MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

[Majingir]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11570053/mlb-commissioner-forms-committee-address-pace-play-concerns

Major League Baseball would like to pick up the pace of games, as commissioner Bud Selig has formed a committee to implement new rules in time for the 2015 season.

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According to a release by MLB, the goals of the committee will focus on decreasing the time of games and improving the overall pace of play for the 2015 regular season and beyond.

Atlanta Braves president John Schuerholz will chair the committee, which is also composed of New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, Boston Red Sox partner Michael Gordon, MLB commissioner-elect Rob Manfred, MLB executive vice president Joe Torre and Red Sox chairman Tom Werner.

"We have the greatest game in the world, but we are always looking for ways to improve it," Selig said Monday in a statement. "The game is at its highest levels of popularity and we will continue to strive to identify ways that can build on its stature well into the future.

"With the cooperation of all appropriate parties, we can make progress on improving the pace of play, and we will have recommendations in the very near future for the 2015 season. I believe that this group has the experience and the perspective to be mindful of our game's traditions while being creative about our approach in the future."

The easiest/more obvious thing would be to actually enforce a pitch clock or something like that. If you can reduce the amount of time a pitcher takes to throw his pitch. Doing so wouldn't impact commercials or anything at all, so not like they'd lose out on money or anything, it'd just mean pitchers have to pitch sooner and that's it.

Pitchers take over 18 seconds per pitch(and this doesn't include batters calling timeouts I believe). The MLB rulebook has a 12 second rule that is never enforced, so even just having something like an official 15 second pitch clock would save around 12-15 minutes of time(3 seconds less per pitch,and about 250-300 pitches per game,would be 12.5-15 minutes saved). And that's assuming the average amount of time is exactly 15 seconds, meaning the actual number could be closer to 20 minutes in the end in terms of time saved.

[XXstormmXX]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

So happy about this. I started following baseball again but I don't watch a lot of games because they take so long in between pitches. I would say a 15 second pitch clock would speed up the game a lot and I would use a walk as a punishment for taking too long on pitches.

[SPTO]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

There IS actually a pitch clock but they've never enforced it to my knowledge. I'd also like to see it like the old days (even up to the early '80s it was still common) once you get in the batter's box there's no walking out of it and you can only ask for time maybe once an AB.

Basically, you enforce these two things and the game can move along a LOT quicker.

[jorge380]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

Hopefully they can limit some of these late game pitching changes by managers.Some games managers change up to three pitchers in an inning. Dont let them have eight warm up pitches when they are coming from the bullpen warm already.I hate them messing with the game,but these late game changes take to long.

[HustlinOwl]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

No-pitch intentional walks (and other pace of game experiments) will take place in this year's Arizona Fall League.

• From MLB: • BATTER’S BOX RULE: The batter shall keep at least one foot in the batter’s box throughout his at-bat, unless one of a series of established exceptions occurs, in which case the batter may leave the batter’s box but not the dirt area surrounding home plate. (Exceptions include a foul ball or a foul tip; a pitch forcing the batter out of the batter’s box; “time” being requested and granted; a wild pitch or a passed ball; and several others.)
• • 20-SECOND RULE [AT 17 SALT RIVER FIELDS HOME GAMES ONLY]: A modified version of Rule 8.04, which discourages unnecessary delays by the pitcher, shall apply. Rule 8.04 requires the pitcher to deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds after he receives the ball with the bases unoccupied. The penalty prescribed by Rule 8.04 for a pitcher’s violation of the Rule is that the umpire shall call “Ball.”
• • 2:30 PITCHING CHANGE BREAK CLOCK: There shall be a maximum 2:30 break for pitching changes, including pitching changes that occur during an inning break. The first pitch must be thrown before the conclusion of the 2:30 period or the umpire shall call a ball. The clock shall start when the new pitcher enters the playing field (i.e., crosses the warning track, or foul line).
• • THREE “TIME OUT” LIMIT: Each team shall be permitted only three “Time Out” conferences per game (including extra innings). Such conferences shall include player conferences with the pitcher (including the catcher), manager or coach conferences with the pitcher, and coach conferences with a batter. Conferences during pitching changes, and time outs called as a result of an injury or other emergency, shall not be counted towards this limit. A manager, coach or player will not be permitted to call a fourth time out in violation of this Rule. In such cases, the game will continue uninterrupted, and offenders may be subject to discipline.

[Majingir]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

No pitch intentional walk I guess is good,but doesn't sound like it really saves that much time, maybe 1 minute at most(and even then,we see intentional walks maybe once every other game or so on average). Will miss the boos from the crowd during the 4 pitches when away pitcher intentionally walks the home player though.

20 second rule really doesn't seem like it'll solve much. Yes there are guys who do take over 20 seconds,but on average the amount of time is 18. If they really wanted to cut down the time,it should be a 15 second rule.

Pitching change clock isn't one I really noticed in terms of amount of time it'd take to warm up a pitcher during a pitching change. But they should have a modified rule of this where the clock is shorter if a manager makes multiple changes in an inning. Just so that we don't have a 2.5min break,pitcher faces 1 batter,then another 2.5min break for another pitching change.

The timeout limit also sounds like a good one,but like the pitching change, does it really take up that much time? Does reducing it to just 3 a game really save much if any time?

And as for the batters box stuff..another one I never noticed. How often do batters actually step out without calling time? Unless every time they ever step out of the box,they never actually call time(and I just assumed they do),in which case it happens alot. Will be funny though seeing a guy step out,then a pitcher pitching while he's not even there.

[Amoo316]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

I think some of these are good and others are not so good.

I'm in favor of the pitch clock and batters foot rule. I do however wish it was 15 seconds and not 20. I would say the blame is 50/50 between the hitter and pitcher and honestly in my opinion the blame lies more on the hitter then pitcher. Some pitchers do work slow, but I hate seeing a dude step out of the box to adjust his gloves, glasses, helmet, crotch...etc after every pitch. I believe this causes more delays then the pitchers themselves do. Get yourself adjusted, get your sign, take your pitch, step out only to get a sign then get your *** back in the box.

I'm not in favor of the timeout rule. Pitchers and catchers can get crossed up. Sometimes a pitcher & catcher need to discuss strategy on a batter. Sometimes the IF captain needs to go settle a pitcher down. I would be in favor of something like 2 "timeouts" per pitcher, but not 3 for the whole game including extra innings. I get why they are looking at it because sometimes it is frustrating, but trying to throw a blanket random number out for every situation doesn't work and I think this is one of those.

2:30 pitcher change clock. Love it. Not much more needs to be said here. I also feel it wouldn't seem as long as it does now if the networks didn't take pitching changes as an opportunity to sneak in more commercial dollars, but that's a battle I don't think is worth fighting as it's not going to happen.

[DamnYanks2]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

Yea, no thanks, leave it like it is. Mlb needs to quit changing something every year. That goes for every sport.

[Kaiser Wilhelm]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

wrong thread.

[Blzer]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

I disagree with the no-pitch intentional walk rule for the sake of the game itself. I'm re-posting this (with varied context) from a thread a while ago on my reasoning:

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I believe that the intentional walk isn't "real" in a way, and in doing so that way you would actually be forcing it to be real (that is, as it stands the intentional walk only exists as four balls thrown with zero intention to face the batter, and the deliberation is shown by the catcher standing and extending his arm.

Putting someone on that way has no such repercussions, which is something that I enjoy about baseball. You never know what may happen, and it requires pitchers to actually throw the pitches as well.

If they ever did have that, then I'll have to say that there should be a limit on the number of intentional walks, like someone said in the thread earlier but I shot down the idea because of the idea that, like I said, the intentional walk isn't really "real". This idea would make it real, so I believe there should then be a limit, like one or two per game. The rest would need to be balls out of the zone if you want to walk him.

It's outside of the norm of actually playing to get results. That's like the pitcher coming up and requesting to take an out to move the runner over. Not exactly the same because it's not as successful, but it's essentially asking for a trade-off without actually just playing it out. QB's have to kneel (in a legal formation) to run down the clock and end the game, basketball players have to dribble in play until the time runs down, etc. Four balls is just a part of the game.

I'd prefer that they just have it as is, making all legal pitches to put the guy on. It's bad enough that this has been abused since Bonds starting getting put on by Bochy in 2001 (let's not forget Showalter's stunt back in the 90s with the bases loaded), and now it's just borderline annoying to see. Fans don't like it, they like every pitch to count. "Putting them on" in high school felt so embarrassing just watching it in the outfield and made our team look like sissies.

And again, you have to enjoy the repercussions. If you want to walk him, you have to earn walking him. Throw perfect balls, no strikes or wild pitches. If you mess up, it's on you. You're doing this to try and gain an advantage for yourself and skip by the bigger guys by giving them free passes... you might as well have to make the pitches to do so.

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Regardless, there aren't so many that it would reduce more than what... forty seconds?

[kehlis]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

Time out rule? Ridiculous.


And 20 seconds isn't too short. Games with quick pitchers go quick as it is. No need to rush those who already work quick. The rule would be put into place to stop those who take their time every pitch and are excruciating to watch (Balfour as an example).

[sydrogerdavid]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

Fans don't like it, they like every pitch to count. "Putting them on" in high school felt so embarrassing just watching it in the outfield and made our team look like sissies.

Oh, jeez. I'll never forget the time our varsity coach was in charge of JV one night in at Kickapoo in Springfield, MO. The leadoff batter got a triple, so the coach decided to put the next two guys on. He just shouted towards the ump that he was going to do that and the batter jogged directly to second and the on deck batter jogged directly to first.

It was getting late, it was a school night, it was a JV game, and we had a 100 mile bus ride, but that's still incredibly embarrassing, especially for the pitcher who never got to throw that often. Needless to say the next batter had a walk off infield hit.

[kehlis]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

Oh, jeez. I'll never forget the time our varsity coach was in charge of JV one night in at Kickapoo in Springfield, MO. The leadoff batter got a triple, so the coach decided to put the next two guys on. He just shouted towards the ump that he was going to do that and the batter jogged directly to second and the on deck batter jogged directly to first.

It was getting late, it was a school night, it was a JV game, and we had a 100 mile bus ride, but that's still incredibly embarrassing, especially for the pitcher who never got to throw that often. Needless to say the next batter had a walk off infield hit.

It's absolutely the right call to walk both batters though.

[NYJets]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

I'm on board with all those changes. A few of them I'm not sure how much of an impact they'll actually have, but I don't see a downside.

[baseballsim]

Re: MLB Trying to Speed Up Games

I understand they need some TV commercial time but as a fan I'd like the time between innings to be shorter.