World Series Game 3 between The Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers lasted six hours and 39 minutes, ending in the 18th inning with a walk-off home run hit by Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman. The duration of this game was significantly extended and the entertainment value harmed by the Blue Jays repeated intentional walking of Dodgers star player Shohei Ohtani. This has resulted in a debate in the baseball community on whether intentional walks should be limited or banned.
In Game 3, Ohtani collected four hits in his first four at bats, including two home runs. After Ohtani’s second home run in the eighth inning, he did not see another pitch for the rest of the game. The Blue Jays intentionally walked Ohtani four times to avoid risking giving the hot hitter an opportunity to do further damage. The Dodgers participated as well, using the intentional walk multiple times in the series to avoid pitching to Toronto’s hottest hitter, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Intentional walks have been a part of baseball for over a century, however, the process of the intentional walk has changed. For most of baseball history, when a team decided to intentionally walk a batter, the catcher would stand up and move away from home plate to catch four pitches that were out of the hitter’s reach. In 2017, a rule change gave teams the ability to automatically walk batters without having to throw any pitches.
Intentional walks commonly occur when one or more baserunners are in scoring position. For instance, if there are baserunners on second base and third base with one out, a team will intentionally walk the batter to load the bases, giving them a greater chance at setting up a double play.
While the intentional walk is an effective strategy to minimize scoring, it is extremely harmful to the entertainment value of baseball. The higher leverage the situation and the better the hitter, the more likely a team is to opt to use an intentional walk. This is counterintuitive to the MLB’s primary goal: to create a captivating and memorable product.
In recent years, several changes have been made in an attempt to make baseball faster-paced and entertaining. The pitch clock requires that a pitcher take no more than 15 seconds after the previous pitch to enter his windup and throw the next. In the three seasons that the pitch clock has been present, games have been considerably shorter and more rapidly paced. Since 2020, a baserunner has automatically been placed on second base to prevent games from dragging on for several hours. However, in postseason games, automatic baserunners are not given during extra innings, resulting in the 18-inning slugfest that was Game 3.
The intentional walk takes the game out of the player’s hands and prevents iconic moments from happening. Rather than Ohtani getting a chance to hit his third home run of the night to win the game, he was bypassed entirely.
There are several actions the MLB can take if they choose to alter the intentional walk rules. If they view the intentional walk as a dire problem, they may seek to ban it entirely. While it is impossible to prevent a pitcher from pitching around a hitter, requiring that the catcher remain in a squatting position directly behind home plate would forcibly reduce the amount of intentional walks. If the MLB won’t go so far as a complete ban, they may reverse the 2017 rule change and outlaw the automatic walk. However, it is far more likely that MLB will not take action due to the long-standing history of the intentional walk.
A more moderate solution would be to limit teams to a set amount of automatic walks. For instance, a team would have two automatic walks they can use at any point in the game. This way, teams cannot repeatedly avoid certain hitters, especially if the game reaches extra innings.
If the MLB wants to attract new viewers, elite players need to have opportunities to shine rather than have the spotlight taken away from them. To the average person, baseball is a boring sport; not allowing hitters to have their moment merely reinforces that notion.