 With the new pitch clock rules comes new gamesmanship within the line's legal gamesmanship and I love that element of baseball. This breakdown is brought to you by DraftKings. Thank you to them. We got a two run game in the ninth inning, Red Sox and Cardinals and Contreras steps in. There's a runner on first. It was a four pitch walk to get the runner on first and the first pitch from Kenley is a strike. Strike one. Kenley Janssen was one of the slowest pitchers in baseball last year in the last couple of years and someone who they thought the pitch clock was really going to affect. So he had to change his delivery, he had to change his motion, probably change his mindset and Contreras is gonna take advantage of that because now he's like, all right, I wanna pitch fast and Contreras puts one foot out of the box and then starts getting ready and doing his gloves and all that and the rule is that you can't throw a pitch until the batter and pitcher look at each other and both are ready to play. And if you wanna complain about that, you can but it seems very fair to me like, hey, let's make sure both guys are ready. That's probably gonna get us the best result on the field and I agree. But Kenley is just looking at his eyes and his bat and not his feet and Contreras knows this. So he starts his delivery but Contreras foot is still outside of the box. So the umpire says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, and he just gives him a warning. He says, you gotta make eye contact. You gotta look at him, look at him. He's gotta be ready. And Kenley's like, okay, I was, I thought he was ready. All right, and then Contreras keeps his foot outside of the box but he's looking at Kenley making eye contact and his bat is in the hitting position. So when Kenley is looking up, he's just focusing on the top half of his body and he's seeing that he's ready. He's not looking at his feet and he's starting his wind up and the umpire's like, no, now it's a violation. That's a ball and Kenley's like, what? Wait, what? I thought he was ready. He turns to his infielders and they must be like, no, dude. And he's like, yeah, okay. All right, so it's one in one count and Contreras is trying to do it again but you can see they're waiting him out. The ump's not ready. The catcher's looking at him. Kenley's kind of waiting for him and then he steps in and then the catcher says, all right, here we go and they play. So Contreras doesn't do it that time but he got him to do it twice. One a warning, one an automatic ball and there's ball two and they stole a second base. Goldy with wheels. Because that run, if you're the Red Sox, really doesn't matter. It's not gonna tie the game. Just get the outs when you can. And here's the two one pitch. Contreras doesn't do it. He puts it in his back pocket. He's like, I'll save that again for later. Yup, that's what I'm saving it for. That was ball three, just one more and I'm on base. So he puts his feet right outside. He does it again and Kenley does it again. That's his motion right there. See that knee come up and he's not ready on the umpire's like, dude, again, that's a walk. And Contreras knows exactly what he was doing. Kenley's like, what, I don't, what's I, my problem was I was too slow. Now I'm going too fast. Well, I don't understand what's happening and the umpire writes it down in his little book and he says, really weird situation. Kenley doesn't know the raw goes, explain it to him. But that wouldn't be the end of this game and the shenanigans that ensued. Two batters later, that two strike 98 down the middle, fastball is put to the right field wall and that runner who doesn't really matter cause it's not a tie game scores and it is a three to two game with the tying run now at third base and they go ahead run at second base. Then they intentionally walk the next batter. They say, get on your way to first base, man. Easy does it because they want the force out. They want to be able to turn the double play and end the game. And on the one oh pitch, they get the double play ball one out at two game over. No, game tied because the ball got away. Now I don't think the throw is going to beat the runner anyway, but oh, we're happy here. We're happy here. He's watching the Jumbotron hoping they show the replay. Like what happened here? They get the one out and then, oh, just spiked that throw now. He was going to be safe anyway. You can see that foot come down before the glove really comes up to scoop it. But the errant throw allows the tying run to score and this guy's like, oh, shit. This guy's got his kid on its lap and he's like, oh, shit, you take him, honey. I got to stand up and yell. Kiki's like, whoa, okay. I mean, I didn't think you were going to pass off your kid just to yell at me. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm upset as well. The next batter is Lars Newtbar and he's going to do the same thing, but I think not on purpose because he's not looking at Kenley right here, but his feet aren't ready. But if Kenley looks up, it looks like his hands are ready or Kenley's just in his own world and he just wants to go. The umpire's going to step out and you can see the batter's eyes like face kind of go, wait, what's going on? I didn't mean to trick him, but that is the fourth time he's been called for this. The first, he got a warning, three balls in a row and now Cora's going to walk out. They're like, what the hell is this? What's going on? And the umpire is going to explain to him like, I told him, he's not waiting for the batter to be in his hitting position. I can explain to you it further. They're tricking him, but I don't know if that's my place as an umpire and Kenley's like, okay, I did. I don't get it. Now he did say after the game, Kenley was like, you learn a lot. I just learned something to be aware of that I wasn't sure to be aware of. And Contreras after the game was like, yeah, very much that was something I was doing on purpose to mess with his timing. That's what I got to do to help the team win. Pretty cool. He doesn't fall for it the rest of the way. He gets the last out of the inning on that funky play and not great base running, but it doesn't matter. The damage was done. They shut him down. And that was a new pitch clock gamesmanship that I didn't know was going to take place, but it is pretty fun. I enjoy players who try to find all the ways they can to win games between the margins. And this breakdown was brought to you by DraftKings and I appreciate them very much. And thank you for watching. If you want to subscribe, that helps out a lot too. And I appreciate that.