Remember when baseball got it right with the pitch clock? Welp, they have taken steps back as a league after injuries to star pitchers and scandals involving Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star player Shohei Ohtani
By Victor Corona
Major League Baseball finally got something right after it introduced new rules last season to speed up the game. The introduction of the pitch clock was a success, with games lasting around two hours and 30 minutes, which was a welcomed sight for a sport that had struggled to gain traction with young sports fans. The positive results, however, didn’t last long for baseball because they got in their own way, and boy, things have escalated quickly.
All the good they built last year is gone and we’re not even two weeks into the season. It started with the uniform mess during spring training last month. Not only were fans complaining on social media about how cheap the quality of the uniforms appeared, but even the players aired their frustrations to the media.
You’d think once the season got started things would get better, especially with having the season open two weeks early in Korea with the Los Angeles Dodgers and their big free agent acquisition Shohei Ohtani going up against the San Diego Padres in a two-game series. Between the first and second game of the series, news began to trickle about a sports gambling story involving Ohtani and his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who was fired after the second game of the series. Ohtani alleges his former interpreter stole $4.5 million to cover his gambling debt.
From there, the Oakland A’s said, “hold my beer. During the offseason, the owners approved the A’s relocation to Las Vegas in 2028. Despite the approval, the Athletics don’t have a stadium plan in Sin City. To make matters worse, their stadium lease in Oakland ends at the conclusion of this season. The A’s recently announced plans to play the next three years at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, a Triple-A stadium that holds around 14,000 fans. The Athletics are averaging around 6,500 fans per game.
Somehow it got worse for MLB, and again, it involved the Dodgers’ superstar slugger. Ohtani was back on the wrong end of a public relations mess after hitting his first home run as a Los Angeles Dodger. What was a cool moment for Ohtani and Ambar Roman, the woman who caught the home run ball, quickly turned into a PR nightmare during a two-day stretch for the Dodgers. Roman accused Dodgers security of bullying her into accepting two signed hats, a signed ball and a signed bat from Ohtani for the special home run ball that was estimated to be worth $100,000. After the story blew up, the Dodgers went into PR crisis mode by inviting Roman and her husband, Alexis Valenzuela, to an on-field experience at Dodger Stadium. The team also said it will review its ballpark process for retrieving baseballs.
Surely that was the last issue going on in the big leagues two weeks into the season, right? Actually, there’s one more. Over the weekend, prominent pitchers Shane Bieber, Jonathan Loaisiga, Spencer Strider and Eury Perez were either lost for the season or are expected to miss significant time due to elbow injuries. This led to the MLB Players Association blaming the new pitch clock for all the elbow injuries we’ve seen in the last calendar year.
Once again, every time baseball takes a step forward they follow by backtracking. In this case, MLB went five steps back in its attempt to keep the sport relevant.
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