Players’ Union Rejects Pace Of Play Proposals

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Because football has a huddle before every play.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

Exactly!!!!!

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.

~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. 

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. 

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.

The evolution analogy is interesting.

I think there are some very good, natural ways that technology is influencing and changing the game. I would describe these as being akin to the process of evolution. Technology is good in baseball for documentation, analysis, and instruction. Its amazingly enjoyable to watch baseball on television in high definition from multiple perspectives. I love it. It's also great to be able to reference and relive moments in baseball history. Maybe the Twins will never win another world series title, but I can always watch the footage of Kirby's game six walkoff. Computers have enabled staggering amounts of statistical analysis to be consumable and useable. I don't love all of the effects of this analysis on the game (extreme infield shifting, early exits for starting pitchers) but I see these changes as being naturally occurring without artificially manipulating the structure or definitive qualities of the game. For that reason, I accept them; I see them as being, as you have put it, evolutionary. Video technology is also amazing for instruction. For the first time in the history of the game, video analysis of mechanics is verifying the true components of an ideal swing (Ted Williams and rotational theory being validated and the old hands first-downward ax chop being debunked). I could make a case that there was something charming and romantic about the mystery of the swing, of the vying arguments and theories, of the way even people who were so good at doing it didn't really understand what they were doing; and that we are losing something fun in knowing for sure what is exactly the right way to do it is. Video analysis of pitching mechanics is yielding greater understanding of flaws that lead to injury. 

Again, I think these are some examples of natural changes in the game, changes that can be appropriately described as evolutionary. I'm willing to accept both the things I like and dislike about them, I'm willing to accept evolutionary changes.

What I'm less willing to accept, and at some point not at all willing to accept, are artificial, forcefully imposed changes. The type of changes that might be less akin to evolution and more so to genetic modification or genetic engineering. Video reviews/challenges, clocks of any type for any reason, automated strike zones are as to artificial modification and not so much evolution. I've accepted, under protest, video review; I probably will do the same with the proposed clock. I'll be out the day they introduce the automated strike zone. I mean, I guess I'll be investigating what the Saints have to offer a little more seriously. 

I can't really draw any theoretical connections between the artificial changes and attracting a younger demographic of viewership. Is the idea that younger people are more accustomed to technology and its ubiquitous application and are turned off when it plays a less significant role? Isn't there just as much grounding on which to anticipate a backlash against the pervasiveness of technology? Why shouldn't baseball be looking to capitalize on its natural, organic beauty; to appeal to the person looking for an alternative to the noxious hype of the NBA/NFL; the person who prefers a handful of wild blueberries to a handful of skittles; the person who prefers the subtle imperfections of craftsmanship to the sterility of the mass produced? To the extent that MLB is even competing with the other pro sports leagues, why should it try to be more like them rather than try to set itself apart? 

To the extent that there is a connection between the artificial changes and attracting a younger audience; why should I defer to their whimsy, to their fickle, impressionable nature? I was their age once; I was once seduced by the hype of NBA Inside Stuff and hi-top sneakers. They will grow up. They will be sick of clocks, buzzers, timeouts to check video, watching people run back and forth, and sick of the latest "Chris Paul is headed back to LA to play the Clippers for the first time since being traded to the Rockets- will the fans boo or applaud him, will his old teammates embrace him or turn a cold shoulder?!" Baseball will be waiting- hopefully it's not all mucked up.