TORONTO – The intentional walk has outlived its usefulness, as anybody who paid as much as $1,371 face value for a ticket to the three World Series games this week at Dodger Stadium can attest.
Just like back in the day when Barry Bonds was intentionally walked a record 668 times in his 22-year career, the target in Game 3 was Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani. The Toronto Blue Jays waved him to first base four times and walked him once unintentionally in the final nine innings of a record-tying 18-inning game the Dodgers won.
No one paying that kind of money to attend a premier Major League Baseball game wants to see that. The fans are paying to see the man called the best player on the planet swing the bat, not walk.
“That’s fair. That’s a fair take,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before a Game 5 loss on Wednesday that put the Jays on the verge of winning this Fall Classic.
The no-pitch intentional walk was instituted as a rule change prior to the 2017 season. At least before then, a pitcher had to lob four pitches outside the strike zone to complete the task.
But in no other sport can a manager take the ball or stick out of the hand of the best opposing player in the game—at least not in the same way. Not Patrick Mahomes in football. Not Connor McDavid in hockey. In basketball, you can try to intentionally foul a star 3-point shooter like Stephen Curry, but he still has the chance to attempt a shot before being touched by a defender. And even if he’s hacked, he still gets to shoot from the foul line.
In baseball you can take the bat out of the best player’s hands, be it Ohtani or Aaron Judge, who set the American League record with 36 intentional walks this season for the New York Yankees. It’s not what paying customers want to see and it’s not inherently fair.
“Obviously, for me on the bias side, I would probably say I wish we could outlaw it because it would benefit the Dodgers,” Roberts said.
It’s a failed strategy anyway, as the San Francisco Giants observed when Bonds walked 2,558 times (1,947 of them in San Francisco), the equivalent of five full seasons of plate appearances. The Giants always noted they scored 30% of the time when Bonds walked.
“One team’s got to win and if that’s taking Shohei out, and not pitch to him, then that’s what they’ve got to do,” Freddie Freeman said. “But that means Shohei’s on base, so that’s also good for the Dodgers.”
Of course, the key here is that Dodgers have to knock him in. They’re hitting .201 in the World Series and since the 18-inning marathon game Ohtani is 0-for-7 with another walk and three strikeouts. Mookie Betts, who bats directly behind Ohtani, is just 3-for-23 in this Fall Classic.
Monday night, the move ultimately didn’t pay off for Blue Jays manager John Schneider, who opted to incessantly walk Ohtani after he hit a pair of homers and two doubles in his first four at-bats. Ohtani set a record by getting on base nine times in Game 3 with Betts and Freeman hitting behind him.
By walking Ohtani, Schneider kept turning the lineup over and that roulette wheel finally landed on Freeman, who homered to lead off the bottom of the 18th inning.
Schneider said he’d rather have had anyone else beat his team that night than Ohtani.
“He had a great game, he’s a great player, but I think after that, you just take the bat out of his hands,” Schneider said.
Freeman batted three times with runners on base before becoming the first player ever to hit a walk-off homer in two World Series games, having done so the first time last year. In the 13th inning Monday night, Schneider walked both Ohtani and Betts intentionally to load the bases with two outs and pitch to Freeman, who hit a fly ball to the warning track in center field.
“Then it happens with no one on,” Freeman said. “That’s the way the game works sometimes.”
Perhaps, but the game would never have lasted 18 innings if Schneider had been forced to at least pitch around Ohtani. There’s a bit of honor in that.
When Schneider was asked if the rule should be changed to wipe out the intentional walk, he noted there are other rules that should be abolished. Like not allowing a pitcher to hit, he quipped.
Ohtani, as many have said, is a unicorn, the first two-way player since Babe Ruth to regularly hit and pitch in his career. Unlike Ohtani, that ended for Ruth when he was sold in 1919 at 24 years of age to the New York Yankees. After that he made five starts in New York for the remainder of his career, winning all of them.
Ohtani, at 31, continues to do both.
MLB has already made rule accommodations for Ohtani. When he is done on the mound in games he pitches, he can remain in the lineup as the DH, giving the Dodgers an inherent advantage.
The idea of intentionally walking a team’s leadoff hitter is not always a great one. That may be why Ohtani has only been intentionally walked 88 times in his career during the regular season, 20 this year.
He’s only been walked intentionally eight times overall in the postseason, half of them in Game 3.
Bonds was walked intentionally seven times alone by Anaheim Angels manager Mike Scioscia during the 2002 World Series, which his club won over the Giants in seven games. Bonds still batted .471 (8-for-17) with four homers, six RBIs and a 1.994 OPS. He had eight homers that postseason and was a walked intentionally 13 times. Ruth has the highest all-time career OPS of 1.164, putting into perspective what Bonds was able to do in that World Series.
The most Ruth was walked intentionally in a single season was 24 times in 1924. Of course, he had Lou Gehrig hitting behind him.
Scioscia said he was just trying to win games when he walked Bonds with first base open, a runner on first, and runners on first and second. So was Schneider.
I hated it back then, and I still hate it today. I’d rather see the best hitter hit.