Baseball rule change: Free Pass (FP) instead of IBB

While the main action in baseball moves counterclockwise, pro baseball's marketing braintrust claims that shortening games is key to rebuilding the sport's popularity. To that end, they've proposed the odd arbitrary rule change, but largely just pressure umpires to better enforce existing rules to propel the game at the pace of a brisk, um, picnic.

I propose a novel change to speed up the average ballgame (if only slightly), while axing one of baseball's troublingly subjective rules. Walks (for the benighted baseball-clueless out there, walks are automatic bases awarded to batters who refrain from swinging at four pitches deemed out of the hitting zone) get -officially- scored as either unintentional or 'intentional' (i.e. when the pitcher deems a walk less risky than letting the particular hitter try to hit).

However, the leisurely thrown pitches in an 'intentional' walk are fair game for the batter to hit (a rarity); moreover, the official scorer must judge -intent- as part of a play -- clearly a subjective and error-prone endeavor. Yes, baseball has other rules which invoke intent, but I think most folks will agree that the fewer such subjective rules the better.

So why not let pitchers issue an instant 'Free Pass' to first base in lieu of the tedious fully/half-heartedly/unconsciously 'intentional' walk? The game would move that much faster; the pitcher would save energy and preserve his pitching rhythm; a walk would simply be a walk; and, finally, pitchers and their agents could no longer argue that walk totals should be discounted by the number of 'intentional' ones (which often result from the pitcher getting himself in trouble in the first place). This would streamline contract negotiation and arbitration too, perhaps blunting fan fury at players' ever-skyrocketing salaries.