I just want to know how they’re going to “counteract” analytics? Penalties for thinking too much about the game? Take away their spreadsheet licenses?
Here are rule changes that would speed the game.
- Maximum four pitchers per game in a 9-inning game. Three pitching changes. If your fourth pitcher gets hurt, tough titties, you must use a position player.
- No warm up pitches on the mound. Warm up in the bullpen, that should be enough.
- Each pitcher must pitch to at least two batters. No lefty-righty switcheroos.
- Batters cannot call time at the plate more than once during an at-bat.
- Visits to the mound by a coach or manager are one minute, tops. If they go longer, next batter is awarded first base.
Rob Manfred can thank me later.
Hell no. You must be an AL fan.
Exception for injury? Sure.
Ehhh, maybe in inning. I see no reason for cross inning on this.
Aka the Red Sox- Yankees rule.
Sure.
Still all of that is better than any of the rules to limit shifts or sabremetrics.
We’re on pace to set another strikeout record this season, and home runs – while down a bit from last year – are still trending upward. You could argue it’s in response to the shift, but the defense is involved less than ever these days.
If a pitcher is getting shelled, you’re either going to risk injury on another pitcher (or position player) by stretching him too far, or completely destroy your pitching staff to survive a game. Not to mention the game is going to take way longer if one team is basically hitting batting practice.
Another injury risk. No way.
I don’t care too much about this but it’ll put a bunhc of LOOGYs out of a job. Not gonna happen.
As long as the pitcher isn’t taking excessive time, fine.
Umps are already supposed to break meetings up so sure, whatever.
But hey, if this is how they want to sneak in automated strike zones? I’m on board with that.
Oh man, batters calling time. Drives me nuts, the way some of them do it. I’d start with giving umps a clear directive to not grant it more than once every few pitches without good reason though; there’s enough gamesmanship that goes on that a hard rule feels exploitable.
I’m super against robot umps. Leave the human drama in the game.
Two batters per pitcher in an inning, love it.
Warm-ups on the mound, eh.
Ban replay from all sports forever. No bamboozle. It’s the worst. Getting mad at refs is our God-given right as sports fans. Conditional cheering is the worst. Look at football, for Christ’s sake.
To begin with, enforce the current rules, especially the pitch timer, and things move along much more quickly. Games move along just fine when you get a pitcher on the mound who actually obeys the timer.
If you’re greatly concerned about batters stepping out you could modify that rule to punish a batter who isn’t ready when the timer expires.
The only other pace-of-play rule that seems useful to me would be the suggestion to eliminate (non-injury) warm-up pitches. Put a timer on the pitching change, something like 45 seconds to get the guy in from the bullpen, and then move on.
The lack of action concern becomes much less of an issue if the game is moving at a decent pace. Strikeouts can be interesting, too, if you’re not having to wait around between each one.
How about simply prohibiting batters from stepping out of the box after every pitch? I can’t think of anything that slows the game down more.
They can tweak all they want with in-game stuff like mound visits and batter time-outs. Bet they won’t touch the one thing that could really make a difference
The larger issue, of course, is expanding the business, which means attracting more fans. And baseball won’t touch the biggest impediments to that effort, because it would mean less money now. Want to make the game move more quickly? Cut every commercial break by 30 seconds.
And velcro. At-bats would shorten by 50% if they ban velcro. I never played enough baseball to wear batting gloves, but I do find re-tightening the velcro straps on racquetball gloves irresistible.
I can’t imagine having to use a position player to pitch would in any way speed up the game.
Pitchers need to warm up on the mound as while mound dimensions are standard I don’t think they are all truly identical. At least commentators have said that.
I do like the idea of no one hitter pitchers. I would even limit (short of injury) the number of pitchers you could use in an inning.
I think mound visits are rarely over a minute, they just seem long.
I had thought there were rules to that effect but you can’t tell in a major league game. Maybe it was something they tried in the minors.
Games already sped up about 2% once Nomar Garciaparra retired. Baseball is getting greedy! But really, the constant timeouts and stepping out of the batter box are huge contributors to the lengthy games these days.
Current ML rules say that the batter must keep one foot in the box, unless they swing at a pitch or there’s some other play on the bases.
Has that rule ever been enforced? If so, I haven’t seen or heard of it.
and that would be pretty helpful - if the pitcher were allowed to throw a pitch while the batter stands there with one toe in the batter’s box.
The idea is that this would only happen in a blowout. So the four-pitchers-in-regulation idea is that actually you’d only use three, and the fourth would be your failsafe, much like second catchers aren’t used to pinch-hit in case the starting catcher got hurt. A position player pitching would be rare.
I realize my ideas are probably unworkable, and they’d probably only speed the game slightly. But it is a fun little exercise.
Yes. The biggest the dollars in the game, the more cautious teams are with their investments pitchers, as noted in this old Bleacher Report analysis.
The only theory that has been advanced that makes any sense to this writer is the idea that so much is invested in the pitchers now, both in time and money, and pitching talent is generally so thin that no one wants to take a chance on ruining a good arm
Very true.
Yes, that is the great irony about pitching changes. They slow the game down, they give broadcast partners (which are paying times mega bucks for rights) more opportunity to recoup their investment.
I haven’t seen it, but then I mostly see batters following the rules. Admittedly I don’t pay close attention to every pitch, but these days batters mostly seem to keep a foot in the box.
Most hitters are good about it. Two who are bad are Odubel Herrera of the Phillies and Jose Martinez of the Cardinals.
Another menace though, is batters calling time to step out of the box for a minute or longer to try to mess with a pitcher’s rhythm.
Sadly, Miggy is old and not getting any younger. Injuries have keep a serious problem for him the last several years. Got to figure it’s just a matter of time before one of them knocks him out of the game for good. :(
I miss you, LoCain
This is a fun video. More content like this, baseball!