162 0.21
PHI 33 162 0.20
DET 32 161 0.20
HOU 31 162 0.19
LAD 31 162 0.19
LgA 31 162 0.19
SDP 30 162 0.19
SEA 29 162 0.18
STL 28 162 0.17
MIN 24 162 0.15
KCR 23 162 0.14
TEX 23 162 0.14
LAA 21 162 0.13
TBR 20 162 0.12
BAL 19 162 0.12
NYY 19 162 0.12
OAK 19 162 0.12
CHW 16 162 0.10
CLE 16 161 0.10
TOR 16 162 0.10
Total 932 4856 0.19

Here is a more magnified view of the bottom line:

Overall in 2016 #
Total IBB 932
Total # of games played 4856
IBB/Game 0.19

Essentially, the rule change that allows coaches to just put on a hitter as he is walking to the plate with a hand signal is saving us from something that happened at an amazing rate of .19 times per game! In addition, the fact that it is not even saving too much game time, which is the entire premise the new rule is based on, is not the only problem with the new rule. The intentional walk was never an automatic thing. Although I could not track down a stat for how many times a intentional ball was accidentally thrown to the backstop (or left over the plate to be crushed by a hitter), us Giants fans don't have to think back too far to remember Dellin Betances overthrowing an intentional pitch in the 11th inning that Angel Pagan *should have* scored on last summer.

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If you haven't noticed already, I really do not like this rule change and just wanted to share the stats I found on the frequency of this play. Let me know what you guys think of the new rule!

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