Dodgers pitcher Pedro Baez is baseball's slowest worker and it's agonizing
LOS ANGELES - To say Pedro Baez works at a snail's pace would be unfair to snails, unless you're referring to the entire lifespan of a snail or the amount time it took snails to evolve their shells. Snails get bored watching Pedro Baez pitch.
Baez, the Dodgers' 28-year-old reliever, pitches at a slower pace than anyone else in baseball, and it's not terribly close. Where Major League pitchers averaged 22.7 seconds between pitches in 2016, Baez clocked in at 30.2, by far the highest in the league among anyone with at least 50 innings pitched.
"Pedro's very methodical," manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers' 8-4 loss in Game 5, in which Baez faced seven batters in the eighth inning but recorded only two outs and yielded five runs due to a series of softly struck hits and defensive miscues. "We've talked about the pace of play and trying to speed that up…. It's a work in progress as far as the pace, but I think he still pitched considerable better than the line."
Technically, pitchers should only have 12 seconds to deliver the ball with no runners on base, but the rule is never enforced at the big-league level. So there's nothing actually wrong with what Baez is doing, save for the agonizing aesthetics of it. And to be fair, Baez typically gets good results with his glacial pace: He owns a solid career 3.08 ERA since joining the Dodgers' bullpen in 2014.
But Baez's appearance on Thursday included a couple of minor defensive hiccups - his own error notwithstanding. Third baseman Justin Turner appeared a step too slow while charging a roller that Kris Bryant beat out for an infield hit, and second baseman Kiké Hernandez narrowly missed doubling up Dexter Fowler at second base on a soft-line drive. Neither seemed a certain damnation of Baez's pace, but it seems hard to imagine the players behind him enjoy watching as he makes a slow walk around the mound between practically every pitch.
"I think our guys make no excuses about how fast or slow a guy works," Roberts said.
Asked if it gets frustrating to play behind Baez, Hernandez said, "At first it might. But once you get used to it, I guess, you find a way to not get out of the game, you know? For me, I usually just walk around a lot. Corey (Seager) does the same thing. You've just got to find a way to keep yourself on your toes.
"Obviously it's a lot more fun to play behind a guy who's working quick. But it's still your teammate, and it is what it is."
It is most certainly what it is, and it's definitely not something Baez is about to change this postseason - the Dodgers have tried in the past to get Baez to hurry it up, but to no avail. But Major League Baseball has experimented with using pitch clocks in the high minors in the last two seasons, and Baez's laborious postseason showcase emphasizes an issue that will inevitably be addressed in upcoming collective-bargaining negotiations: The league wants its games moving faster to appeal to broader audiences, and allowing pitchers half a minute between throws seems an outrageously bad way to do that.
And look: Of course there's room for drama late in postseason games, and plenty of baseball fans love the sport enough to abide long waits during innings. Baseball's just never going to match basketball in terms of the frequency of action. And it does seem likely that the issue weighs more heavily on sportswriters - like, say, those hoping to get out of Dodger Stadium in time to get to the L.A. taco place we heard about before it closes - than it does on casual fans.
Still, it's bad. Thursday's Game 5 featured eight pitching changes and about a feature film's worth of video reviews, plus postseason games include longer commercial breaks. So Baez is hardly the only factor to blame for the four hour, 16 minute time of game. But he obviously didn't help, and it's difficult to believe there's so much as a single viewer anywhere eager to watch relatively unknown setup relievers turn what should be short outings into interminable slogs.
Nothing's going to be done about it this October, obviously, but Major League Baseball would be well-served finding a way to move things along before it further alienates those that argue its product is too boring.
Because Baez is boring. That's really the main thing. He's a guy with a high-90s fastball and a sharp slider that should be elevating the heartbeats of opposing batters, not tiring out his own infielders with tedium.
Many object to the idea of implementing a pitch clock at the Major League level because baseball, traditionally, is the sport of no clocks. But baseball changes constantly, and it has not traditionally been a sport of four-hour long nine-inning games. The game progresses and adjusts, and in this, it needs a progressive adjustment.