Minor leagues and the pitch clock

[Brock Beauchamp]

Baseball America looked at the pitch clock implementation in the minors and...

MLB cannot implement this rule quickly enough.

This line is bonkers:

Quote

On their first day of enforcement, the new rules appeared to cut more than 25 minutes from the average game time.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/new-rules-dramatically-sped-up-last-nights-milb-games/

[DuWayne Steurer]

I know it's a super contentious topic to a lot of people and there's the whole "don't go to a game if you don't want to spend 5 hours at the stadium!" people, but I don't want to spend 3 1/2 or 4 hours at a stadium, and I DO want to go to games.  There's no reason for games to take so long, and a pitch clock (as demonstrated) is doing a lot to remedy that. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, RoCoBrewfan said:

I know it's a super contentious topic to a lot of people and there's the whole "don't go to a game if you don't want to spend 5 hours at the stadium!" people, but I don't want to spend 3 1/2 or 4 hours at a stadium, and I DO want to go to games.  There's no reason for games to take so long, and a pitch clock (as demonstrated) is doing a lot to remedy that. 

Baseball is 162 games. I don’t need 3.5 hours that many times in a calendar year.

And the pitch clock has so many benefits: there’s more action with less downtime and we’ll see a decrease in velocity for the first time… ever, maybe? It takes so many elements about the modern game that aren’t great and minimizes them. 

[Robocaller]

If I was a catcher and my pitcher just kept shaking me off, I'd keep flashing the same sign until he had to go ahead and pitch.

[Patrick425]

11 hours ago, Robocaller said:

If I was a catcher and my pitcher just kept shaking me off, I'd keep flashing the same sign until he had to go ahead and pitch.

[KeithStone53151]

On 4/17/2022 at 11:04 AM, RoCoBrewfan said:

there's the whole "don't go to a game if you don't want to spend 5 hours at the stadium!" people

This contingent of people has to be extremely small.

Also fun fact, MLB will be beta testing automated balls and strikes at every MLB stadium for a small select number of games this season. I highly suspect this will be implemented in 2023.

[Joseph Zarr]

2 hours ago, KeithStone53151 said:

This contingent of people has to be extremely small.

Also fun fact, MLB will be beta testing automated balls and strikes at every MLB stadium for a small select number of games this season. I highly suspect this will be implemented in 2023.

This is extremely exciting. I have seen enough of borderline give and takes. One inning a pitch 6" off the zone is a strike...the next, it's a ball on a crucial 3-2 pitch. 

[TURBO]

20 hours ago, Robocaller said:

If I was a catcher and my pitcher just kept shaking me off, I'd keep flashing the same sign until he had to go ahead and pitch.

I doubt you'd be a catcher for long with that kind of attitude...lol

[folly412]

Couple of observations from watching the Mudcats:

• Enforcement is still very loose. Carolina had a couple pitchers always take 3-5 seconds longer to deliver and were never penalized, nor (from what I could tell) even warned.  I'm not sure how to interpret this - the presence of the clock is sufficient to speed things up, there may or may not be more upside with strict enforcement, or they gamble on a call not knowing if an umpire is going to enforce the rule and make them adjust.
• There appears to be no practice of hitters calling time during an at-bat, walking out of the box, adjusting gloves, taking practice swings, or any of the other stuff we see in MLB.  They seem to be held to the pitch clock as much as the pitchers, and expected to be in the box awaiting the pitch.

[Brock Beauchamp]

25 minutes ago, folly412 said:

There appears to be no practice of hitters calling time during an at-bat, walking out of the box, adjusting gloves, taking practice swings, or any of the other stuff we see in MLB.  They seem to be held to the pitch clock as much as the pitchers, and expected to be in the box awaiting the pitch.

I believe part of the rule is that hitters are not to step out of the box and do all that garbage you just mentioned, at least not without calling time (which the ump may or may not grant).

[Tbadder]

In general, I don’t really care if the pitch clock comes. PersonalIy, I love spending as much time as I can at the park, but understand that most don’t. However I think we need to keep track of pitcher injuries. I read somewhere (I realize this isn’t helpful or convincing) that the time between pitches is recovery time and helpful in preventing injury. Pitching clock? Okay, but let’s collect the relevant data and cross our fingers. 

[Robocaller]

On 4/18/2022 at 7:23 PM, TURBO said:

I doubt you'd be a catcher for long with that kind of attitude...lol

I figure I'd be a lot smarter than the pitcher, so he'd better do what I say.

[areacodes]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:57 PM, Tbadder said:

In general, I don’t really care if the pitch clock comes. PersonalIy, I love spending as much time as I can at the park, but understand that most don’t. However I think we need to keep track of pitcher injuries. I read somewhere (I realize this isn’t helpful or convincing) that the time between pitches is recovery time and helpful in preventing injury. Pitching clock? Okay, but let’s collect the relevant data and cross our fingers. 

Then the pitchers need to adjust on the velocity/max effort for pitches so their recovery time is more in line with the allotted time from the pitch clock.

[Opening Day]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:17 PM, folly412 said:

 

• There appears to be no practice of hitters calling time during an at-bat, walking out of the box, adjusting gloves, taking practice swings, or any of the other stuff we see in MLB.  They seem to be held to the pitch clock as much as the pitchers, and expected to be in the box awaiting the pitch.

This is the biggest problem to me.  Yeah, some pitchers work slow, but I feel like a ton of the delays are on the batters.  You just watched a pitch, how did your gloves get so loose you need to tight them?  Is that extra half speed swing actually helping you do anything?  It gets ridiculous.

Also, do we have to watch the players jog off the field at the end of an inning?  Cant they just immediately starts the commercials and limit between inning time?  I dont think that extra 20 seconds of catch is improving anyones defense either.

 

[Dragonbait]

How bout shortening the in-between innings by one commercial? That'll speed things up quite a bit.

~30sec x 18 = thats almost 10 minutes right there. (and many less times seeing the same damned commercial)

[KeithStone53151]

1 hour ago, Dragonbait said:

How bout shortening the in-between innings by one commercial? That'll speed things up quite a bit.

~30sec x 18 = thats almost 10 minutes right there. (and many less times seeing the same damned commercial)

On Ballys i turned on a replay of the prior game yesterday. They apparently cut commercials for the replay and the total game time was 2 hours and 11 minutes or something. I'm pretty sure most games against the pirates were around 3 hours, so that tells you how much time gets added with just commercials...

[Oxy]

On 4/21/2022 at 5:02 AM, Robocaller said:

I figure I'd be a lot smarter than the pitcher, so he'd better do what I say.

He's got the ball...after getting crossed up a few times you'll agree to just give him the sign he wants.

[Robocaller]

4 hours ago, Oxy said:

He's got the ball...after getting crossed up a few times you'll agree to just give him the sign he wants.

You have more faith in me than is warranted.  ?

[dlk9s]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:06 AM, Robocaller said:

If I was a catcher and my pitcher just kept shaking me off, I'd keep flashing the same sign until he had to go ahead and pitch.

In high school, we had a "shake off" sign. Sometimes my catcher and I would mess around and he would just keep giving me the shake off sign so the team would think I had a million different pitches I could throw at any moment.

[TURBO]

I was at the Timber rattlers game Sunday.

18-1 was the final score.

The game was less than 3 hours, even with all those runs scored.

I have noticed a huge difference in game time this season, all due to the pitch clock.

I'm all for it!

[TURBO]

On 4/21/2022 at 9:22 AM, Dragonbait said:

How bout shortening the in-between innings by one commercial? That'll speed things up quite a bit.

~30sec x 18 = thats almost 10 minutes right there. (and many less times seeing the same damned commercial)

As long as that one commercial is the Vizzy Queen and her court commercial, I'm in!!!!  Do we really need to see that commercial 10 times per game (not an exaggeration)  It literally plays once per inning and at least once during the pre-game show.

 

[Dragonbait]

3 hours ago, TURBO said:

As long as that one commercial is the Vizzy Queen and her court commercial, I'm in!!!!  Do we really need to see that commercial 10 times per game (not an exaggeration)  It literally plays once per inning and at least once during the pre-game show.

 

Me and the wife cant decide if that's a woman, or a drag queen either... ?

[TURBO]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:58 PM, Dragonbait said:

Me and the wife cant decide if that's a woman, or a drag queen either... ?

it is 100% a man.