ANAHEIM, Calif. — If baseball, with its leisurely place, is known as the thinking man’s game, there was an inordinate amount of time on Sunday for players on the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Angels to contemplate — well, just about anything under the cosmos.
When Brandon Belt of the Giants, the second batter of the game, stepped in to face Jaime Barria, a rookie pitcher for the Angels, they produced an at-bat that, in almost every conceivable way, flouted Commissioner Rob Manfred’s efforts to speed up the pace of play.
Barria pumped pitch after pitch after pitch — fastballs, sliders and changeups — into the strike zone, and Belt spoiled every one.