How Major League Baseball’s new pitch timer works and rules pitchers must follow.
Manny Machado went down in the history books on Friday afternoon.
To start off his first at-bat of MLB spring training, the San Diego Padres star was called for an automatic strike after taking too long to get set in the batter's box. So Machado was down 0-1 in the count before even seeing a pitch from Seattle Mariners southpaw Robbie Ray.
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SIGN UP HERE It was the first pitch clock violation of the spring.
With a pitch clock in place (15 seconds if the bases are empty, 20 if they're not), batters must be ready to hit with at least eight seconds remaining on the clock.
"I'm gonna have to make a big adjustment. I might be down 0-1 a lot this year," Machado told Bally Sports San Diego following the infraction. "It's super fast. There's definitely going to be an adjustment period, but I'm going down in the history books."
Machado said the home plate umpire warned him that he only had two seconds left to get set, but the third baseman wasn't able to look up at the pitcher in time.
The pitch clock is one of three major rule changes coming to baseball this season, along with bigger bases and shift restrictions.
Machado recently told USA TODAY's Bob Nightengale that some players are going to get "pissed off" by the changes and that MLB needs to be flexible with tweaking the rules in-season if adjustments are required.
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“You’re going to have some players who are going to be freakin’ angry and pissed off,” Machado said. “You’re going to have players pissed off at the umpires who are just following the rules. We’re going to be seeing some crazy [expletive] for sure.
“Some of us older players, we don’t like change too much. We earned the right to be who we are. Now, there’s going to have to be a lot of adjustments. MLB is going to have to be the ones to make adjustments on the fly if things aren’t working. If they do that, then I think everybody will be OK with it. But they’re going to have to be lenient and tweak some things.
“Rob [Manfred] said that he wants to listen to the players. Well, you got to listen to the players and make adjustments during the season if things start spiraling out of control. You can’t just say, 'This is how it is. It’s this way or the highway.’ We are changing the game a lot, so let’s make this as simple as possible.’’
