Speeding Up America’s Favorite Pastime

Baseball season isn’t far off. In fact, teams will report for spring training February 19th and the first regular season game will be played on April 5th. Every time we enter baseball season, the pace of play comes up.

Last year, regular season Major League games on average were played in three hours. As for the postseason, those games took about three and half hours. That’s a long time for fans to not only be at the stadium but to watch the game on TV. What doesn’t help baseball is the commercials every half inning, pitching changes, mound visits, replay challenges, and batters being granted time. This is a lot of down time. How do we make the game faster?

This year the Arizona Fall League experimented with ideas to make baseball faster. They used a 20 second pitch clock after each pitch. If the pitcher didn’t throw the ball in 20 seconds, it was an automatic ball. Half inning breaks were only two minutes and five seconds. Teams were allowed three mound visits per game. Instead of having the pitcher throw four balls for an intentional walk, the manager put up four fingers to show the umpire it was a no pitch intentional walk. All these helped game length. Games under these rules were played on average two hours and 14 minutes. This helped speed up the game of baseball.

Major League Baseball is going to use these rules in both Triple and Double A. It won’t affect Major League Baseball this season. Fans are all for speeding up the game. What this won’t help with is calling for time by batters, pitchers throwing to bases keeping the runner close to the base, pitching changes, or replay challenges.

If these rules work in Triple and Double A, they maybe coming to Major League Baseball. MLB will need to figure out how many times a batter can call for time or a when a pitcher throwing to a base will restart the pitch clock. A pitcher could stand around and throw to a base with a runner on to take his time throwing a pitch to the plate. A batter could call for time. Of course, it’s up to the umpire to grant time.

Baseball has to find away to speed up the game. Having a 20 second pitch clock, breaks during half innings being two minutes and five seconds, and having three pitcher mound visits would speed up the game. If all these rules make the game shorter we could see them implemented in Major League Baseball.

What do you think? Are there any other ways Major League Baseball can speed up the game or should we leave it the way it is?

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