The 2023 Major League Baseball season poses one particularly new challenge that’ll surely provide some fantastic on and off-field commentary, if not highlights.
That challenge is MLB’s installation of the new pitch clock, which New York Mets manager Buck Showalter had a funny, but fair, concern with at spring training.
Showalter, who began his coaching career in 1990 with the New York Yankees, has experienced a multitude of changes to the game. That includes this season, with a new rule in 2023 allowing pitchers just 15 seconds — or 20 with a runner on base — to toss the ball from the mound in order to avoid an automatic ball added to the count. This also gives batters eight seconds to enter the box at the threat of being charged with an automatic strike.
This prompted an outside-the-box thought from the Mets skipper.
“I was thinking today, bat boys are gonna be a big deal,” Showalter told reporters Sunday at spring training, per SNY video. “You better have a good bat boy. Bad bat boys are gonna make it tougher. I have a great bat boy. At home. He might be making some road trips with us.”
The new rule, as Showalter emphasized, does present a challenge for those responsible for now providing hitters with their bats in a timely matter — with the weighted pressure of potentially costing said hitters with a strike before getting a chance to swing the bat.
“If you don’t have someone that knows what to do and when to go and where to go, and have the bats ready for the first two hitters and how there’s a method there, you’re gonna lose seconds,” Showalter said.
