Baseball Clock

[3TrueFans]

162 games seems like waaaayyyyyy too many, you could do like a 5 game series with each team in the league and then 5 game series with teams from a division in the other league, that'd be like 95 games.

 

[Bigman38]

They need to be at the end of the playoffs right now instead of gearing up for the final stretch of the regular season. The most exciting part of an excruciatingly long season goes head to head with the biggest sport in the country. Imagine the attention it would get if the world series was happening right now.

 

[VeloClone]

Except Nomar Garciaparra. Man I hated watching him at the plate.

I hate watching Braun. You'd think a guy that juiced up would be just antsy to go and wouldn't take 90 seconds between pitches to play with all of his equipment.

 

[Buster28]

Baseball doesn't need a clock. The number of pitchers who are too slow is relatively low, so that wouldn't affect most games much anyway, unless the clock was so short that it forced everyone to pitch faster than they would like. I am fine with the pace of the game, but I love baseball anyway. Once you start tweaking too many different aspects of the game, it starts becoming not baseball and you have relegated what has been achieved in the past irrelevant to today. I believe that replay is about all you can do without making fundamental changes to how it's played (and I am generally in favor of that because I want the calls to be correct, even if they go against my team).

 

[SoapyCy]

honestly just make shorter seasons, baseball should end when preseason football starts

or preseason football starts when baseball ends?

 

[ISU42]

Serious question. How does the length of the game today compare to 10 years ago? 20 years ago? And so on.

 

[3TrueFans]

Serious question. How does the length of the game today compare to 10 years ago? 20 years ago? And so on.

Found this on Google, it's from 4 years ago.

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2010/08/baseball-games-getting-longer.html

I think I heard that the average length of a game in 2014 is over 3 hours now.

 

[IcSyU]

I don't like the idea of a clock, but some pitchers are really slow. For me the bigger annoyance is the batters continuously stepping out of the batters box, and the relievers needing x many pitches before they can pitch to a batter. They just warmed up in the bull pen

Pitching on a bullpen mound no one has used versus pitching in a stadium where two other pitchers have hacked it apart for 6 innings each is a lot different. As a catcher you also want to see each guy's stuff for at least a couple pitches in warm ups to figure out if there's a little more tail on the 2 seamer/drop in the sinker/etc.

Serious question. How does the length of the game today compare to 10 years ago? 20 years ago? And so on.

Baseball will be longer than it used to be just because you didn't have as many specialists in the past. There wasn't a "gets lefties out" guy in the pen. There wasn't a "this guy is for the 9th inning" pitcher. There wasn't really a "I need a strikeout and this guy is my best shot" guy. Now any good team has all 3 of those + potentially a setup man.

Unfortunately baseball like every other sport has let the almighty dollar take over.

Football games are about as bad as baseball. Watch for 40 seconds...get MAYBE 5 seconds of action. Come back from 3 minutes of commercials, guy grounds out on the 2nd pitch, call to the bullpen, 3 more minutes of commercials. Or in the NFL you get extra point, 3 minutes of commercials, kickoff out of the back of the endzone, 3 more minutes of commercials.

 

[klamath632]

With the election of a new commish of baseball I've been hearing more and more about the need to speed up the game and to put a clock (or rather, enforce the current clock) on pitchers and batters. I've had many discussions with friends and all have a differing opinion. Best I can tell, those who love baseball and are die hard fans hate the idea, while those who are casual fans or don't like baseball think it should have a clock. I personally don't like the idea. Baseball is great because there is no clock. It's part of the appeal to me. Just wondering what other people think.

Are you kidding? Die hard fans who grew up with the game remember a time when batters didn't step out of the box after every pitch, when you didn't make a pitching change for three batters in a row. Today's baseball games suck. The plays are as great as they have ever been, but you have to wait too god damn long between plays.

If you truly are a purist, you want the clocks, just to get the game back to where it was, and so the games will actually move at a reasonable pace again.

 

[Bu4ISU]

or preseason football starts when baseball ends?

Preseason football starting in November would suck

 

[urb1]

I would like to see a time limit between pitches that the batter and pitcher have to follow and/or the number of times a better can step out of the box. It is ridiculous how long it takes between pitches for some players these days.

 

[Gunnerclone]

I would like to see a time limit between pitches that the batter and pitcher have to follow and/or the number of times a better can step out of the box. It is ridiculous how long it takes between pitches for some players these days.

Is there a limit on timeouts in baseball? I don't think timeouts should be allowed, the whole game is a giant timeout with less action than the timeouts in other sports.

 

[CyFan61]

This will never happen, but I would like to see the MLB shorten their season and coordinate schedules with the NFL so that Game 7 of the World Series would be on a Tuesday in the same week that the NFL kicks off on a Thursday. I think more people would watch the MLB playoffs without competition from football.

 

[Clonefan32]

I like baseball just the way it is, but I don't think it would be out of line to allow the umpire the discretion to give a pitcher a warning on speed and to assess a walk in the event they don't speed up some. It could work similarly to golf's rule-- rarely utilized but meant to allow some discretion to tell guys to speed it up.

 

[ruxCYtable]

I compared this to a basketball player having a routine before he shoots a free throw. Except there's so many other variables in baseball. My guess is while they are adjusting all of those things, they are taking those variables into account. Not just fidgeting for fidgeting's sake.

which, a lot of people don't know, IS timed

There's a Minor league division that splits the season into halves. Winner of the first half automatically makes the post-season playoffs. That would be interesting because it would force coaches to decide whether they should start resting their players or not.

midwest league (cr kernels) does this.

 

[Yellow Snow]

I compared this to a basketball player having a routine before he shoots a free throw. Except there's so many other variables in baseball. My guess is while they are adjusting all of those things, they are taking those variables into account. Not just fidgeting for fidgeting's sake.

The difference is that a basketball player is on a 10 second clock to shoot his free throw once he catches the ball from the official.

 

[NATEizKING]

Baseball is meant to be long and uneventful. The wait between each pitch, the length of a single game, the length of the season. I just think of wasting time as a key characteristic of the sport, kind of like faking injuries in soccer.

 

[HandSanitizer]

baseball really is losing interest.
my kids will have a tournament on Saturday/Sunday. Got to be there 60-75 mins before the game starts to fricking warm up. Why does baseball need 60 mins to warm up for a game when you don't even do anything. Stretch your damn arm out and run a lap. Then the game takes forever in any type of weather. Coaches trips to the mound, to the ump, Catcher to the mound. Coach to the batter. 10 pick off moves per inning.....Time, Time, Time.
Take a look around a baseball stadium next time. I bet half the people are there just to drink and go out.

I personally think they could create a few rules and widen the strike zone a bit.
Done ranting.

 

[cyowan]

The difference is that a basketball player is on a 10 second clock to shoot his free throw once he catches the ball from the official.

The pitcher actually has a clock on him as well, it's just not enforced. I've never seen this rule enforced in basketball either, but I don't watch the NBA. I've seen a lot of college games though, and never seen it called.

 

[CyFan61]

The pitcher actually has a clock on him as well, it's just not enforced.

Is this the case in MLB? I had never heard of it so I just took a glance at the MLB rulebook and didn't see anything to that effect.