With the announcement of changes for pace of play last week by Major League Baseball, Adrian Gonzalez took part in a Tom Verducci exclusive roundtable interview on MLB Network. Gonzalez was joined on the panel by Nelson Cruz, Francisco Lindor, Jonathan Lucroy and Salvador Perez, to discuss their thoughts.
The justification of the rule changes are to shorten the breaks between action on the field. Along with taking away the intentional walk, MLB has been toying with the idea of a pitch clock, cutting down on mound visits and lifting the height of the strikes at the bottom of the zone.
"If it can be implied," Gonzalez said on charges to the strike zone. "As a player, you understand it, every umpire’s got a different strike zone. The strike zone in the rule book is not the strike zone that is being implied on the field."
"People talk about changing the strike zone, unless it’s across the board, umpire-to-umpire, they all agree to do the same strike zone, it’s gonna be very, very difficult."
Mound visits have always been used as a stall tactic in the game. But there is also an important place for communication on such occasions.
"You’re taking away from the game, I mean, there’s a strategy of the game," Lucroy said. "We’re going out there, [saying], ‘Hey, calm down. Relax.’ I mean that’s our job, to go down there and calm the pitcher down or say, ‘Hey, this guy is stealing signs from second.’ That’s the strategy of the game."
The pitch clock has been an ongoing experiment at the minor league level and it's unclear if the physical clock will be coming to the major leagues. There is already a rule on the books that could be implemented.
"I just don’t know what else you can do to the game to speed it up," Lindor said about the clock. "I mean, what are you gonna do, play seven innings? That’s the only way I think it’s gonna cut down."
"You can make adjustments, what is it gonna change? Three, ten minutes. I don’t think that’s worth it. If you can cut it down an hour, now you’re playing seven innings, that’s not right."
Baseball is great without tweaking and changing it seems like it won't help that much in the area of time management. Teams will always find ways to stall in order to give themselves an advantage.