Mets' Max Scherzer Calls Out MLB's Warm-Up Clock: 'Frustrating' for Pitchers, Umps

A few months into the MLB season and New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer is still adjusting to the strict rules of the pitch clock.

Ahead of the fifth inning in New York's 4-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies at Citi Field on Thursday, Scherzer got into a bit of disagreement with home plate umpire Tripp Gibson over how much time he had to warm up.

According to MLB's new rules, there are two minutes between half innings and pitchers are allowed eight warm-up pitches in that time. But since catcher Francisco Alvarez was the last batter out in the prior inning, Scherzer wasn't given enough time to finish his warm-up, which led to his argument with Gibson.

"Why can't the umpires have discretion in that situation to allow eight normal warm-up pitches?" Scherzer said. "Why do we have to be so anal about this to have the clock shoved in everybody's face and try to step out every single second that's going into the game?"

Scherzer went on to say that Gibson sort of agreed with him, with the umpire claiming that he had to enforce the rules or he'd be reprimanded by the league. He wanted Scherzer to speak up about the issue and advocate for MLB to give more leeway in certain situations.

Before 2023, umpires had the ability to adjust the amount of warm-up time the pitchers got, even if it ran over the two minutes.

"It's situations like this that really are frustrating not only for pitchers, players, but even umpires," Scherzer said. "That's what Tripp says. Tripp is handcuffed. Why is Tripp handcuffed to not allow something normal, a normal routine? Why can't Tripp make that call?"

"They want to allow the game to be normal," he added later. "The umpires are frustrated that the game is not normal, that we're living and dying by the clock. I said I would speak for him. We're way too far thinking about the clock in every single situation instead of letting players have their normal routines."

While the pitch clock has done a lot of good for the game, most notably helping increase the pace of play, there are still a few little bugs that need to be sorted out like the one that Scherzer pointed out.

But overall, those at the highest level of the sport feel like the clock has changed baseball for the better.

"If there was a way to deliver the pace without the clock, we would have done it 20 years ago," Morgan Sword, MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations, said. "... We started Day 1 of spring training with rigid enforcement of all these new rules, and we felt that that was the best way to help players through that adjustment period and to get to the other side.

"And as we saw in the minor leagues, once you're on the other side, violations occur in less than half of games and are not a big part of the competition—but you feel the benefit of the clock every single pitch all night."

Scherzer was singing a different tune about the pitch clock prior to the start of the regular season. In fact, he thought it'd give pitchers more of an advantage with their ability to control the pace of the game.

"Really, the power the pitcher has now—I can totally dictate pace," Scherzer said at the time. "The rule change of the hitter having only one timeout changes the complete dynamic of the hitter-and-pitcher dynamic. I love it."

Now, he's seeing that there may be a few more things to clean up.

Scherzer had a good outing Thursday despite the hiccup. He went seven innings, allowing just one run on five hits while striking out nine and walking one. It was his latest in a string of strong starts, and he has his ERA down to 3.21 after a rough start to the year.