If recently acquired Brock Osweiler gets a shot to quarterback the Browns, he won’t be competing against Robert Griffin III.
The Browns released Griffin on Friday, ending his time in Cleveland after only one season.
The move saves the Browns not only the $6 million due RG3 for 2017, but also the $750,000 roster bonus he would’ve been due Saturday, an unidentified league source told Cleveland.com.
Last season, major league teams issued 932 intentional walks. At four pitches per walk, that’s 3,728 pitches. Granted, not every intentional walk included four intentional balls: Some were thrown after the count went to, say, 2-0, 3-0 or 3-1 as teams pitched around batters. But for the sake of this argument, let’s say all the wide ones were intentional, with the catcher holding out his arm and all that.
That’s 3,728 pitches spread out over the 2,428 regular-season games played in 2016. That is, on average … 1.54 pitches per game.
MLB and the players, therefore, have agreed to jack around with game play to save the time needed to throw a pitch and a half per game. I don’t care how long a nervous pitcher may need to throw that pitch and a half; it isn’t nearly enough to merit such a radical change to the rules.
And it is a radical change. Not every intentional Cheap Jerseys With Numbers ball is perfectly executed (see the ending to Tuesday’s Stephen F. Austin-Texas A&M game). The Yankees’ Gary Sanchez reminded us last September that a hitter can swing at any pitch, wherever it’s thrown. That’s why teams try (well, tried) to keep intentional balls far away from hitters.
