San Francisco Giants right-hander Justin Verlander is frustrated with Major League Baseball after a change they made in the grading of umpires resulted in a tighter strike zone.
The buffer zone of MLB umpires, which refers to the area surrounding the strike zone, was changed from two inches to three-quarters of an inch on all sides, according to The Athletic.
The change was made as part of a new labor agreement with the Major League Umpires Association, and the purpose of it was to have umpires evaluated more closely to the textbook definition of the strike zone.
“This just exacerbates the problem between MLB and players, too,” Verlander told Justice delos Santos of the Mercury News.
“There’s a lack of trust and a lack of communication. Rob Manfred runs around every spring training saying, ‘It’s not us. We’re open. We want to talk. We want to have a great relationship with you guys.’ Then, they do everything behind closed doors and don’t include us in anything – in the game that we play and make our livelihood doing.”
Verlander, as well as other players, was surprised by the change despite an MLB official telling The Athletic that clubs were informed after the collective bargaining agreement was ratified.
“We saw that story,” Verlander said. “The league said they notified everybody, and everybody said, ‘We never heard anything.’ They talked to all the people that were supposed to be notified, and none of them had heard anything. So, somebody’s lying.”
Verlander believes the reduced buffer zone is a problem because it incentivizes teams to continue valuing pitchers with elite velocity and “bigger stuff” over command types who need to live on the edges.
“We’ll take the guy that throws 101 with a good breaking ball and have the catcher set up right down the middle and throw as hard as you can and go two times through the lineup, and then we’re on to the next guy that throws 100 out of the bullpen. That, to me, is not the game of baseball that I know and love, and I don’t think that’s the game the fans want,” Verlander said.
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