Max Scherzer of the Mets Needs to Shut Up About the Pitch Clock

The Yankees completed an impressive West Coast trip by taking two of three from the Dodgers after doing the same to the Mariners. That’s some really good work for this team which is definitely playing better than it was early in the season. Of course, what’s a series without numerous injuries to deal with? But first, sometimes I veer away from the Yankees in the lead item, and that’s the case again this morning because Max Scherzer is whining about the pitch clock again.

For the vast majority of players in Major League Baseball, the new pitch clock and timing rules have been no problem whatsoever.

The younger players, in particular, have had little trouble adjusting to the quicker pace of play because they’ve been doing this in the minor leagues for several years now. The veterans who were out of the minor leagues before clocks were used have struggled with it a bit more, but like everything in baseball, and in life, they’re adjusting.

But then you have guys like Max Scherzer of the Mets who can’t stop bitching about it, which is getting pretty tiring because he’s starting to sound like a broken record. I mean he was bitching about it back in 2019 when it was merely an idea, four years before the clock was finally introduced in the majors.

The other day, he took his complaining to another level when home plate umpire Tripp Gibson denied him his eighth and final warmup toss because the between innings clock had run down and it was time to start the inning.

Mind you, this wasn’t the first inning - it was prior to the fifth after he’d already thrown 70 pitches in the game, not to mention 32 warm-up pitches before the first four innings, and however many he threw in his pregame warmup. Did he really, really need that last warmup pitch before the fifth, and was it worth holding up the game so he could voice his displeasure?

“You’re supposed to get eight warmup pitches, and I had seven,” Scherzer said afterward. “I asked (Gibson) if I could have the eighth pitch. Can I do my normal routine to warm up? And he’s telling me, ‘It’s the clock, it’s the clock.’ That’s what’s so frustrating. Look, I’m doing my normal routine. Why do we need to step through the game and have the umpires change routines when it’s not my fault for what’s going on here? I’m talking to Tripp, and he’s sitting here saying he can’t do anything about it. If he lets me throw the pitch, MLB gets mad at him.”

The issue was that Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez made the last out in the top of the fifth and wasn’t ready to take Scherzer’s warmup tosses. OK, but that happens all the time and teams just send a bench player out to catch the first few warmup pitches until the catcher is ready, so what happened here? If there wasn’t someone ready to do that, that’s a Mets issue, not a timing issue.

“This goes back to, why do we need a pitch clock for that situation? If I throw one more pitch, what is it, one second slower?” Scherzer said. “Why can’t the umpire have discretion in that situation, to allow a pitcher to throw his eighth, normal warmup pitch? Why do we have to be so anal about this to have a clock shoved in everybody’s face to snuff out every single second that’s going through the game?”

I’ll give Scherzer this: The umpire should have discretion between innings and Gibson probably could have let Scherzer throw that last pitch. However, if there’s a rule, there’s a rule, so we can’t really get on Gibson because he’s doing what he’s supposed to do.

Scherzer’s last point about why there’s a need for a clock? He’s just being rock-headed because the reason we need clocks in baseball is because players like him - and there have been thousands of them over the past two decades - helped ruin the game with all the dead time they created with their slow pace of play. The timing rules saved us from that misery.

Heading into last weekend, the average time of a nine-inning game so far has been two hours, 37 minutes. That’s down 26 minutes from 2022 before the clocks were introduced, and 33 minutes faster than 2021 which was the all-time slowest season in MLB history when the average time of a nine-inning game was three hours, 10 minutes.

Who in their right mind would be complaining about timing rules? Crotchety cranks like Scherzer I guess because most players have already adapted, and they’re loving the fact that they aren’t playing games that drag on for three, three and a half, sometimes four hours.

Mighty Max and his ilk need to get over themselves and deal with the new reality which is great for everyone except them.

Now, on to the Yankees adventurous weekend in Los Angeles where they took two of three from the Dodgers, but paid a heavy injury price.

➤ I’m convinced there will never be another day in the history of mankind where the Yankees will have a relatively healthy roster, let alone a completely healthy one.

It was three up, four down on the injury front over the weekend. Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson and Tommy Kahnle were all activated off the injured list before Friday’s game, and to make room on the roster the Yankees sent down Oswaldo Cabrera, Franchy Cordero and Matt Krook. For a couple hours, the Yankees were almost whole. However, here’s the tricky part for the Yankees. They have to play games which is always a dangerous endeavor for this team.

In the loss to Los Angeles Friday, Greg Allen - who is replacing the always injured Harrison Bader in center field - suffered a hip flexor and pitcher Ryan Weber felt some pain in his forearm, so they both went on the injured list. And then Sunday came the news that Nestor Cortes has a shoulder problem and he will also go on the IL.

And lastly, and most importantly, late Sunday it was revealed that Aaron Judge may have broken a toe crashing through the right field bullpen gate in the Saturday game. He will undergo x-rays when the team gets back to New York and it probably means he’s going back on the IL.

Thus, what should have been a great weekend, beating a very good team like the Dodgers on the road, turns to shit because of all these injuries including one to the MVP. It never ends. It’s utterly astonishing that a baseball team can be so injury-prone.

Here are my observations on the three games against the Dodgers.

June 2: Dodgers 8, Yankees 4

➤ Hey, full credit to the Yankees for allowing us to go to bed at a decent hour. This game started at 10:10 and it was basically over by 10:40, so good job fellas.

➤ After two promising starts, Luis Severino was garbage in this game and the Dodgers demolished him. Six runs on eight hits in the first inning is some serious suckage; I mean suckage of the highest quality. He had nothing. His fastball velocity was down, his command was terrible, and the Dodgers lit him up. I usually don’t care much about all the things Statcast tracks, but this number was hard to ignore: Of the 18 balls the Dodgers put in play against Severino, 13 had an exit velocity of at least 95 mph, meaning he wasn’t fooling anybody. Since Statcast became a thing in 2015, that’s the highest percentage of hard-hit balls (72.2%) of any Yankees pitcher with a minimum 17 batted balls. Was he tipping pitches, which has been an issue in the past? Who knows, but more than than anything, he just had a bad night. It happens.

➤ The best thing about this night is that Aaron Boone made Severino eat some innings. He knew he couldn’t yank him that early because the bullpen would have been depleted for the rest of the weekend against a very good team. To his credit, at least Severino got through four innings allowing only one more run, lessening the burden on the relievers.

➤ Kahnle made his season debut by pitching the fifth, though he was clearly rusty. It took him 29 pitches as he gave up a walk and a double, but no runs. Weber (until he got hurt) and Albert Abreu split the final three with Weber giving up a solo homer to Mookie Betts.

➤ Yes, it was not lost on me that two former Red Sox tormentors crushed the Yankees. Betts went 4-for-4 with a walk, two homers and three RBI, while J.D. Martinez went 2-for-4 with a home run.

➤ Donaldson played for the first time since April 5 and hey, nice night for him as he hit two homers and drove in three runs. And Stanton played for the first time since April 15 and he also homered. Otherwise, Dodgers starter and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw made it look easy as he pitched seven innings and gave up two runs on four hits and a walk while striking out nine including Judge twice.

BOX SCORE

June 3: Yankees 6, Dodgers 3

➤ Here’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever type in this newsletter: Jake Bauers hit a pair of two-run homers to lead the Yankees to a victory. So I can cross that off the journalism bucket list, I guess. It’s true, Bauers hit a two-run homer in the second and another in the fourth, both off Dodgers starter Michael Grove. Later, Judge hit his 19th in the sixth and Cabrera - who began Saturday at Newark Airport traveling back to the team because of the Allen injury - hit a solo shot in the ninth. Through two games, all 10 of the Yankees runs came via a home run.

➤ Cabrera was sent to Scranton Thursday and didn’t even play for the Rail Riders before being called back. He entered this game in the seventh inning as a defensive replacement for Bauers in left field, which really didn’t make much sense. Is he really a better left fielder than Bauers? Well two pitches into the inning, Miguel Vargas hit a rope into the left-field corner that caromed around the wall and Cabrera dribbled it like a basketball for about 30 feet before he finally picked it up. By that time, a run had scored and Vargas was on third with a triple. Of course it wasn’t a triple - it should have been scored a double and an error on Cabrera but it seems official scorers are prohibited from giving players errors in 2023. I must have missed that clause in the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement.

➤ The trouble in the seventh came courtesy of Wandy Peralta. Gerrit Cole pitched great for six innings as he allowed only one run on four hits and two walks. But at 80 pitches he was cramping, so Boone had to pull him. Peralta came in and was awful. He faced three batters, threw nine pitches, and the results were a Chris Taylor single, the Vargas triple and a walk to Trayce Thompson. What the hell was that Wandy?

➤ Boone went to Michael King and the first guy he faced, Miguel Rojas, singled home a run to make it 5-3, yet another inherited runner who was allowed to score. But then, with men on first and second and disaster lurking with the top of the Dodgers order up, King was great. He got Betts and Freddie Freeman - who had a 20-game hitting streak snapped on Friday - to line out and he whiffed Will Smith for a tremendous game-saving escape. King then pitched a scoreless eighth and Clay Holmes a scoreless ninth.

➤ Judge made another great play in right, and this one will be shown for years to come because when a superstar makes a play like that, MLB will ride that sucker forever in promo videos. Also, as I said earlier, it may land him on the IL. He raced back to make a leaping catch of a Martinez liner and as he caught the ball he crashed through the gate to the visiting bullpen in right. The guy is a superhero right now. Well, except that superhero’s don’t usually get hurt doing their superhero things.

➤ Stanton didn’t play because apparently taking four at-bats as the DH Friday was enough of a workload in his return after nearly six weeks off. Boone says they want to ease him back. How is being the DH not the very definition of easing him back in? Stanton, and the coddled treatment he receives, just mystifies me.

BOX SCORE

June 4: Yankees 4, Dodgers 1

➤ Domingo German was great. He made only one mistake when he hung one to Martinez in the bottom of the seventh and, as he always does against the Yankees, Martinez took advantage and hit it out, a quick answer after the Yankees had scored their first run in the top half. Otherwise, German went 6.2 innings and gave up just four hits and a walk on 99 pitches.

➤ Holmes took over for German with a man on first and he walked Vargas to create a threat, but then he struck out Taylor to end it. And after Holmes got the first two outs of the eighth, Peralta came in and was much better than he was the night before as he got the last four outs for the save. He walked the leadoff man in the ninth, Smith, but then he picked him off to defuse any potential trouble. How good was the pitching? This is the first time all season that the Dodgers 1 thru 4 hitters were all held without a hit. That’s pretty amazing when that group in this game was Betts, Freeman, Smith and Muncy.

➤ You all know I hate the contact play. Hate it. But, it did work in this game, twice. In the seventh, Bauers singled and Isiah Kiner-Falefa bunted for a hit and the runners advanced on a throwing error by pitcher Brusdar Graterol. Kyle Higashioka then hit a weak grounder to short with the infield pulled in, and it was so weak that Bauers was able to score. Then in the eighth, Rizzo walked, Stanton doubled, and in the exact scenario Cabrera hit a weak grounder to second and Rizzo was able to lumber home without a throw. Amazing that they scored both times like that.

➤ Volpe had a single earlier in the game, and then he provided some much-needed insurance with a two-run homer to left-center. I’ll say this, for as poorly as he’s hitting, Volpe has had some big late-game moments and this was one of those. That was his first two-hit game since May 14. Since that date, his average has dropped 25 points to .193.

➤ LeMahieu continues to play great defense, but his bat is ice cold. He went 0-for-4 and in his last 15 games he’s batting .152 with one homer, three RBI and 18 strikeouts.

➤ In their last eight series the Yankees have won six, lost one and tied one and their record is 17-8.

BOX SCORE

 ➤ June 3, 1932: This was one of the most amazing regular-season games in Yankees history as they demolished the three-time defending AL champion A’s 20-13 at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. They banged out 23 hits for an MLB record 50 total bases.

There are 15 four-homer games in the history of MLB, and Gehrig became the first man in the 20th century to do it as he hit three off A’s starter George Earnshaw and then the last off Roy Mahaffey in the seventh. There has never been a five-homer game, but Gehrig nearly hit a fifth in the ninth, a long drive to dead center that resulted in a sacrifice fly for his sixth RBI of the day.

As if that wasn’t enough, Tony Lazzeri hit a grand slam in the ninth to get the Yankees to 20 runs, but more important, that hit completed a natural cycle. He had singled in the fourth, doubled in the sixth, and tripled in the seventh.

Incredibly, the Yankees actually trailed 8-4 after four innings as the A’s jumped on Johnny Allen, the big damage a two-run homer by Mickey Cochrane and a three-run triple by Doc Cramer, but New York scored at least two runs in each of the last six innings including six in the ninth.

Oh, and over in Harlem, Giants manager John McGraw announced his retirement from baseball. He had been with the Giants for 31 years and won three World Series titles. He turned the reins over to Bill Terry who became a player-manager. Yeah, it was quite a day for the New York City sports writers.

After taking Monday off, the Yankees will host one of the most disappointing teams in MLB this season for three games, the White Sox.

Chicago was supposed to be a real threat to win the AL Central, and it still might because that’s the worst division in MLB. As bad as the Sox have been all season at 26-35, they’re still only 5.5 games behind first-place Minnesota and now they’re coming off a three-game sweep against the Tigers.

The last two were walkoffs. Saturday they scored the winning run in the 10th when a wild pitch hit the umpire in the mask and as he lay on the ground, Yoan Moncada raced home. Sunday, Jake Burger hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth for a 6-2 victory.

The White Sox have several talented players, but too many have underperformed. Outfielder Luis Robert has been good lately and he leads the team with 13 homers while first baseman Andrew Vaughn leads with 39 RBI. Ex-Yankee Andrew Benintendi has been just OK with a .271 average but he has yet to hit a homer and has only 14 RBI. They just got star shortstop Tim Anderson back, so that should help the offense and defense.

Pitching is what is killing the Sox. Their team ERA of 4.74 ranks 26th in MLB, their 1.370 WHIP is 24th, and they’ve allowed the second-most homers at 85.

All three games are on YES with 7:05 p.m. starts. The pitching matchups are Tuesday, Clarke Schmidt (5.01 ERA) against Lucas Giolito (4.08); Wednesday, the Cortes injury has things up in the air for New York while the Sox are throwing Lance Lynn (6.55); and Thursday it’s Severino (5.28) against Mike Clevinger (4.13).