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Major League Baseball has made some pretty radical rule changes in the name of player safety the past few seasons. 

In 2020 and 2021, double-header games were shortened to just seven innings. In those two years and again in 2022, extra innings have started with a magic runner on second base. The goal of both rules has been to reduce the number of innings played in certain circumstances, in an effort to avoid injuries that might happen in long games/days of baseball.

MORE: Why benches cleared after plunked batters in St. Louis

AnGiancarlo Stanton d now it’s time for MLB to introduce at least one more radical change in the name of player safety. It’s far beyond time, actually.

“I had a moment last night,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said Wednesday morning before his team played an afternoon game in St. Louis against the Cardinals, “when I was holding Pete’s helmet and it was cracked.” 

He paused. 

Pete Alonso had been hit MLB Home and Office Decorin the back of the head by a Kody Whitely pitch in the eighth inning on Tuesday. Thankfully, the helmet — made of aerospace-grade carbon fiber composite, the Rawlings S100 Pro Comp — absorbed most of the impact, as designed, and Alonso was OK. But if the pitch had been a couple inches in another direction and hit Alonso in the face, or in the neck — with the same amount of force that cracked the helmet — a serious injury would have been almost certain.

“Y’know,” Showalter said, “it’s kinda funny how football saw a problem and addressed it. It still happens some, but there’s a huge fine and penalty for it. Guys know they’re not supposed to do that.”

Nothing happened to Whitely. He stayed in the game. He threw a pitch that cracked a player’s helmet and was not ejected, and under baseball’s current rules, that’s exactly how it should have played out. That’s gotta change. 

“I’m not a pitcher, but I justTim Anderson can’t comprehend pitchers missing that badly,” Alonso said after Wednesday’s game. “It’s not even close. I’m 6-3, I’m a tall guy. I know guys are getting incentivized to throw hard and throw up, but I just don’t know how the miss is that bad. For me, that’s a head-scratcher, how big-leaguers can miss that badly.”

I have no idea if Whitley intended to hit Alonso in the head or not. That’s a completely different conversation, one I’ve written about it before. If there is unmistakable intent when a pitcher hits a batter in the head, there should be swift a atlanta braves world series jerseys nd severe punishment, measured in weeks, not days. Prevention, not punishment. 

But for the purposes of this column, intent is irrelevant. That’s where this conversation so often goes off the rails, devolves into a thing that should not matter and gets lots in the weeds. 

MO atlanta braves jersey majestic RE: Mets pitcher says MLB doesn’t care about ball issues

There have to be immediate, established punishments for hittin atlanta braves gold program jersey g batters in the head, starting with this one: Hit a batter in the head and you’re ejected.

“You reach a point where it’s about safety of yo atlanta braves jersey 2t ur players,” Showalter said. “We’re lucky. We’re talking about a pitch that broke his helmet. It’s not good.”

And since MLB seems enamored with magically putting runners on second base, let’s do that here, too. atlanta baseball jersey If a batter gets hit in the head, he — or his replacement runner — automatically goes to second base. If there are two guys on base, one of them scMLB Trading Cardsores. 

Unfair? Don’t hit batters in the head. 

It’s time for aExpress player safety rule that matters.