Here's to a 2025 Without the Cop-Out, Reactionary Nonsense HBP Rules Proposed By Whit Merrifield

[Matthew Trueblood]

It's been a quiet four months since we first heard tell of this possible rule change. Let's try to go another four decades without hearing any more of it.

Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-Imagn Images

I should be clear, though: I don't think we'll be so lucky. Back in the latter part of the 2024 regular season, Whit Merrifield was hit in the head with a pitch, and went on a tirade after the game about what he considered the danger and irresponsibility of pitchers working up and in. Merrifield was part of 2024's MLB Competition Committee, which includes players (among other stakeholders) in discussions of potential rule changes, and he took his grievances there, too. He emerged from a meeting of the committee convinced that a new rule would take effect in 2025, carving out special penalties for hitting batters high or breaking their hands with fastballs inside.

Various versions of this kicked around by Merrifield and others included immediate ejections, and (perhaps even more notably) fines in cases of non-ejections. Merrifield is unlikely to find it as easy to actually achieve rules changes as it was to get the other members of the committee to nod along with him, because pitchers are union members, too, and those fines would be a major sticking point. However, the very idea of these harsher punishments demand our attention, because with the new year will come increased discussion of these types of changes. Already, we know the league will experiment with automatic ball-and-strike calling in spring training. Will they also allow the hitter lobby to bully their way into taking the inner third of the plate away from pitchers?

Here's hoping the answer is no. Merrifield was way out of line with this suggestion, and true baseball fans should scoff at and dismiss him. That's not to say that player safety shouldn't be paramount; it should. But the notion that unintentional high-and-tight pitches require a punishment in excess of the free base given to a plunked batter is preposterous. Across multiple interviews in his personal media tour, Merrifield pushed blame for plunkings onto pitchers and implied that it should be their sole responsibility to think about safety instead of efficacy when throwing an inside heater.

He sounded very much like the pitchers who lamented the augmented enforcement of rules against foreign substances on the ball, a few years ago. Merrifield is used to doing things a certain way, and doesn't think he should have to change. He doesn't think hitters should have to adjust and adapt, or that they should have to have the risk of an errant pitch riding in on them in the back of their minds as they attempt to hit. He's hilariously wrong.

The reason batters get a free base when they're hit is to discourage pitchers from throwing too close to them. It's a rule with as profound an impact as a 15-yard penalty in football. It's all about safety. That's the protection hitters get. The rest is their own responsibility, and if it's true that more of them are getting hit, they are every bit as much to blame as pitchers. Hitters crowd the plate more than ever, covering the entire zone with their 'A' swings. They adorn themselves with protective equipment the likes of which Willie Mays never would have imagined during his playing career, and then they expect to also be given deference when it comes to the inner edge of the plate. That—not rising bloodlust from pitchers—is why hit batters are happening more often than at any other time in the game's history. Not giving ground means wearing a bruise, now and then.

Hitting is excruciatingly hard right now. Merrifield is an aging hitter, and not a very good one (by MLB standards) at this stage. His frustration is understandable, but to propose amendments to the rules that would materially hurt his fellow players and abdicate his and his fellow hitters' own duty to protect themselves and negotiate the fight for the strike zone is as reckless of him as throwing an inside fastball is of a pitcher with imperfect command.

In the past, I've proposed ejecting pitchers who hit three batters in one game. I still think that makes sense. Ejecting anyone on a first plunking (absent external factors like a simmering feud between the teams), though, is a foolish idea, and it reflects an attitude on the part of hitters as derelict as the one pitchers took to sticky stuff over the years. In the new year, we'll hear more about this rule, but I hope we only hear that it was duly considered and then shoved into the back of a junk drawer, where it belongs.

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[Transmogrified Tiger]

Not sure there's a silver bullet for this, and I certainly don't give more weight to Merrifield's complaints in particular, but I do think the topic is worth looking into.  HBP have clearly continued to increase: 

• 1990: 861 (993 extrapolated to 30 teams)
• 2000: 1573
• 2010: 1549
• 2019: 1984
• 2024: 2020

When you combine that with the simultaneous rise in velocity, there's no question there's more danger to hitters.  They certainly bear some responsibility with their positioning, but with the steady increase in walk rates and emphasis on movement and missing bats(while de-emphasizing pinpoint command), there's little question to me the increase in danger to hitters is mostly on the pitching side.

As to what to do about it, as I said up top I'm not sure there's an obvious solution. Ejections or making HBP a 2 base penalty feel like they create some perverse incentives for the hitters.  Maybe something at the macro level would work, e.g. every X HBP(or HBP that meet criteria of 'dangerous') for an individual pitcher or team results in a suspension.

[Brock Beauchamp]

10 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Not sure there's a silver bullet for this, and I certainly don't give more weight to Merrifield's complaints in particular, but I do think the topic is worth looking into.  HBP have clearly continued to increase: 

• 1990: 861 (993 extrapolated to 30 teams)
• 2000: 1573
• 2010: 1549
• 2019: 1984
• 2024: 2020

When you combine that with the simultaneous rise in velocity, there's no question there's more danger to hitters.  They certainly bear some responsibility with their positioning, but with the steady increase in walk rates and emphasis on movement and missing bats(while de-emphasizing pinpoint command), there's little question to me the increase in danger to hitters is mostly on the pitching side.

As to what to do about it, as I said up top I'm not sure there's an obvious solution. Ejections or making HBP a 2 base penalty feel like they create some perverse incentives for the hitters.  Maybe something at the macro level would work, e.g. every X HBP(or HBP that meet criteria of 'dangerous') for an individual pitcher or team results in a suspension.

Baseball needs to find a way to curb velocity and max effort. No idea how they can do it but it should be the goal.