Major League Baseball tests ways to speed up slow games By Bill Brink, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 11.10.14 Word Count 1,267 Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Edinson Volquez throws against the San Francisco Giants in the first inning of the wild- card playoff baseball game on Oct. 1, 2014, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Baseball, the only major sport without a time element, could soon be on the clock. Football has a play clock. Basketball has a shot clock. Under experimental rules Major League Baseball is currently testing in the Arizona Fall League (AFL), baseball could have a pitch clock. And a pitching-change clock. And an inning-break clock. Violations will result in automatic balls and strikes, applying a pace-of-play and penalty structure to a game played at its own pace for more than 150 years. The rule changes, born of the Pace of Game Committee departing Commissioner Bud Selig created, are intended to address the increasing periods of inactivity that some fear could turn away younger viewers. “In the major leagues is where the problem is,” said Pittsburgh Pirates special assistant to player development Frank Kremblas, who is managing in the fall league. “That’s why they’re doing it. We’re the experimental people.” Baseball games consistently have increased in length in the past few decades. The time of an average game has increased from 2 hours, 23 minutes in 1950 to 2:33 in 1981 to more than three hours this season. The first three games of the World Series took 3:32, 3:25 and 3:15. According to Nielsen Media Research, Game 1 television ratings set a record low for the second time in three seasons and declined as the game went on, though that corresponded with a growing San Francisco Giants lead. More troublesome than the length of games is the slower pace of play. Since teams averaged 5.14 runs per game in 2000, which came at the height of the steroid era and was the highest total in the live-ball era since 1936, scoring has declined, settling at 4.07 runs per game this year. Strikeouts steadily have increased for the entire previous century and especially in the past 10 seasons. If fewer runs are scored and fewer balls put in play, what’s taking so long? Selig gave his thoughts in August, addressing reporters in Oakland, California. “I’m aggravated,” he said. “Let me give you my pet example: Player comes to the plate, ball one. Now he gets out of the box and he’s adjusting all his equipment. What the hell? He hasn’t swung. What is he adjusting?” Specialized bullpens designed to play the matchups and more pitching changes have contributed to slower games, as has the increased emphasis of on-base percentage, which leads to working counts. The introduction in 2014 of managerial challenges and the accompanying video reviews added dead time. But the players, pitchers and hitters, are slowing the game as well — pitchers removing dirt from their cleats and fussing with the rosin bag, hitters adjusting their batting gloves and taking practice swings. “It’s going to be the hitter that takes too long to get there,” Kremblas predicted. The PITCHf/x system that tracks pitch velocity and movement in every ballpark puts a time stamp on each pitch thrown, allowing for calculation of a “pace” for each pitcher or hitter representing the average time between pitches during their plate appearances. Some pitchers, such as Mark Buehrle of the Toronto Blue Jays and Doug Fister of the Washington Nationals, motor along, averaging around 18 seconds between pitches — the quickest pace among qualified starters this year. Others take longer: Edinson Volquez of the Pirates, for example, averaged 25.3 seconds between pitches, the fourth-slowest time this year. Batters are guilty, too. Hanley Ramirez’s major league-leading 28.1 seconds between pitches and Yasiel Puig’s 26.7 seconds, which tied for third, contributed to Los Angeles Dodgers games averaging 3:14 this season. Thus, the AFL experimental measures, announced in early October. “The Arizona Fall League will be a terrific platform during which we can experiment with these ideas and take away some lessons in the hope of streamlining the pace of play,” John Schuerholz, president of the Atlanta Braves and chairman of the Pace of Game Committee, said in a statement at the time. The most drastic measure is the pitch clock, which requires pitchers to deliver the ball within 20 seconds or receive an automatic ball to the batter's count. This is an extension of Rule 8.04, which directs pitchers to throw the ball within 12 seconds of receiving it from the catcher when the bases are empty. It is almost never enforced. Batters must keep at least one foot in the batter’s box during their at-bat, with certain exceptions. “You can only step out if you foul a pitch off or if you swing, something like that,” said Pirates prospect Josh Bell, who is playing in the fall league. “I’m not really one to step out of the box anyway, it didn’t really bother me.” Pitchers have to deliver the first pitch of an inning within 2 minutes, 5 seconds after the end of the previous inning — pitchers are docked a ball if they don’t, while batters who aren’t in the box by 1:45 receive an automatic strike — and a pitching change can take no longer than 2:30. Teams are also limited to three timeouts and can issue an intentional walk merely by saying so rather than throwing four intentional balls. “Really, it’s kind of a lot of time,” said Pirates minor league right-hander Tyler Glasnow, also a fall league participant. The rules are enforced at Salt River Fields, the only AFL ballpark outfitted with the clocks. Five digital clocks — two in each dugout, two behind home plate and one on the wall in left-center field — counted down the various times. The mere presence of the clocks altered play, Bell said: The clocks behind home plate, offset so as not to distract the pitcher, lined up with the first and third basemen’s view of the strike zone. “So you’re looking at 20, 19, you’re trying to pick up the ball, the lights are flashing right behind,” he said. “It’s definitely a little bit different.” Detroit Tigers minor league left-hander Robbie Ray learned the hard way the consequences of the new rules on Oct. 16 when his Glendale Desert Dogs faced the Salt River Rafters. Because he did not deliver his first pitch in the bottom of the first inning before time expired, he received an automatic ball and started the at-bat with a 1-0 count. Houston Astros prospect Mark Appel committed two violations on Oct. 14 — stepping off the mound as the man on first faked toward second, then exceeding the between-innings time limit when both his final warm-up pitch and the catcher’s practice throw to second base were off target. “I don’t think the pitch clock saves that much time with runners on,” Appel told MLB.com. “It’s very different and very arbitrary.” But so far, very effective. Through Friday, nine-inning games under the new rules averaged 2 hours, 20 minutes, while nine-inning games elsewhere averaged 2:49. The average fall league game took 2:51 in 2013. Whether the experimental rules make it to the major leagues, and to what extent, remains unclear. The game can only speed up so much. Shorter isn’t always better. As pitcher Jonathan Papelbon, one of baseball’s slowest pitchers and a former participant in games between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox that regularly exceeded 3 1/2 hours, put it in 2010, “Have you ever gone to watch a movie and thought, ‘Man, this movie is so good I wish it would have never ended?’ That’s like a Red Sox-Yankees game. Why would you want it to end?” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle expressed a similar sentiment in September, when the committee was announced. “There’s some instances where,” he said, “if it’s all about a clock, go watch another sport.” Quiz 1 Select the sentence from the article that provides one of the reasons for the introduction of new rules to speed up baseball games. (A) Under experimental rules Major League Baseball is currently testing in the Arizona Fall League (AFL), baseball could have a pitch clock. (B) The introduction in 2014 of managerial challenges and the accompanying video reviews added dead time. (C) "It's going to be the hitter that takes too long to get there," Kremblas predicted. (D) "You can only step out if you foul a pitch off or if you swing, something like that," said Pirates prospect Josh Bell, who is playing in the fall league. 2 Select the sentence from the article that shows that not everyone supports the new set of rules. (A) "In the major leagues is where the problem is," said Pittsburgh Pirates special assistant to player development Frank Kremblas, who is managing in the fall league. (B) "Really, it's kind of a lot of time," said Pirates minor league right-hander Tyler Glasnow, also a fall league participant. (C) "So you're looking at 20, 19, you're trying to pick up the ball, the lights are flashing right behind," he said. (D) "There's some instances where," he said, "if it's all about a clock, go watch another sport." 3 How does the article explain the slow pace of baseball games in the major leagues? (A) by sharing anecdotes of pitchers and their team managers (B) by stating facts and figures of the average time taken by various players (C) by providing examples of the increasing time of an average baseball game (D) by comparing the time slots of baseball with other games like basketball and football 4 With a change in the rules, all of the following aspects of the game will be streamlined EXCEPT: (A) frequency of automatic strikes (B) average time between pitches (C) the length of the game (D) the speed of the pitch.