Pickoffs were a pitcher's best friend

Time to find a new one

Welcome back! Today, I’m introducing a new series on the 2023 running game. I’ll start by highlighting the significance of the one rule change that I think will be the thorniest for pitchers this season (and it’s not the clock). We’ll say goodbye to some of the ways that crafty pitchers held runners in the “old game” before we consider how those same pitchers can make the new one work for them.

Spring Training can be kind of boring. There’s a reason that most of it (particularly the non-game action) isn’t televised. Fungoes will be hit, pitchers will field and throw, and runners will practice sliding on tarps.

This year, though, there’s another reason to be excited for that Rangers/Royals matchup on February 24th. The rules of the game have changed in a pretty significant way this offseason, and those rules go into effect in full on Day 1 of Spring Training¹. The changes themselves are well-documented, so I’ll only recap at a high level. We have:

• Restrictions on where infielders can stand (on the dirt, on their own side of the field)

• Bigger bases

• A clock on pitchers (and hitters)

• Pickoff limits (2 per hitter faced)

The team executives’ quotes I’ve seen haven’t revealed much, if anything, that teams are doing to plan for these changes. We’ve seen a good amount of “we don’t know how these changes are going to interact with each other” (which seems like a valid point) and “Trea Turner will probably steal 80 bags,” but not much on the specific ways in which teams and players will find competitive advantages within these new rules. That probably isn’t surprising, as any early tipping of the hand by a prepared team just allows the unprepared team to catch up more quickly.

But for those teams who want to pick up that first-mover advantage in 2023, time is short. With the rules presented and group meetings held at the Winter Meetings in December, strategies should already be formed. If you’re going to try a two-man outfield, you would’ve met to discuss how you’d roll that out (what drills should that alignment be incorporated into and who needs to practice what).

Think of the infield shift. When the early-moving teams started to use it, they practiced it in Spring Training. Those teams practiced turning double plays in the shift, calling for popups in the shift, and covering second base in the shift. Late-moving teams didn’t practice; they just started doing it during the regular season and worked out the kinks in real time. Those were the teams that had two middle infielders going for a ground ball and none covering second base.

I think we’re going to see a similar dynamic this spring that we saw in those “infield shift” springs of several years ago. Some teams are going to be very deliberate with practice minutes. Others might, at a minimum, put clocks in batting cages and bullpen mounds to help players acclimate to the pitch timer. Still other teams might not make any adjustments before February 24 - you’ll be able to spot players on those teams still working out the kinks in April.

About that Pickoff Limit

You’ll notice that I have the pickoff limit listed as its own bullet point above, and that’s because I think it is the rule that will most separate the 2023 game from the 2022 game. The pickoff limit hasn’t gotten a ton of coverage yet, but I think that will change as soon as the games start. Jesse Rogers published this on Monday in a primer article:

"Guys were a little uncomfortable with the clock, for the most part," competition committee member and San Francisco Giants outfielder Austin Slater said. "The thing that players were most concerned about, regarding the pitch clock, was in conjunction with that fact you're only allowed two pick-offs.”

In the 2022 game, pitchers could do all of these things to control the opposing running game:

• Speed up their delivery (by using a slide-step or dropping a high leg kick)

• Pitch out

• Hold the ball for a long time to freeze a runner (or by going long-short-long with hold times)

• Attempt a pickoff (whenever and however many times you’d like to)

In 2023, pitchers will only be able to use the first two of these tools as often as they’d like to (and it’s not as if slide-stepping and pitching out don’t each come with their own costs²). Pickoff throws were the pitching team’s best counter to the running game prior to this season, and they’re going to be even more important in 2023. Pickoff throws limit the size of primary leads for runners, but more importantly, they also affect the quality of a runner’s jump toward the next base. Russell Carleton estimated that a prior pickoff throw decreases the success rate of a stolen base by 12 percentage points. For pitchers with quality moves, the effect should be bigger - runners have to wait until they’re sure the pitcher isn’t coming at them. On the other hand, pitchers with weak moves (or no move at all) give runners a free head start.

Scherzer loved to use the last two tools in that list (hold times and frequent pickoffs), so it was not so surprising to hear that he was an outspoken opponent of the pitch clock. He’d developed strategies to use baseball’s old rules to hold runners in place. Because baseball didn’t have a clock, he’d hold the ball for a long time (longer than most pitchers would get away with) on one pitch before going quick on the next one³. See below for a 7-second viewing experience you’ll never get under the new rules:

Scherzer also loved to throw over often. He was a big user of an “A” move (a quick, bullet throw) and a “B” move (the little lob throw shown below that arrived at first base 3 seconds after the runner did). When you can throw over as many times as you want, you can set up runners with fluff like this:

I don’t think we’ll miss either the “long hold” or the “lob” next year.

Do pitchers really throw over that often?

So Max Scherzer took the old rules to their logical extreme - but what about everyone else? If we’re trying to evaluate how big a deal this two-pickoff limit is, shouldn’t we know how often it was hit or passed last season? Let’s take a look:

If a pitcher attempted a pickoff (to first base) in 2022, he didn’t throw over again while facing the same hitter roughly 70% of the time. In roughly one out of five runner-on-1st situations that included a pickoff throw, the new “two-pickoffs-per-hitter” limit was hit. And yes, Brett Phillips once coaxed Alek Manoah into throwing over eight times (including seven in a row between two pitches) while facing Taylor Walls⁴.

The chart might make it seem as if the pickoff limit’s effect will be limited to unicorns like Scherzer. But it wouldn’t be fair to assume that pitchers will behave the same way with a limit in place. (The chart also doesn't include step-offs/non-throws, which also count as "disengagements.") The stakes on each one of these throws are much higher now. Once a pitcher burns through his two freebies, any third step-off or pickoff must result in the runner getting thrown out. Otherwise, the runner gets a free base.

That means no more “show me” pickoffs and no more “I missed the sign and I need a reset” pickoffs.

A 2-Pickoff Limit Becomes a 1-Pickoff Limit

When this two-disengagement threshold is crossed, the game transforms into something we’ve never seen before. Among the many choices a runner has at this point is the option to leave early toward the next base to tempt a pitcher into disengaging a third time (kind of like the Jon Lester example below). Because Lester was afraid to pick off, he’s a pretty good example of what things might look like:

Imagine this scenario playing out: the runner turns and sprints a few steps toward second base and then stops. The dugout for the pitching team yells “GOING!” (or, “STEP OFF!”). The pitcher, out of habit, responds. He steps off, and the runner (who’d already stopped) dives back to first base. If the runner beats the pitcher back to the bag, the result (a balk) is as good as a stolen base.

If you really can’t afford to lose your second pickoff, and everyone knows that you probably won’t ever use it, then your first pickoff attempt becomes the only one you do have. And if the viable threat of a pickoff is important to hold the runner (again, see the Lester example above), you’d want to keep that threat alive as long as possible. The logic against using your second disengagement then extends to dissuading you from using the first one.

The average plate appearance lasted roughly 4 pitches in 2022⁵; it is hard to imagine pitchers burning a pickoff on pitch 1. I think teams are going to prefer to avoid wacky situations like the one I described by holding on to that first disengagement for as long as possible.

It is clear that a lot of thought needs to go into when and how to use disengagements effectively. We’ll see players and staff start to experiment in some of these early games. I’ll jump more into pickoff strategy in another post; this introduction is only intended to highlight the significance of this rule change and the creative team responses it is going to require.

Time to Adapt

Max Scherzer didn’t get to where he is by complaining. He didn’t like PitchCom in July because he thought it took away one of his advantages (his ability to come up with complex finger-based sign systems), but he’s seen how it can benefit him and is now apparently a fan of it.

The clock and pickoff limit initially chafed him, too, but we’re seeing the same pattern play out as he strategizes. After the rule changes became official, he even expressed some excitement about these changes. Holding runners might be harder than it used to be for him, but he’s hoping to turn an increase in runner comfort into a corresponding decrease in hitter comfort. Remember, Scherzer was the one who did this to Odúbel Herrera, the Human Rain Delay:

In a series of posts to run up through Spring Training, I want to dive into several creative options that teams (and thoughtful pitchers like Scherzer) might be evaluating. These tools will focus on pitchers and their running game partners (first basemen and catchers).

More to come in the next few weeks. Thanks for reading.

*Pickoff data acquired via baseballr. Thanks to that team for the great work they’ve done and shared.

1. Read: “Umpires have been instructed to begin calling violations with no grace period” (mlb.com)

2. Because a slide-step is such a different delivery, pitchers have varying degrees of confidence in their ability to execute it. Some pitchers, for example, can’t (or won’t) slide-step while throwing a curveball.

3. The pitch clock is not just going to take timing-variation tactics away from pitchers like Scherzer - it’s going to make it even easier for runners to time a pitcher up. When you know when a pitcher is going to start toward the plate, it doesn’t matter as much how quick they are in getting rid of the ball.

4. The exchange picked up its own Reddit thread. Manoah struggles to be quick to the plate when he needs to be - he’s a good example of a pitcher who peppered runners with a below-average pickoff move that acted as a band-aid to cover up a slow delivery. He stopped Phillips from running here, but he couldn’t stop him from getting a giant lead. The more Manoah threw over, more confident Phillips became. Take a look at how big his lead got after pickoff #7:

5. 3.90, per Baseball Reference