Attending a minor league baseball game this season, specifically in Double-A or Triple-A, you may have noticed a new addition somewhere near the scoreboard or along the centerfield wall.
If you’re a baseball fan who’s thought about how long the games usually take, then I’d really love to meet you. As far as I can tell, finding a person who wants to watch baseball that cares if it takes two hours and 30 minutes or two hours and 45 minutes is as rare as a Sasquatch sighting, and way less likely to just be a bear or a roadie from a nearby Pantera tribute band concert.
The 20-second pitch clock isn’t the only timer at minor league games this season. In between innings stadiums have just two minutes and 25 seconds to run all their on-the-field gags, contests and fan-favorite moments. Somebody better tell Myron Noodleman that Major League baseball is almost as sick of his shtick as I am.
The Major League clubs also had a few change-of-pace rules added this season, with managers forced to stay in the dugout during replay challenges and hitters being required to keep a foot in the batters’ box at all times. The 20-second pitch-clock is probably coming to your favorite Major League ballpark in the next couple of years. Inside Smokies Park, home of the Chicago Cubs Double-A Tennessee Smokies, manager Buddy Bailey doesn’t think it’s made much difference in game times.
“I think they’re grasping for straws trying to speed up games,” Bailey said. “I’ve been at this for ‘X’ amount of years and if you look at every game at the end, you look at how many pitches are thrown by each staff, that’s what’s going to determine how long the game is.”
The pitching clock starts when the umpire puts the ball in play at the beginning of the inning and restarts every time the pitcher steps into the dirt on the mound. To run the clock, the Smokies had to add two staff members to work in conjunction with each game’s umpire crew to time each pitch correctly.
“I remember Greg Maddox threw and hour and 42-minute game and he threw 88 pitches and the other guy threw 100,” Bailey said. “And now you see a lot of game where you see 250 to 300 pitches. There’s 30-some minutes built into the game right there. Then you have pitching coaches that have to come into the game and settle a guy down. You got to send guys over to give the pitcher a rest. The manager has to come out, you’ve got a double switch and the new pitcher has to warm up. So all of that comes down to the pitching.”
The pitch clock first showed up during last year’s Arizona Fall League and made news with three violations, two by the Houston Astros Mark Appel, in the first game. So far at Smokies park there’s been no violations and, as a writer covering the game, I can’t tell much different in the overall game time or pace of the game. But, then I like baseball and it’s never bothered me. In the Arizona fall league last season games were generally 10 minutes shorter.
First time I've ever seen it. The pitch clock runs out and a pitched ball was awarded. That ball led to a walk w/ bases already loaded.
— David Suarez (@DavidSuarez) May 8, 2015
The 20-second pitch clock actually breaks an established MLB rule. Rule 8.04 states that pitchers have just 12 seconds to take their signals and throw their pitch.
While the pitch clock has made an appearance in the higher minor leagues, other pace-of-game experiments from the Arizona Fall League didn’t make the cut.
#RiverCatsFact: 5/4/15 featured the 1st River Cats player charged w/ a pitch clock violation…Jarrett Parker, 5th inn. (Automatic Strike)
— Sacramento River Cats (@RiverCats) May 6, 2015
No-pitch intentional walks and the three time-out limit weren’t implemented in any league. In the Major Leagues, umpires are enforcing the two-minute, 25-second break between innings and between pitching changes, even if it costs a relief pitcher one of his eight allotted warm-up pitches. In television games, teams have an extra 20 seconds between innings and pitching changes.
“The Pace of Game Committee wants to take measured steps as we address this industry goal to quicken the pace of our great game,” Atlanta Braves president John Schuerholz said. “It is not an objective of ours to achieve a dramatic time reduction right away. It is more important to develop a culture of better habits and a structure with more exact timings for non-game action.”
Danny Ortiz scalded by the pitch clock. With 3 seconds left, Ortiz stepped out of the batter's box. Plate ump Carlos Torres issued a strike.
— Kevin Oklobzija (@kevinoROC1) May 2, 2015
Schuerholz was chairman of the Pace of Game and Replay Committee and if the raw data is right, game time has been cut to a degree. But this is ultimately a situation where something wasn’t broken, yet they fixed it anyway.
