Thank you. Fortunately it looks like I’m not going to have to make that choice.
Have you noticed how much faster all the young guys pitch–the ones lately called up, who’ve been conditioned to the clock in the minors? It’s awesome. All this will do is safeguard that conditioning from sliding into the 30-to-35 second doldrums in which we currently live half the time–which has no historical precedent.
Another thing to consider is that, given the trend, if you don’t put in a clock, it’s just going to keep getting slower. Not slower compared to TikTok, slower compared to itself the year and decade and century before.
In general we’ve always enjoyed pitchers with a quick pace. I’ll be happy to see the whole league work at a quicker pace. Really not much more complicated than that.
Both batters and pitchers are to blame for the length of time between pitches. I don’t completely like the idea of a clock because there are batting situations that call for more strategic consideration than others necessitating more time between pitches. However, 15 to 20 seconds should be enough time for any situation. I do get so tired of all the preening and fucking with shit, the pacing about and fidgeting around seems to be nothing more than stalling and wasting time.
I only post this link because of the embedded table showing the average length of games at 10 year intervals since 1950. Three hour games aren’t classic baseball games, they’re the bloated product of lots of pitchers run out of the dugout. I frankly think they’re a pain in the ass. I don’t particularly like the clock, but I would like shorter games again.
Is the goal of shorter games to increase viewer appeal, reduce game attendee time constraints, younger demographic market share, or compete with other professional leagues. Would shortening MLB game length unequivocally solve one or more of the aforementioned issues?
The bottom line revenue status should probably govern corporate efforts to alter the product, but those data are held tightly. Is that an issue? The audience for various sports can appreciate timed and untimed contests and fast and slow-paced games.
I only know of TV ratings, which are too scattershot and dependent on the affected markets and promotion efforts by the involved networks.
My short and dirty solution which retains the game’s historical character is to shorten games to seven innings, which reduces the bullpen’s impact. The length of games tabulated above reflects the bullpen’s increased role and alters strategy as we’ve known it previously.
This runs entirely against the historical character.
With fewer innings, what makes you think they’d use fewer pitchers? They’d just have guys throw harder for shorter times. You might have starters only going once through the lineup.
There’s been a lot of tinkering dating to expansion, the DH, and more. If that flippant idea creates seven pitchers for seven innings, the executives deserve whatever ensues.
From a personal standpoint, I did for my kids what my father did for me. It took in my case, but millennials and genZ are impervious to MLB. Video and handhelds rule the day. I watch alone now, and not for lack of trying
Complete games are rare today. They go seven innings at most and often five. Is most of the game length contingent on late bullpen usage? That’s the assumption. What is the time breakdown by innings? Complete games can be seven innings, and perhaps shorter.
All of this assumes game length is the problem. There might be more systemic issues unrelated to the product, and unsolvable by doing any particular thing
Bullpen use isn’t the biggest issue when it comes to game length, it’s time between pitches and number of pitches thrown. A bullpen game doesn’t take any longer than a normal game. Complete games do tend to be faster but that is because a complete game is lower scoring and fewer pitches being thrown, not because there aren’t pitching changes