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Your Thoughts On The Pace Of Baseball
- Thread starter Mayhem
- Start date
But baseball still is slow pace.
Games 4 and 5 of the NLCS went almost 4 hours.
Games 4 and 5 of the NLCS went almost 4 hours.
Mayhem
Banned
4 hours of terrific baseball that kept all of us on the edge of our seats. So what's the problem?
And again, it was changing the pitchers that caused the extra time. Are we going to limit the number of pitching changes? Not let them warm up on the mound?
Wanted to catch Fast N Loud replay before going to bed with the new spin off Misfit Garage with Richard Rawling's former fired mechanics.
Mayhem
Banned
Major League Baseball tries to pick up the pace
http://www.southsidesox.com/2015/1/...jor-league-baseball-tries-to-pick-up-the-pace
Major League Baseball has deemed the pace of play worthy of attention, and I'm surprised when people say it isn't. The average game took longer than three hours last year, and there's no real good reason for it.
I can understand why it doesn't matter to Buck Showalter:
"The thing that gets me about all this," said Orioles manager Buck Showalter, "is that there are only two groups of people I hear consistently complain about the pace of games, and that's the umpires and the media, people who are at the game 162 times a year. But that family of four in the stands, those people who come to three games a year, I don't hear them complaining about the length or the pace of games. So what's the endgame we're trying to get to? ... What are we basing this on?"
But maybe the people who only come to three games a year would come to more if they had a better sense of the time required. Imagine two leagues of equal quality. In one, every pitcher works like Mark Buehrle. In the other, every pitcher works like Clay Buchholz. Which ones would fans rather watch?
That Showalter quote is from a Jayson Stark article that assesses several points of contention that may arise between the owners and the players as they try to improve the pace of play, and the last one is the most controversial.
One foot in the batter's box: This rule is already in the books for routine takes -- 6:02 (d) (1) -- and Stark says to expect MLB to push umpires to enforce it harder, because the players "don't appear to be gearing up to fight this one." And they shouldn't, because when batters don't leave the batter's box, it gets INTENSE.
Tighten the time between innings: Stark says commercial breaks are only supposed to take 2 minutes and 5 seconds for a regular, non-national broadcast, but a league source says the average break actually lasts a minute longer when you stop the clock with the first pitch. There's some finger-pointing on both sides -- the league says players extend the breaks, the players say there's a gap between the last warm-up toss and the start of the inning -- so Stark says there's incentive for both sides to improve this.
Tighten up mid-inning pitching changes: Managers dawdle before signaling, and relievers dawdle before coming out the bullpen. The latter seems more enforceable than the former, especially since a manager has a right to talk to the pitcher if it's the first mound visit of the inning.
Limit mound visits: The Arizona Fall League limited teams to three visits a game, but the league would have to increase that amount for a major league game.
Pitch clocks: These are actually coming to Double-A and Triple-A parks, and Stark says the league would love to have these in every MLB park, but it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Grant Brisbee says clocks are inevitable in MLB parks, and maybe they are. And maybe it'll be like the shot clock in basketball, where a generation from now, nobody could understand watching the sport without it. But as SI.com's Cliff Corcoran says, it wouldn't change the structure of the game in any meaningful way like the shot clock did -- it'd just be a nag.
I'd hope they'd exhaust every other option first. Tighten up the breaks. Make hitters stay in the box and see if pitchers respond in kind. Wait to see if the clocks at Double-A and Triple-A form better habits. Let umpires enforce the 12-second rule more aggressively. Review sloth-like pitchers like the NBA reviews floppers and hand out the shame after the game.
But a big clock would mean that baseball is no longer the only North American team sport to be played without one, and that seems dumb. Baseball was able to finish games in 2 hours and 45 minutes 10 years ago, and a clock wasn't needed then.
http://www.southsidesox.com/2015/1/...jor-league-baseball-tries-to-pick-up-the-pace
Major League Baseball has deemed the pace of play worthy of attention, and I'm surprised when people say it isn't. The average game took longer than three hours last year, and there's no real good reason for it.
I can understand why it doesn't matter to Buck Showalter:
"The thing that gets me about all this," said Orioles manager Buck Showalter, "is that there are only two groups of people I hear consistently complain about the pace of games, and that's the umpires and the media, people who are at the game 162 times a year. But that family of four in the stands, those people who come to three games a year, I don't hear them complaining about the length or the pace of games. So what's the endgame we're trying to get to? ... What are we basing this on?"
But maybe the people who only come to three games a year would come to more if they had a better sense of the time required. Imagine two leagues of equal quality. In one, every pitcher works like Mark Buehrle. In the other, every pitcher works like Clay Buchholz. Which ones would fans rather watch?
That Showalter quote is from a Jayson Stark article that assesses several points of contention that may arise between the owners and the players as they try to improve the pace of play, and the last one is the most controversial.
One foot in the batter's box: This rule is already in the books for routine takes -- 6:02 (d) (1) -- and Stark says to expect MLB to push umpires to enforce it harder, because the players "don't appear to be gearing up to fight this one." And they shouldn't, because when batters don't leave the batter's box, it gets INTENSE.
Tighten the time between innings: Stark says commercial breaks are only supposed to take 2 minutes and 5 seconds for a regular, non-national broadcast, but a league source says the average break actually lasts a minute longer when you stop the clock with the first pitch. There's some finger-pointing on both sides -- the league says players extend the breaks, the players say there's a gap between the last warm-up toss and the start of the inning -- so Stark says there's incentive for both sides to improve this.
Tighten up mid-inning pitching changes: Managers dawdle before signaling, and relievers dawdle before coming out the bullpen. The latter seems more enforceable than the former, especially since a manager has a right to talk to the pitcher if it's the first mound visit of the inning.
Limit mound visits: The Arizona Fall League limited teams to three visits a game, but the league would have to increase that amount for a major league game.
Pitch clocks: These are actually coming to Double-A and Triple-A parks, and Stark says the league would love to have these in every MLB park, but it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Grant Brisbee says clocks are inevitable in MLB parks, and maybe they are. And maybe it'll be like the shot clock in basketball, where a generation from now, nobody could understand watching the sport without it. But as SI.com's Cliff Corcoran says, it wouldn't change the structure of the game in any meaningful way like the shot clock did -- it'd just be a nag.
I'd hope they'd exhaust every other option first. Tighten up the breaks. Make hitters stay in the box and see if pitchers respond in kind. Wait to see if the clocks at Double-A and Triple-A form better habits. Let umpires enforce the 12-second rule more aggressively. Review sloth-like pitchers like the NBA reviews floppers and hand out the shame after the game.
But a big clock would mean that baseball is no longer the only North American team sport to be played without one, and that seems dumb. Baseball was able to finish games in 2 hours and 45 minutes 10 years ago, and a clock wasn't needed then.
Spot on on all counts :thumbsup:
Baseball is as beautiful as it is perfect. You can keep your 800 mile an hour world and have it all to yourself please leave Baseball alone.
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