Bad news for all you dyed in the wool baseball purists out there, according to what sources are telling Howard Bryant of ESPN the Magazine, effective for the 2017 season, Major League Baseball will switch to an electronic dugout signal for Intentional Walks rather than the traditional four ball pitchout.
The change in the intentional-walk rule was proposed by MLB to the Players Association earlier in the year and it will end the long-standing practice of requiring the pitcher to toss four soft pitches outside the strike zone to his catcher.
Now, a team could just signify it wants to issue an intentional walk by activating an electronic dugout signal that would send the hitter directly to first base.
Sad… No but seriously, this will do absolutely nothing to shorten the length of games. Intentional walks were never the problem.
