Players’ Union Rejects Pace Of Play Proposals

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:

I mean, that's interesting and compelling. It's even more compelling in conjunction with your other post countering my assumption that there has been an increase in pitching changes. 

I could say that it's only suggestive and not conclusive. Hand selecting one game from each season, even if the author is totally impartial and seeking an objective observation- which I trust he is- is still too small a sample size to really conclude anything authoritatively, right? 

I don't know, I probably should concede that point. 

I also don't really care that the games are taking longer, but it's also fine with me if the league wants to try to speed them up, as long as they find a way to do it naturally. 

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.

Where is the thread? 

Polls are bogus.

In twenty years "the vast majority of people who watch baseball will be dead and virtually all of them are white"?  Bogus.

Of professional sports in the U.S., baseball is by far the most racially diverse. The NHL is homogenous, the NBA is homogenous, the NFL is more diverse than those two but less diverse than MLB. 

The NFL will be dead by 2040... maybe.

Actually, the pitch clock might be the least intrusive / most "natural" way to do it.  No changes in rules or definitions, no subjective rulings to argue or be ignored, just a mostly invisible, objective clock to train players to keep their routines within the rulebook definitions (what is that, 12 seconds with bases empty? 20 seconds with runners on?).  I don't think anyone has much noticed the pitch clock already in effect at minor league games.

I wouldn't couple 'least intrusive' with 'most natural'. It could be done in an un-intrusive way. That doesn't make it natural. It's still an artificial element, and in that regard, I'm resisting it on principle, not necessarily on effect.

As to the effect, my prediction is that it will be intrusive to viewing the game, mostly on TV. I think broadcasts will treat it the same way the NFL broadcasts treat the play clock, and the NBA treats the shot clock. It works great for those games because those sports are structurally built around a clock that counts down. A clock that counts down is natural to those games. When I'm watching baseball on TV, I don't want to see a countdown clock blinking red next to the ball-strike-out graphic. I don't want to hear commentators referencing or talking about the clock. I don't want it in the stadiums either, next to the radar gun reading or wherever, so that fans at the game can start countdown chants while a pitcher is getting ready to deliver.

I guess, if they give the umps a little pocket stop watch and tell them the time allotments and to enforce them, that seems like a reasonable place to start.   

I went to a game on Sunday between the Charlotte Knights (White Sox AAA) and Norfolk Tides (Orioles) and saw some of the rule changes in person for the first time and i gotta admit i love it. The innings breaks are max. 2min. 25 seconds and the pitchers have 20 seconds between batters to begin motion. It really does keep the game moving at a good pace and it's awesome. IMO that's how the game was meant to be played and was played long before TV and all the damn commercials. The game i went to was about 2hrs 15 minutes.  MLB could learn a thing or two from AAA.