When he came in to try close a game on June 22, 2024, Nationals’ closer Kyle Finnegan’s eight pitch-clock violations for the season already were three more than any other pitcher. So it’s no surprise that this night in Colorado, he became the first ever in the pitch-clock era to surrender the winning run on an automatic ball four delivered too late.
It was bound to happen to somebody at some point. What softened the blow a bit for the Nationals was that Fiinnegan had put himself in position to lose the game, anyway.
The 2024 rules give a pitcher 18 seconds, two fewer than in 2023, to deliver a pitch with runners on base. Working the ninth in Colorado, Finnegan already had blown the save, allowing the tying run to score on three straight singles before allowing a fourth to reload the bases with nobody out.
Trying to wiggle out of as tough a situation as any pitcher faces, Finnegan got two strikes on Ryan McMahon before running the count full. Brendan Doyle of the Rockies, on second base, must have had an eye on the pitch clock because he began frantically waving at plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt as soon as the pitch was delivered. The umpire immediately jumped out and tapped his wrist, signaling an automatic ball four and bringing in the winning run from third.
“To lose the game that way — it can’t happen,” Finnegan said after the game.” In fact, it can and it did. Better he would have lost on a batted ball or a sacrifice fly or normal walk, even.
As the pitch that was disallowed didn’t look like a strike, it would have been the same result. Some player would have been a walk-off hero, instead of a lot of players fans wondering what the heck just happened.
This was the fourth time a pitch-clock violation with the bases loaded brought in a run, but the first that decided a game, according to MLB. Although Finnegan is in the record book as the first, this surely will happen in another game where a pitcher who might have been a pitch away from getting out of bases-loaded jam, is caught being a second tardy. I have to wish it wouldn’t.
Nationals’ Manager Davey Martinez said his pitcher, now with nine violations, has to be more aware of the pitch-clock, as if Finnegan didn’t have enough to worry about. McMahon already was 3-for-4 with a homer.
Is some easing of the pitch-clock rules needed in the ninth or extra innings? Do fans really want a game decided this way, for the sake of saving a few seconds?
I’m in favor of faster games. I dreaded watching batters and pitchers who took forever to do what they’re supposed to do. Yet tense situations with a game on the line are some of the best, most exciting, moments in baseball.
A pitch-clock violation, much like a questionable balk call, is just not the way a game should end.
A version of this appeared on July 6, 2024, edition of Here’s the Pitch, the daily online post of the Internet Baseball Writers Association. It also is included in Here’s the Pitch 2025, a volume published by Acta Sports of 35 of the best articles from 2024.
Washington baseball history 