A strange thing happened on the way to an argument on the strike zone. The discussion turned from: “Was that a strike?” to “We have to pick up the pace on the game.”

On Wednesday in Seattle the Orioles were playing the Mariners. Brian Runge was the home-plate umpire and it was clear from the get-go that the strike zone had some size to it.

There was so much size that the hitters were turning in disbelieve on called strikes before the fans were even settled in their seats.

Dave Trembley, the Orioles manager, decided to go out between innings and see just what was going on and try to get the zone tightened a little with some jaw boning with Runge.

Said Trembley after the meeting, “He (Runge) started talking about the pace of the game. It’s all those memos they’re getting (from MLB).”

Trembley was referring to apparent directives from MLB headquarters to the umpires to speed the games up. Apparently one way to do that is maybe expand the strike zone a little to get the hitters coming to the plate swinging, or at least call the whole zone as described in the rule book.

Time of games continues to be a perceived problem for MLB. The Red Sox and the Yankees epitomize the problem with their endless confrontations that involve far too many 3-2 counts, walks and a litany of pitchers.

Hard to believe a Yankee-Red Sox game could be boring, but they are getting there.

Both teams subscribe to on-base percentage as being vital to winning. That means you take all the walks you can get and you do that by taking all the pitchers you can.

More importantly, the OBP will go up if you can get to the underbelly of virtually every team: middle relief.

To do that, you make the starter throw as many pitches early in the game as you can, he leaves and the more hittable bullpen pitchers begin their trudge to the mound.

All this means that hitters are coming to the plate with the idea of taking pitches rather than swinging and thus begins the 31/2-hour game where there is little going on but the pitcher and catcher playing catch.

The effort in all this by teams is to win and the Sox and Yankees have done that. Even Oakland, in the land of money ball that started all this OBP stuff, wins its share of games with teams that are not overly talented.

Memos about how teams should be playing games tend to come and go during the course of each season. The scales get tilted one way and then the other.

It will be interesting to see if pacing of games becomes a memo that is followed by umpires and how the players and managers react.

One thing is for sure. If the strike zone is expanded to the point of pitches that hitters feel they can’t reach, there will be some interesting conversations at the plate and a few ejections.

“Pacing of the game.” That used to mean guys hollering to the mound, “throw strikes!” while the other dugout was yelling, “swing the bat!” There’s not a lot of either of those two things going on in a lot of games today.

bdnsports@bangordailynews.net