Speed Up The Games!

I find it much more fun to watch basebally when you have a fast-working pitcher like Lieber on the mound rather than a human rain delay like Trachsel. I hope that these rules will actually be enforced.

And the cameras got some great shots of the second-base umpire checking his stopwatch in between pitches. Len and Bob were speculating on how enforcement of the 12-second rule might affect pitchers such as Bob Howry, who go through a fairly slow series of mechanics before delivering the ball. It didn’t seem to bother Howry last night, as I thought he had a pretty solid outing. (And I believe that’s at least two good outings in a row for Bob.)

Anyway, I applaud these efforts as well. Somewhere out there Steve Trachsel is grumbling to himself and kicking the dirt. (Did he ever get picked up by anyone?)

the rule change to speed up the game but I’m sure we will miss quite a few of the first at bat when TV returns from a commercial.

and his 20 second delay before calling a strike? Is Bud going to do something about that, too?

Really acts like a tough guy doesnt he? I suspect this 12 second rule last about one week before it is all but forgotten. If the want to speed up the game how about not allowing the extra 30 seconds per commercial for national telecasts.

$$$$$$$$

Or another ump dedicated to policing time? Probably No on both counts and many of these rule enforcement drives eventually dwindle away and we go back to our old ways. Still got to applaud the league for at least trying to address it and to the umps for doing their job right 99.5% of the time despite the immense responsibility and difficulty of what they do.

Glenallen Hill——the ump got so annoyed that he was taking his sweet ass time that the ump ordered the pitch, Hill ran into the box for an RBI hit

something else on this topic . . . MLB is going to encourage managers and pitching coaches to jog out to the mound to talk with/replace their pitchers. Apparently there are too many mangers that take a leisurely stroll out to the mound for their discussions.

Lou doesn’t move that slowly, but it’ll be fun to watch him jog out to the mound. IIRC, Lou already jogs back to the dugout from the mound most of the time.

Something needs to be done. Baseball games don’t need to be 3 hours plus all the time. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s games would routinenly be snappy 2 1/2 hour affairs. Bigger bullpens and the propensity to use relief specialists has greatly slowed the game down. Ditto the proliferation of TV and radio commercials. But there are other ways to compensate.

Surely as a batter its your job to be there when the pitch is thrown. I can just see it now. Nomar wanders out of the box & starts fiddling with his gloves when, oops there goes the next pitch

I do realise that the pitchers would take the proverbial _

You cannot step out of the box completly, only 1 foot while taking signs.

Bill James has posed the idea that if you bring in a reliever, he cannot be removed that until he gives up a run, gets injured, or the inning ends. Little things can go a long way towards speeding things up – lots of the dead time in games is due to reliever warm-up pitches and the accompanying commerical time that happens whenever there is a pitching change.

... MLB officials say they’re going to test out instant replay in the Arizona Fall League.

If it works OK, they will continue the trial in the WBC next spring and in spring training games.

had the right idea after all. Don’t walk and clog the bases and the game will take less time.

of complete games. each team had most likely one pitching change per game, unless the game really got out of hand. Now, each team has a minimum of 2-3 pitching changes. That and more runs scored per game is where the time is going. The batter stepping out really doesn’t bother me, I guess I’m numb to it now. I don’t like the idea of relievers having to face x amount of batters or outcomes, that’s not baseball.

Those are the only two things that will really speed up the game. Pitchers! Throw strikes! If you can’t throw strikes, become an outfielder.

Managers: let pitchers work out of trouble. Teach them to pitch, not just throw. This whole lefty/righty Larussa-esque matchup stuff has to go.

...has baseball been played? The game and it’s pace has never been dictated by a clock. To change it so we can fit a game into our viewing time slot it shallow. Don’t change the game. It may not seem a big deal until our team, or in a big moment the rule is enforced.

“Games are taking too long, we need to speed them up.” Then they get shorter for a while but eventually they creep longer and longer when all of a sudden, “Games are too long! We must speed them up!” And so it goes. Am I misremembering here? : )

A bunch of media outlet bean counters must have determined that the number of commercial revenue is maximized in a game which time is 2:38 instead of 2:51. Yet another Bud Light reactive impulse.

This is so silly. Thats 10-15 minutes out of 171 minutes. So take the middle, 12.5 minutes. That’s a whopping 7.3%; woo-hoo! BFHD.

There’s more than that percent variation when you have games where some pitchers are more inclined to throw to first with a runner on or in the case if there’s a couple more walks and/or pitching changes or even more so when there’s several AB’s of many 2-strike foul balls. On cold days (boy there’s never any of those), pitchers are allowed to blow into their hands on the mound, otherwise (at the umps discretion), they have to be on the grass. How does that figure in? There’s just so much variation.

Did they ever think that sometimes a few extra seconds delay is a bit of tactic to try to un-nerve the opponent? Boy, that’s never been considered, let alone actually done; yeah right.

If they were talking 15-20%, that’s different. All this does is open up speculation of elapsed time and the definition. So what’s next, a 12s pitch-clock?

Instead of doing something PROACTIVE, like pulling their heads out of their asses in instituting instant replay and getting rid of those stupid, dumb-ass HR-ball quirks at some ballparks like that bandbox in TX, they try to screw around with this.

And yet, come playoff time, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a between half-inning commercial delay that’s some 20-50% longer than during the regular season. So….will that be changed? Of course not. Why? $$$

You’d figure the team owners would want the slightly longer time, greater opportunity for fans to purchase concession stand items.