By Tom Haudricourt Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sandy Alderson takes exception with those who say baseball officials are crazy to change the rules by enforcing a new strike zone this season. We're merely enforcing the rule in the book.
Problem is, umpires stopped calling the rule-book strike zone decades ago.
Over the years, it came down lower and lower. Indeed it did. Rarely were pitches above the belt called strikes, giving pitchers an increasingly smaller vertical target. At the same time, the strike zone began to creep east and west as pitchers tried to work off the plate to compensate. As a result, walks increased, run totals increased, ERAs increased and, to the chagrin of all involved, time of games increased.