It’s no secret that Major League teams are paranoid. Whenever there is even the slightest suspicion of sign stealing, it becomes a whole thing. You’ll even see a pitcher put himself at a technical disadvantage just to make sign stealing tougher on the opponent.
That’s exactly what happened on Tuesday with Craig Kimbrel against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
With a runner on second and the Dodgers up by two runs in the ninth inning, Kimbrel took a glance at Geraldo Perdomo on second base, flipped his glove over and let the ball drop to the mound for a balk. It was all so casual and all so intentional.
Craig Kimbrel, Intentional Balk Mechanics.
cc: @PitchingNinja pic.twitter.com/z2XJFNuJ9k— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) May 17, 2022
But there was a reason behind it all.
Kimbrel wanted to move Perdomo to third base in order to prevent him from relaying signs to Ketel Marte at the plate. We saw the intentional balk in that situation last season pretty regularly, but now, teams are allowed to use PitchCom instead of traditional catcher-pitcher signs. The Dodgers just choose not to use PitchCom because technology is scary.
The strategy somewhat backfired because Perdomo ended up scoring on an infield single. Kimbrel did manage to close out the game the following at-bat.
Still, fans had plenty of thoughts about the unconventional move.
