Baseball has always been a sport where time has not been a constraining element.
Innings are determined by player outs, not the ticks on a clock.
A game can go on indefinitely if the score is tied, again no clock to worry about.
The world is however changing, and with it fans and what they want.
Movies have generally gotten shorter. Other sports have worked to keep game time within the expectation of the modern fan.
In general the attention span of fans wanes after 2.5 hours, and drowsiness kicks in at 3 hours.
The average major league baseball game is just a smidge over three hours, meaning a big chunk of games drag on well past that mark.
With a general trend to wanting everything faster, baseball also increasingly lack the ‘AH’ moments.
An ‘AH’ moment gets fans to look up from texting to actually watch a play, predominantly seeing a long fly ball that just might clear the outfield fence.
Sadly for the game that is about the extent of ‘AH’ moments. The steal is an all but forgotten offensive tool, so too the hit and run, the suicide squeeze and anything else that might stop the next .240 career hitter from swinging for the fences.
So baseball is looking to modernize.
However, have you ever made a change for the sake of change, and realize how silly it looks after the fact?
Try this MLB clunker on for size.
Heading into the 2019 season, and subject to discussions with broadcast partners, inning breaks will be reduced from 2:05 to 2:00 in local games, and from 2:25 to 2:00 in national games. (The Office of the Commissioner retains the right to reduce the inning breaks to 1:55 in local and national games for the 2020 season.)
Stop the presses, the issue of games becoming too long has been solved, five seconds at a time.
Here is another; the maximum number of mound visits per team will be reduced from six to five.
That is a blip of nothingness.
It’s time for tech to take over. Pitchers wear earbuds and the bench talks to them without the protracted walk to the mound and back to allow a reliever to warm up. Save some real time and get current with the world of tech.
And then just in case you want to lessen the enjoyment of the game this is a good way to start. The league is eliminating the 40-man active roster limit in September, moving instead to a rule where all teams must carry 28 players on the active roster.
For the 70-80 per cent of teams that are already out of playoff contention come Sept. 1, the bright spot for fans of those teams was expanded rosters and a chance to see just what the farm system might be providing down the road. Now the league is taking that glimpse into the crystal ball of tomorrow away from fans.
At the heart of slowness of games is the late inning pitching changes where teams trot out relievers who may only throw a single pitch if it’s a fly out, or a hit, and then dip back into the bullpen for someone new.
So the solution is obvious, expand rosters to give teams even more pitchers to work with.
In 2020 the active roster limit from opening day through Aug. 31 and in postseason games will increase from 25 to 26, and the minimum number of active players will increase from 24 to 25. The current Major League Rules allowing for a 26th player for doubleheaders will be amended to allow for a 27th player.
There is a suggestion the number of pitchers a team may carry on the active roster will be capped at a number determined by the joint committee, that number is rumoured to be 13, so relievers galore.
More interesting is the idea the league will implement an amended rule requiring that starting pitchers and relief pitchers must pitch to either a minimum of three batters or the end of a half-inning (with exceptions for incapacitating injury or illness). This is a good step as it moves to eliminate where a group of pitchers throw more warm-ups in an inning than pitches to actual batters.
Coupled with a meaningful pitch clock – softball works rather smoothly at 20-seconds – and you might start to cut into the time of the game.
The pitch clock would speed up pitchers, and also keep batters in the box.
So far the efforts of MLB is a minor tinkering, where a few philosophical changes of greater magnitude are required.
A scant decade ago baseball would have topped my list of favourite team sports. It has slid to fifth, and a couple of other sports are inching closer to overtaking it.
