Anyone see the Bottom of the 8th in Cleveland tonight?
Alex Colome on the mound for Minnesota, who has just been brutal...
-Franmil Reyes strikes out on 8 pitches... the 3rd strike was called and was at least 3 inches outside.
-Josh Naylor gets hit with the 4th pitch. Trainer comes out, brief delay, he stays in the game.
-Jake Bauers walks on 5 pitches, the 4 balls nowhere near
-Roberto Perez strikes out swinging on 4 pitches
-Andres Gimenez walks on 5 pitches, Ball 2 was pretty clearly a strike
-Cesar Hernandez walks on 4 pitches. Ball 4 was a strike and Colome throws his hands up at the ump in frustration. Naylor scores
Jorge Alcala replaces Colome. Alcala has an absolutely electric arm but has *ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA* where the ball is going.
-Jordan Luplow gets hit with the 6th pitch... 99 mph to the left shoulder. Stays in the game. Bauers scores
-Jose Ramirez strikes out on the 7th pitch.
End inning.
That all took 39 minutes. When you count all the commerical breaks, injury delays and Cruz's strikeout to end the top half of the 8th, over 45 minutes passed between Buxton's homer and Alex Kirilloff's lineout to start the 9th. That's 45 minutes without A SINGLE BALL put in play.
This inning was a microcosm of everything that's wrong with MLB... hitters doing nothing but swinging for the fences, pitchers for whom the only emphasis is velocity, and some really bad plate umpiring (which is overall the worst I've ever seen it this year.)
Coming into tonight's games, the league was batting .232 as a whole, and the Reds led the National League with a .247 team batting average.
I get that these numbers will probably come up somewhat as the weather warms.
I'm not sure about this, but I seem to also remember hearing that the pitching is on pace to hit a record number of batters this year, and it's not even close. (Admittedly small sample size) That's just straight up dangerous.
Something HAS to change, but I'm not sure what....