As the time-worn adage goes: Timing is everything.
And that’s extremely true for batters in baseball, who work on their timing to find the exact moment to swing at a pitch. If a pitcher — Nestor Cortes comes to mind! — messes with the timing of his windup and delivery, it can throw off all that.
Which brings us to an intriguing trend that could be emerging at 2023 spring training.
New York Mets ace Max Scherzer is finding ways to mess with batter timing thanks to the pitch clock that’s been installed.
Because the hitter needs to step in at a certain time — by the time eight seconds are left on the clock, and we’ve seen how batters have made mistakes with that — Scherzer notices he can either slow the pace down or speed it up.
Scherzer says he is learning to play around with the pitch clock.
Washington’s Michael Chavis, the second hitter in the second inning, stepped out of the box when he felt Scherzer was taking too long. That was fine with Scherzer.
The right-hander held the ball for more than 10 seconds before delivering the next pitch as Chavis had to remain in the batter’s box, locked eyes with Scherzer. The veteran pitcher felt he had imposed his will, even though Chavis ultimately singled to right.
“I can work extremely quick. And I can work extremely slow,” Scherzer said. “There’s another layer here to be able to mess with the hitter’s timing.
“I can come set even before the hitter’s in the box. I can’t pitch until eight (seconds left on the clock). But as soon as his eyes are up, I can go. If his eyes are up with 12 seconds to go, I can fire.
And he’s using PitchCom to speed things up by relaying his pitch to the Mets’ catchers quickly:
Max Scherzer calling his own Pitches on PitchCom. pic.twitter.com/nMxE1vDlpz
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) February 27, 2023
Scherzer isn’t the only hurler who thinks the clock helps pitchers more than it does for hitters. From Yahoo:
“The hitters are the ones who do something in between every swing, every pitch,” Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman said. “There’s a way for us to make it an advantage for us. We’ve just got to figure out what that is, right? Whether it’s like, do we wait until one second to throw the pitch? Or do we want to throw it super quick? So that they’re thinking, like, ‘I can’t try to time it up,’ right?”
We’ll see if this continues to be a story as spring training continues.
