Pace of Play

I love baseball.  I could watch it all day.  I have watched it all day.  I have requested Opening Day off this year to enjoy the crack of the bat and excitement of the game.  That's how much I love baseball.  It has never bothered me how long games are.  With that said, there are plenty of opportunities to improve the pace of the game for the casual fan.  Not everyone wants to sit around for two and a half to three hours for a game.  And these are some of the same people that will sit through four hours for one football game.  That, if you ran the game clock with no stoppages, would be one hour.  I don't fully understand it either, but what are you gonna do?

I was watching the MLB Network today and they were discussing the introduction of a pitch clock at the minor league levels.  Same idea as the shot clock in basketball, but for the pitcher.  Once they get the ball back in their hand, they have only a certain amount of time for the next pitch.  It would be beneficial to the speed of the game, I believe, but this is not where the major problem of the game slowing down comes.  It comes from the batters.  Pitchers would benefit from a quicker game as they seem to want to work quickly, some pitchers notwithstanding, and get into a groove.  Batters always want to seem to disrupt that groove.  And the easiest way to do so?  Stepping out of the batters box to readjust the batting gloves, tap your spikes, check with the third base coach as to what your next move should be.

Keeping the batters in the batter's box is more important for speed of the game than using a pitcher's clock.  I know, I know, it's a combination of the batter and the pitcher.  But I think that the batters benefit from slowing the game down because it doesn't really allow pitchers to get into that groove that they want.  The pitchers want the ball back as soon as it hits the catcher's mitt and they want to stay focused.  They don't want to stand around and wait for the batter to scratch his balls another time before stepping back in.

With all that said, I like the idea of having a pitch clock in the minors.  It teaches the pitchers to pick up the pace.  The minor leagues is where players develop.  This is where they learn to play at a professional level.  So, if the pitchers have the pitch clock, it has to be up to the umps to keep the batters in the batter's box.  You cannot have one side of the game learning a new way to play with a new rule set without having the other half learning as well.