Article: Players’ Union Rejects Pace Of Play Proposals

[mikelink45]

 

That's what I have basically said from the beginning ... look at EVERYTHING and adjust accordingly. The proposal are just so ... well, seem so one-sided to me.

If the players step in to the discussion we can cover more, but if they do not, it has to be done and it is up to the commissioner.   If we do not make changes within the game the easiest way to control time is to make the games seven innings instead of nine.  

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Amen! One of the biggest differences in approach of batters compared with 50 years ago is working the count. A bigger zone would help a lot, however, we don't need an increase in the number of K's, so lower the mound a bit as well to take some of the advantage away from the pitcher.

disagree, more running, less trotting would certainly speed up the game.

[ashbury]

A bigger strike zone will just mean pitchers nibbling at a different perimeter, with batters choosing to take just about as frequently.

[Mr. Brooks]

Who gets earpieces? Who gets mics? All 9 players on the field, all coaches, the manager, the stats consultant?

Who controls the security of communication, and how? Players cover their mouths when talking because cameras zeroing in on conversations are subject to lip-reading. Bullpen phones are hard wired rather than cellular for the security reasons.

I know your suggestion was well-meaning and possibly partly tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think it's anywhere close to viable.

Why does it work just fine in football, but isn't viable in baseball?

[Brandon]

Im all for woking as a group to soeed up the game, but a 20 second pitch clock will negatively affect perfomance of some who are more comfortable with more time between pitches. I think that should be done over a 3 year period so players arent making big adjustments to their game to compensate. I do agree that we need to speed up games. We need to do it at a slower pace...

[twinsfanohio]

This entire pace of play question is laughable - in the sense that it is clear that neither side really wants to solve it.

 

Baseball rule 8.04:  the pitcher must put the ball in play within 12 seconds of when he receives the ball (if the bases are unoccupied), with the penalty being a "Ball" called by the umpire  

- If umpires were instructed to actually enforce the rule, it would speed up the game clearly

 

Baseball rule 6.02b (comment):  ...the batter is not allowed to step in and out of the batter's box at will...the umpire should eliminate the batter walking out of the batter's box without reason...(there are other parts to the rule interpretation)

- the intent is clear that "time" is not automatic, and should not be generally granted.  if umpires did not grant time so liberally, it would speed up the game tremendously

 

There is no need for new rules - or a clock - to speed up the game.  If the rulebook is simply enforced, the changes would be meaningful.

 

 

[Darius]

This should absolutely be done if you want to win over/keep fans as we progress further down the rabbit hole of instant gratification and the need for action at all times. You already hear from most people under 25-30 that baseball is "just so boring."

 

At some point, just like anything else in this world, you have get over the nostalgic past and move forward if you want to keep up. The NFL and NBA do it all the time. You think as many people would watch those if they were still wearing leather helmets minus the forward pass, or they were still shooting baskets through a peach basket without a shot clock or 3-point line?

[jkcarew]

Lots of good ideas posted so far, I think.  Some may not be terribly viable, but I think the point is that MLB needs to get serious about this.  It seems reasonable to assume that the length of game issue would be a significant factor in the slip in popularity polls that baseball has been on for a few years now.

Along with considering things like pitch clock and strike zones, MLB needs to consider more radical changes like restricting the number of pitchers 'active' for each game.  Or limiting the number of in-inning pitching changes available to the manager each game.  The way the use of rosters has evolved along with the way managers have used pitchers has really killed the pace of play and the flow of games.  Need to consider anything and everything to create disincentive for the relentless discussions on the mound and in-inning pitching changes.

 

Unfortunately, I think MLB will get serious about fixing this only when the sponsor bubble finally bursts and the money starts shrinking.  Not a second earlier.  I think that day is coming, though.

[nicksaviking]

Who gets earpieces? Who gets mics? All 9 players on the field, all coaches, the manager, the stats consultant?

Who controls the security of communication, and how? Players cover their mouths when talking because cameras zeroing in on conversations are subject to lip-reading. Bullpen phones are hard wired rather than cellular for the security reasons.

I know your suggestion was well-meaning and possibly partly tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think it's anywhere close to viable.

It was a bit tongue in cheek, mostly because I know how stodgy baseball and baseball fans can be about anything new particularly when it comes to technology, but none of those questions are viable reasons to deny the idea. All of them could be easily ironed out, just like in football.

[Sam Morley]

Nobody is saying this in this thread so far, so here it is:

 

A clock in baseball is an abomination. I hate it, on principle whether or not I notice it. (you will notice it because it will be prominently featured in every television broadcast- "look at the clock! there it is! it's counting down! 5 seconds left!"- NFL play clock blinking red on the bottom line). Part of what makes baseball unique is that there is no time. Go to the ballpark, forget about time. I hate that the ballpark experience is being disregarded in favor of the television experience. The television experience is important too, but not at the expense of the ballpark experience.

 

Video review and challenges are also terrible. They are terrible on principle. They are terrible in their effect- they stop the game. The worst part is how managing challenges has become a part of game strategy- what type of plays to challenge, when to challenge, when not to challenge. Plays get challenged in situations where you might as well because there's nothing to lose and maybe you'll get lucky. Plays that should never be challenged are challenged the most because of their reliability of being overturned (players coming off the bag for an indiscernible micro second). I'm surprised they don't challenge double plays to make sure the turn keeps his foot on the bag at the same exact moment he has the ball.

 

Automated strike zones will be an abomination, should they occur. The subjective nature of the strike zone and the manipulation of the umpire by the pitcher, catcher, and hitter is part of the game. It's a great part of the game. That different umpires have different strike zones and that you have to adjust to them is awesome. It's part of what makes the game 'alive', unpredictable, and not boring.

 

In regards to the previous two paragraphs: umps getting calls wrong A doesn't matter and B is part of the drama of the game, both as a fan and as player. It's fun to get pissed at umps. It's a game, it's not important. To the extent that it is contextually important, it comes out in the wash- everybody gets there fair share of blown calls for and against. No matter how it goes down, somebody wins and somebody loses; somebody is happy and somebody is sad.

 

A great thing about baseball was that if you had a bat, a ball, a mitt, and spikes, you could play the same game as the big leaguers. Now if you want to play the same game, you need a bunch of cameras and a stop clock.

 

One thing I don't understand is why serious/real/true fans of baseball are so deferential to the league's initiative of appealing to people who don't like/care about baseball. In the population, there are sports fans and non sports fans. Among sports fans, the NFL is the most popular, and the NBA and MLB are sort of vying for second place. Does that mean, MLB is trying to win over some NBA fans or get some more of those football fans, or get some non sports fans? Is it about getting fans who sort of like baseball to like it more by making more like the sports they like more? Make baseball more like football and basketball so that more fans of football and basketball will like baseball too? 

 

Many people don't like baseball because they say it's boring. If someone thinks baseball is boring, it's because they don't understand it. If someone says to me, "No, I understand it, but I just think it's boring." I say, "No, you don't understand it." If someone doesn't understand it, it's almost impossible to explain it to them. It takes time to understand baseball. 

 

This, in my opinion, is behind the game's popularity demographics. The commissioner wants to point out that baseball is less popular with kids- less popular with kids than with adults; less popular with kids than the NBA. The NBA loves to talk about how popular it is with younger fans. So what? The kids grow up. When I was thirteen, I loved the NBA too. I had my collection of Shawn Kemp basketball cards, and my rebok kamakazies. It was awesome. Basketball is instant gratification... until you've seen it all. I still watch basketball. It's fine. It's sports. I like sports, but it's boring. It's predictable. Football has a little more room for unpredictability than basketball, but not much (the Vikings-Saints game ending in a touchdown instead of a field goal is a rare example of something unpredictable happening in a football game). 

 

The other thing behind the popularity of baseball is its accessibility. Basketball and football are TV broadcast on the free, major networks: FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC. Baseball is not. It wasn't when I was kid, and it still isn't. The NFL and NBA were on every sunday, all day. Baseball was only on cable/satellite. I loved watching baseball as a kid even more than I loved watching football and basketball, but it wasn't accessible to me because my parents weren't about to pay for cable/satellite. I think the commissioner/owners' proposed manipulations of the game have more to do with making its duration more predictable and not so much about making it shorter, with hopes that the increase in predictability will make it friendlier to major network television.

 

For good measure, I also hate the home plate collision rules and the second base break up slide rules. They are sissy.

 

At least the all star game is meaningless again.

 

 

 

 

[Sam Morley]

 

It was a bit tongue in cheek, mostly because I know how stodgy baseball and baseball fans can be about anything new particularly when it comes to technology, but none of those questions are viable reasons to deny the idea. All of them could be easily ironed out, just like in football.

 

I am the stodgy one.

[TheLeviathan]

Baseball is going to romanticize itself into oblivion.  Some of these changes are of the same kind of necessity as switching from radio broadcasts to cable TV.  At some point, the status of society, fan interest, and technology necessitates willingness to change.

 

[EddieMatthews]

 

Nobody is saying this in this thread so far, so here it is:

 

Sam, you said it all!  I am only quoting you to give you credit.  

 

One thing that I would add to what you said is that the biggest time issue is the number and length of commercial breaks.  An inning with 4 pitching changes late in the game takes almost an hour.  

 

Fix this and we won't need a clock.  

[nicksaviking]

I am the stodgy one.

Well we can either suck it up and roll with the changes or be content to watch baseball the way WE want to see it and let it die with our generations.

 

If MLB wants to outlive us it can't cater to Twins Daily poster, it already has us. It has to cater to the new generations who at this point have no interest. Sorry, the only way to stop evolution is to cease to exist. I'll take change over killing the sport for good.

[Nine of twelve]

 

Why does it work just fine in football, but isn't viable in baseball?

Because football has a huddle before every play.

[Nine of twelve]

 

A bigger strike zone will just mean pitchers nibbling at a different perimeter, with batters choosing to take just about as frequently.

I disagree because pitches thrown in the periphery of a larger strike zone would be less hittable than pitches in the periphery of the current strike zone. Pitchers wouldn't need to do anywhere near as much nibbling. BTW when I think of a larger strike zone I mean higher and possibly lower strikes. That would result in more popups, easy fly balls and grounders. I don't think the zone should be made wider.

[h2oface]

Why not also make the batter out after the 3rd foul ball on the 3rd strike? What a waste of time to just keep fouling off good pitches. And only one throw to first base to check the runner per at bat. What a waste of time. And not touching your crouch, a total waste of time. And no stepping off the rubber for the pitcher. Only one glove adjustment per at bat. Hell... no more batting gloves, period. Ridiculous, eh? 

 

All these time changes are BS. There will be more delay enforcing the new asinine time rules than they save. Plus, the won't be strictly enforced, and there will be fudge time (as noted earlier an another comment, the time saving rules are already in place, unenforced). Then they will have to go to replay to see if they beat the clock or not. All these time rules are just stupid. 

[Monkeypaws]

Baseball isn't an immediate gratification fix. The absence of a clock suits many baseball fans just fine.

 

Dumb,dumb,dumb,dumb,dumb,dumb,dumb,dumb, idea,

 

I think baseball should stick to its guns. Letting people flow is good. Stop cramming every available second of free time with music, distractions, etc. 

 

Chill the #$%^ out baseball.

[nicksaviking]

Baseball isn't an immediate gratification fix. The absence of a clock suits many baseball fans just fine.

Yeah but there's not many of us baseball fans left.

[drjim]

Yeah but there's not many of us baseball fans left.

~73 million paid attendance last year. Highest revenue ever.

[h2oface]

 

Nobody is saying this in this thread so far, so here it is:

 

A clock in baseball is an abomination. I hate it, on principle whether or not I notice it. (you will notice it because it will be prominently featured in every television broadcast- "look at the clock! there it is! it's counting down! 5 seconds left!"- NFL play clock blinking red on the bottom line). Part of what makes baseball unique is that there is no time. Go to the ballpark, forget about time. I hate that the ballpark experience is being disregarded in favor of the television experience. The television experience is important too, but not at the expense of the ballpark experience.

 

Totally agree!

 

Video review and challenges are also terrible. They are terrible on principle. They are terrible in their effect- they stop the game. The worst part is how managing challenges has become a part of game strategy- what type of plays to challenge, when to challenge, when not to challenge. Plays get challenged in situations where you might as well because there's nothing to lose and maybe you'll get lucky. Plays that should never be challenged are challenged the most because of their reliability of being overturned (players coming off the bag for an indiscernible micro second). I'm surprised they don't challenge double plays to make sure the turn keeps his foot on the bag at the same exact moment he has the ball.

 

Totally disagree!

 

Automated strike zones will be an abomination, should they occur. The subjective nature of the strike zone and the manipulation of the umpire by the pitcher, catcher, and hitter is part of the game. It's a great part of the game. That different umpires have different strike zones and that you have to adjust to them is awesome. It's part of what makes the game 'alive', unpredictable, and not boring.

 

Totally disagree! The strike zone was never supposed to be a guess, it was just the best that could be done, to have a umpire giving it a best guess. Now it can be done accurately, consistently, and and in real immediate time. It rewards the perfect pitch and perfect take, as it was always meant to be.

 

In regards to the previous two paragraphs: umps getting calls wrong A doesn't matter and B is part of the drama of the game, both as a fan and as player. It's fun to get pissed at umps. It's a game, it's not important. To the extent that it is contextually important, it comes out in the wash- everybody gets there fair share of blown calls for and against. No matter how it goes down, somebody wins and somebody loses; somebody is happy and somebody is sad.

 

Totally disagree! The umpires and umpiring are the inhuman element to the game, and it is about time we reward the outcomes as true and accurately as always becomes possible. For the love of the game. Nothing wrong with making it right.

 

A great thing about baseball was that if you had a bat, a ball, a mitt, and spikes, you could play the same game as the big leaguers. Now if you want to play the same game, you need a bunch of cameras and a stop clock.

 

Totally disagree! There are always degrees of professionalism. This changes nothing. Sandlot ball doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles. There is still whiffle ball home run derby.

 

One thing I don't understand is why serious/real/true fans of baseball are so deferential to the league's initiative of appealing to people who don't like/care about baseball. In the population, there are sports fans and non sports fans. Among sports fans, the NFL is the most popular, and the NBA and MLB are sort of vying for second place. Does that mean, MLB is trying to win over some NBA fans or get some more of those football fans, or get some non sports fans? Is it about getting fans who sort of like baseball to like it more by making more like the sports they like more? Make baseball more like football and basketball so that more fans of football and basketball will like baseball too? 

 

Kind of, mostly agree. It is important to have young fans, always. I think it lies in the parents sharing the passion, and being "real" parents, instead of friends and shoving a screen in their hands at 3 years old to not have to parent.

 

Many people don't like baseball because they say it's boring. If someone thinks baseball is boring, it's because they don't understand it. If someone says to me, "No, I understand it, but I just think it's boring." I say, "No, you don't understand it." If someone doesn't understand it, it's almost impossible to explain it to them. It takes time to understand baseball. 

 

Unless one understands most things, they will lose interest.

 

This, in my opinion, is behind the game's popularity demographics. The commissioner wants to point out that baseball is less popular with kids- less popular with kids than with adults; less popular with kids than the NBA. The NBA loves to talk about how popular it is with younger fans. So what? The kids grow up. When I was thirteen, I loved the NBA too. I had my collection of Shawn Kemp basketball cards, and my rebok kamakazies. It was awesome. Basketball is instant gratification... until you've seen it all. I still watch basketball. It's fine. It's sports. I like sports, but it's boring. It's predictable. Football has a little more room for unpredictability than basketball, but not much (the Vikings-Saints game ending in a touchdown instead of a field goal is a rare example of something unpredictable happening in a football game). 

 

The other thing behind the popularity of baseball is its accessibility. Basketball and football are TV broadcast on the free, major networks: FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC. Baseball is not. It wasn't when I was kid, and it still isn't. The NFL and NBA were on every sunday, all day. Baseball was only on cable/satellite. I loved watching baseball as a kid even more than I loved watching football and basketball, but it wasn't accessible to me because my parents weren't about to pay for cable/satellite. I think the commissioner/owners' proposed manipulations of the game have more to do with making its duration more predictable and not so much about making it shorter, with hopes that the increase in predictability will make it friendlier to major network television.

 

Money drives everything, including baseball.

 

For good measure, I also hate the home plate collision rules and the second base break up slide rules. They are sissy.

 

Totally disagree! Nothing more cowardly in the game of baseball than taking out someone on purpose at second base or the plate. Especially if you are 8 feet off second base! Well, intentionally throwing a 90 plus mph object purposely at a batter might be more cowardly.

 

At least the all star game is meaningless again.

 

 

Everything has degrees.

[h2oface]

 

~73 million paid attendance last year. Highest revenue ever.

 

 

Exactly!!!!!

[Doctor Wu]

The idea of using a clock to time the seconds between pitchers or batters make me shudder. No, no, no! For me, one of the great things about baseball is that they do NOT use a clock of any sort, Keep it that way. But yeah, the overall length of the games is a concern, especially in these time-pressed attention-span-deficit times. I'd opt for reducing or curtailing the stepping out of the batter's box stuff, and also the visits to the mound, by other players or coaching staff.

[ashbury]

The idea of using a clock to time the seconds between pitchers or batters make me shudder. No, no, no! For me, one of the great things about baseball is that they do NOT use a clock of any sort, Keep it that way. But yeah, the overall length of the games is a concern, especially in these time-pressed attention-span-deficit times. I'd opt for reducing or curtailing the stepping out of the batter's box stuff, and also the visits to the mound, by other players or coaching staff.

The visits to the mound don't account for very much of the growth in time over the years.

 

Stepping out of the box is a problem, but that's often done in response to the pitcher taking a long time. The cat-and-mouse game between the two adversaries needs to be addressed equally, by limits on both of them. If you restrict the batter from stepping out, you need to restrict the reason for it, which comes down to time. Enforcing the present rules seems like the right idea.

[Sam Morley]

 

~73 million paid attendance last year. Highest revenue ever.

 

And I assume that's just MLB. Add MiLB attendance. Add independent league attendance. 

 

Baseball is very popular. There's nothing to suggest its in danger of becoming less popular.

 

ESPN and its talking heads are constantly spouting, as though it's casual matter of fact, that baseball is losing popularity with kids while simultaneously saying the opposite about the NBA and basketball. They never, ever site any statistics to support either of these ideas. 

[Sam Morley]

 

The visits to the mound don't account for very much of the growth in time over the years.

 

Stepping out of the box is a problem, but that's often done in response to the pitcher taking a long time. The cat-and-mouse game between the two adversaries needs to be addressed equally, by limits on both of them. If you restrict the batter from stepping out, you need to restrict the reason for it, which comes down to time. Enforcing the present rules seems like the right idea.

 

This seems like a hard thing to quantify. Are plate appearances timed? If so, for how long have they been timing them? Has the average length of a plate appearance gone up over time? I assume we don't have that data, so any conclusions we draw about it are based on hunch. I don't really have a sense that individual plate appearances take longer no than they used to. I don't have a problem with MLB instructing umps to take more initiative to move things along. I don't have a problem with it the way it is either though. 

 

I would say that the biggest factor in the increase in average game length is due to the increase in pitching changes. This is directly linked to the advent of basically unlimited metrics and data. Managers used to be more prone to letting a guy go, especially a starter. Now they have data that basically tells them when to make a pitching change, and the data is telling them to make more pitching changes. The data is telling them to pull the starter sooner, which leads to the game of bullpen management and more pitching changes. 

 

 

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I would say that the biggest factor in the increase in average game length is due to the increase in pitching changes. 

Here is some evidence to the contrary:

 

https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length

 

They compared video of very similar games from 1984 and 2014. The conclusion:

 

Time between pitches is the primary villain. I tallied up all the pitches in both games that we’ll call inaction pitches — pitches that resulted in a ball, called strike, or swinging strike, but didn’t result in the end of an at-bat or the advancement of a runner. These are the pitches where the catcher caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, whose next step was to throw it back to the catcher. Foul balls didn’t count. The fourth ball of a plate appearance didn’t count. Stolen bases didn’t count. Wild pitches didn’t count. Just the pitches where contact wasn’t made, and the pitcher received a return throw from the catcher.

There were 146 inaction pitches in the 1984 game.

There were 144 of these pitches in the 2014 game.

The total time for the inaction pitches in 1984 — the elapsed time between a pitcher releasing one pitch and his release of the next pitch — was 32 minutes and 47 seconds.

The total time for inaction pitches in 2014 was 57 minutes and 41 seconds.

This is how a game can have an almost identical number of pitches thrown, batters faced, baserunners, hits, walks, strikeouts, and runs scored compared to another game, yet take more than a half-hour longer.

 

[TheLeviathan]

 

And I assume that's just MLB. Add MiLB attendance. Add independent league attendance. 

 

Baseball is very popular. There's nothing to suggest its in danger of becoming less popular.

 

ESPN and its talking heads are constantly spouting, as though it's casual matter of fact, that baseball is losing popularity with kids while simultaneously saying the opposite about the NBA and basketball. They never, ever site any statistics to support either of these ideas. 

 

There's a thread with poll numbers on it.  There are actually a number of alarming trends in baseball.

 

Like, for example, the vast majority of people that watch baseball today will likely be dead by the year 2040.  And virtually all of them are white.  You should check out the thread and look into things a bit, it might explain why baseball is taking the matter so seriously.

 

I think showing an effort to fix this is a good thing.  Too often, baseball players seem to give no care at all to how much they are dragging things out.  spycake's post seems to indicate they have more than doubled their lollygagging between pitches in just 30 years.  We should be looking to reverse that for the health of the sport.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

I would say that the biggest factor in the increase in average game length is due to the increase in pitching changes.

More on this -- on average, there are only about two mid-inning pitching change per game these days (1 per team), virtually no change since about 1990 or so.  Even back in the 1970's, it was regularly topping 1.6 per game (0.8 per team).

 

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/tangotiger_blog_are_there_more_mid-inning_relief_changes_these_days

 

Nothing that would remotely explain the explosion in average time of game.

Edited January 22, 2018 by spycake

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

There's a thread with poll numbers on it.  There are actually a number of alarming trends in baseball.

 

Like, for example, the vast majority of people that watch baseball today will likely be dead by the year 2040.  And virtually all of them are white.  You should check out the thread and look into things a bit, it might explain why baseball is taking the matter so seriously.

Wasn't that just among people that listed baseball as the "favorite" sport?  Which doesn't really matter, if millions of younger, non-white people are making the trek to the ballpark every year as a social thing, or out of interest for their second or third favorite sport (something they wouldn't have done, or couldn't afford to do, just a couple generations ago, when baseball was the primary "favorite" of a larger share of people).

 

I'm still not really convinced baseball is taking the matter all that seriously yet. Could be posturing or a bargaining chip with players; could be for show like the toothless initiative from a couple years ago. The length of game and pace of play stuff has just gotten kind of ridiculous, particularly in the postseason, with enough publicity that MLB has had to address it somehow.

Edited January 22, 2018 by spycake