Baseball’s commissioner keeps tinkering with the rulebook. He should learn to love the sport as it is, like the fans do. My latest at The Federalist.
Baseball’s commissioner keeps tinkering with the rulebook. He should learn to love the sport as it is, like the fans do. My latest at The Federalist.
I think the biggest rule change that MLB needs is to look into is speeding up between pitches. If you go back and watch an old MLB game on YouTube from the 70’s/80’s, the time between pitches was around 10 seconds. Now the time between pitches is roughly 15-20 seconds (closer to 20 seconds most of the time). It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it adds up over 9 innings. If you can shorten each at bat by 30 seconds on average (by putting a batter and pitcher on the clock and actually enforcing it), you would save almost a half hour every game. I’ve been a baseball fan for 40 years since I started watching the Phillies in the late 70’s, and the dead time between pitches is killing the game. The Phillies actually played a 4 hour 9 inning game last year as it was the longest in their history that didn’t goto extra innings! If MLB is turning me off, I can’t imagine someone under the age of 30 years old gravitating to these 3+ hour games.
They are trying out a 15-second pitch clock in low-A ball this year. It’s not a bad idea.