Report From The Fort: Logan Morrison Is Nice, But BULLPEN CARS

In fact, messy is the best way to describe MLB and the length of their games. The games are longer because they’re messy. The solutions are messy. The positions of both the league and the MLBPA are messy. And the agreement that was reached for this year’s games is messy, too.

Even the use of the word “agreement” is messy. The MLBPA worked with the league on the issue, but opposed most of the solutions. As a result, the agreement simply said that the MLBPA would not oppose the changes, which is safe to do because they had almost no power to oppose.

The solutions are messy, so I’ll provide a link to the details. The summary is this: only six visits to the mound per game, and that includes the catcher. Commercial breaks between innings will be slightly shorter. And for now, there will be no clock for anything this year, with the suggestion that the players will try to police themselves. But it’s certainly not ruled out for next year.

The MLBPA’s position on the changes is messy, too. Certainly the players would love to make sure that they don’t spend an extra hour at the ballpark. “Players don’t want to be in a position where they’re playing three-and-a-half or four hour games,” Clark says, and he went back to that point repeatedly. But what is less clear is what they’re willing to propose.

Because there are game integrity issues about which the players are concerned. We’ve seen changes that were supposed to improve the game have unintended consequences, like instant replay totally changing how stolen bases are called. The concern is that rule changes will impact the game.

“It’s not a matter of not appreciating advancements in the game. It’s not that,” says Clark. “As it relates to a pitch clock or not a pitch clock, the guys - on its most fundamental basis – just don’t believe that a pace of game violation should potentially change ... the outcome of a game.”

In this case it’s the players who are being the baseball purists. By doing so, they’re at odds with their own self-interest in shortening the games.But they're not alone.

The fans face the same dilemma. “Baseball games are too long” is becoming as ubiquitous a cliché as “MTV doesn’t play music videos” but the truth is that for the last decade game times were fairly steady prior to the past six years. Per Baseball Reference, the first time that MLB games averaged over three hours was in 2000, likely a result of the offensive explosion of that era. But it retreated, and didn’t exceed that mark again until 2013.

Like players, fans also care about the time of the game so long as it doesn’t affect their team. By all means, if the opposing team’s closer is taking too long in between pitches, they should be penalized. But if your slugger needs to readjust his batting gloves for the fifth time, you want that to be his prerogative.

Of course, it’s easy for fans and players to be conflicted, because ultimately they don’t get much say. That could change in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which is still four seasons away. We’ll find out if the players really want to oppose impacting the games and how important it is. Is it really important enough to open a new front in the negotiations with management? Are they willing to give up something financially for their fundamental belief on the integrity of the game?

(And, more cynically, is that one of the reasons that MLB is pushing this agenda to annoy the players?)

The MLBPA’s position would be strengthened if they released some concrete proposals, and that’s where we might see the return of bullpen cars. Clark gave some background information about that idea, sort of tongue-in-cheek. It was the result of talks about reducing the time of pitcher changes, which average almost three minutes per change, since pitching changes are going up in frequency. Bullpen cars were one idea to help. “And it was a nostalgic one that any fan who has been around the game, and has loved our game as long as a number of them have, can appreciate the days when there were cars,” clarified Clark.

Bullpen cars! It’s nice to see one idea that fans, ownership and players can agree on. We’ll need to wait on it, but we’ll also be waiting for the owners and players to sort out the rest of this pace-of-play mess.

Twins Notes

The Twins beat the Rays 5-4 on Sunday afternoon in their Grapefruit League home opener. Kyle Gibson started, was relieved by Addison Reed, who was followed by Ryan Pressly, so a fair number of potential Opening Day roster pitchers appeared. The lineup also contained several probable starting players.

After the game, manager Paul Molitor revealed that Joe Mauer and Miguel Sano will likely make their first spring training appearance on Wednesday, presumably in the home half of the split squad games scheduled that day. Furthermore, the current plan is to have Sano play in the field, though he didn’t specifically say if it would be at first base, third base, or center field. ;-)

For more notes and speculation today, I’d encourage you to check out a new feature on Twins Daily that we’re trying out: Twins Daily Nightly Wrap. It’s all the inside stuff we couldn’t fit into the column in a short audio file that you can listen to on your smart phone or computer. Let us know how you like it.

P.S.

No, but seriously, the bullpen car will be awesome. This is a no-brainer. Make them super fast to speed up gametime. Sponsor the hell out of them. So long as it's a car wearing a baseball cap, we, the fans, are IN.