Saturday, June 21, 2008

Switch-Pitcher in Action

This is interesting. It is a video of a minor league pitcher who can pitch with either arm facing off against a switch-hitter. They both switch back and forth several times. Eventually, they settle it.

What's the rule? There is some confusion it seems. The rules allow both to switch sides once, but it apparently does not say who has to choose first.

Personally, I think the pitcher should choose first and then the batter. Of course, I also think they should limit the armor that batters wear (no arm guards or shin guards), and limit the amount of time between pitches. And I think they should return to the strike zone in the rule book.

It is unfortunate that MLB is not calling me.

The kind of stuff in this video makes a joke out of the grand old game. The umps seemed totally confused about what to do, and in the end, it seems that the batter just gave up and batted from the right side.

He looked pretty bad on the last pitch too ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very entertaining. For about 2 minutes, that is.

If he was just going to watch 3 pitches go by, then make a weak swing at a bad one, it really didn't matter which side of the plate he was on.

When I was in Junior Hi, a kid on my time pitched with both hands. It was pretty cool. He didn't have one of those weird six-fingered gloves. That must be custom made, or something.

The guy I played with just threw left handed all the time until he got tired, then he switched to throwing righty. I don't believe he ever changed hands during the same batter.