MLB Adopts New Rules To Shorten Time of Games

 For Major League Baseball’s entire history, it has remained one of the only major sports that remained without a clock to manage its time.  Unfortunately, due to changes in societal operations and a culture that has become impatient and intolerant of the slowness of time, MLB has deemed it necessary to implement policies and rules that expedite the pace of play.  As much as many may not relish the idea of such drastic adjustments to the way baseball conducts itself, MLB must see this as one of the most effective ways of maintaining its financial viability in ever changing society that seems to be operating faster as time goes on.  Can baseball keep its current fan base satisfied, while meeting the needs of future generations?  Only time will tell.

Yes, throughout the years baseball games have gotten steadily lengthened.  In the 1980’s, a game lasted around 2 and a half hours.  Back then, pitchers got the ball and threw it.  You didn’t see batters stepping out multiple times in the same at bat.  Pitchers did not step off the mound as frequently.  For some unknown reason these occurrences have taken place with much more frequency recently.  Maybe because pitchers have added many more pitches to their repitoire?  Maybe because pitchers throw harder?  I don’t think anyone has a solid answer to this question.  In any event, games are about 30 minutes longer than they used to be.  30 minutes!  Is this any reason to add a pitch clock that limits the time a pitcher or batter can take preparing for an at bat? I’m not sure about that.  Especially, when it completely overhauls the way parts of the game are played.

To eliminate the added time, several regulations have been put in place to speed the pace of games.  First of all, pitchers have 15 seconds between pitches to deliver the next pitch with no runners on base.  This time increases to 20 seconds with runners on the base paths.  In addition, a batter can only step out of the box once during each at bat, and must be in the batter’s box looking at the pitcher with 8 seconds on the clock.  When the runner gets on base, the pitcher can only throw over or step off the rubber twice.  If the pitcher steps off the rubber or throws over to first a third time, the runner must be picked off by the pitcher, or a balk will be called.  Is the addition of so many rules that will inevitably cloud players’ minds the appropriate manner to ensure games are played in the most efficient manner possible? This seems highly questionable.  Again, all these adjustments are being made to save 30 minutes.  Why not just tell umpires to continually remind players and coaches to be quick, and then implement rules as a last resort.

Baseball must be relevant to multiple generations to ensure that it is able have a flourishing existence.  Therefore, they have to find ways to adapt to our accelerating cultural needs, ideally without tearing at the tenets of the original game.  For the current powers at be, they failed at this task miserably.  Other adjustments could have been implemented to shorten games without monumentally changing the way the game operates.  What makes baseball great has been damaged to a certain extent, due to the attempt to cater to a population whose patience has run woefully short.