A Solvable Problem
In game four of the World Series last night (an 18-inning epic), Shohei Ohtani was walked five times.Four of them were intentional. The fifth featured four consecutive balls, with only one anywhere near the plate.
It's a huge drama killer.
It's also solvable. I was thinking about it this morning and realized an easy solution: if a batter walks with zero strikes during his at-bat, he gets to go to second base, not first.
One or more strikes? First base only.
This would make it much more difficult to pitch around guys and also make an intentional walk more difficult to use (as it should be).
Baseball's changed all kinds of rules in the last few years (mostly to good benefit), so it doesn't seem impossible for something like this to happen.
By the way, Ohtani had nine plate appearances last night: 2B, HR, 2B, HR, IBB, IBB, IBB, IBB, BB. Absolutely incredible. And he pitches tonight.
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