Daniel Shamah defends Stark on pickoffs:

While Mike makes some good points with respect to Stark's suggested rule changes (specifically the intentional walk stuff), he's way off on his response to limiting pickoffs. He writes: Do we really need to legislate away bad decision-making?

(6) I believe it was Bob Gibson who said that the best pickoff move is the one that's never (or rarely) seen. Excessive pickoff attempts are a sign of a faltering pitcher and usually just add to the wear on his arm. There is no way to say with any degree of authority since pickoff attempts are not recorded and successful pickoffs appear as caught stealing, but I would think that throwing to first more than a couple of times is a bad idea. The runner gets to see more of your move and, I believe, is usually more successful because of it. Let the pitcher learn from his mistakes.

The point of rule changes is to avoid over-managing and getting back to playing the game. That's why the NBA instituted the 3-point line: too many teams were just finding the biggest guy out there. The NBA wanted to reward good jump shooting, a fundamental part of basketball. It's also why they brought in a 24-second shot clock. Inferior teams were just grabbing a 2-0 lead and dribbling around for minutes at a time, killing clock. This forced teams to stop screwing around, and get back to playing basketball.

I think limiting pickoffs and pitching changes is an exact analog to those cases in the NBA. Yes, pickoffs are an effective strategy for limiting stolen bases. But so was killing clock in the NBA. The whole lefty-righty matchup game that micromanagers like La Russa and Valentine play in the 7th inning of every game not only represents a tiny advantage, it's actually poor managing more often than not.

Let's remember this game is about entertainment. I can't imagine anyone finds 12 consecutive pickoffs or pitching changes entertaining. I'm not advocating full-contact baseball to appease fans: I'm just saying, stop screwing around and play baseball. And there's nothing wrong with bringing in a few new rules to help with that.

One of the most interesting early work that STATS did was in counting pickoff throws. The research they did back in 1990 showed that one pickoff throw was enough to reduce base stealing success. More than one had no effect. It appears that first pickoff sends enough of a message, keeps the runner close enought that no others are needed. Of course, not many have picked up on this fact.

Actually, I like the way pitchers like Jim Palmer and Dwight Gooden approached base runners; they didn't care. If you get the batters out after allowing a man on first, the likelihood is that runner isn't going to score. So Palmer and Gooden concentrated on that, rather than worrying about giving up a stolen base. I think that's the right strategy.