I agree. It did it's job and by the end of the season it had almost no effect on the games because the players had adjusted to it so well. Why they want to fuck with it again makes no sense to me.
Yep, I DVR pretty much all sporting events and watch them in half the time approximately.
To what end though? There are roughly 300 pitches per game. If every one of those pitches used to take 20 seconds and will only take 18 in the future that would shorten games by 10 mins. Knock that down to just the pitches with runners on base and just the pitches that went the full 20 seconds in the past and how much time could it possibly save? I'm guessing a minute a game if I'm being super generous.
But most of them didn't go the full 20 seconds, they would make the pitch wit 2-7 seconds left on the clock. Yes, dropping the limit by 2 seconds will help, but I don't think you will see a 300 second drop from that change (1 second per pitch). I do think you will see more Automatic Balls (and strikes) called due to the change. And I'm a huge fan of the clock but I hate the automatic balls/strikes
It smooths out the flow of the game. Pitchers needed a little longer to check the runner when the bases weren't empty, but 5 extra seconds was too long. A lot of the time it ended up with the batter just standing there while the pitcher held the ball. In the old days the hitter would have called time out. Maybe 3 extra seconds is the sweet spot. We'll find out next year.
I like how Sword puts it here-- the game now "drives forward with a momentum that maintains your attention”:
Some of the numbers since the changes:
The postseason games went faster and violations were not a factor at all:
Stolen bases:
A positive impact that many didn't anticipate:
IMO, the rule changes have been a huge success-- now finish the job with the home plate ump getting an audio signal when the pitch hits the strike zone.
It's reasonable to give some extra time to pitchers to check the runners if there's anyone on. But 5 seconds was clearly too much since almost nobody used all the time.
They are going to be aggressive, I hope the Red Sox are ready for it. Last season in the first games, the Red Sox pitchers looked totally unprepared for the Orioles to steal a bunch of bases.
Cash is planning on his runners being ready to go on the first pitch:
They aren't the only team thinking this way:
The Red Sox seem to have a faster and more athletic lineup than last year so hopefully they are one of those teams. Duran is obviously fast, but now we have Rafaela, and Story should hopefully be playing a lot more games. O'Neill didn't steal much last year (5 for 5) but is 40 for 49 in his career and seems faster than Verdugo. Wong is one of the faster catchers and was 8 for 10 last year. Grissom isn't a blazingly fast guy but he stole 27 for 32 in the minors in 2022, then 13 for 15 in AAA last year.
Absolutely. Love the new rules, I watched a lot more baseball last year than in other years since the Mookie trade.
If someone's mental game is so fragile that a little gamesmanship throws them off for a month every single opponent should take full advantage of it at every opportunity. As a Cleveland fan, I blamed no one but James Karinchak for his problems with the pitch clock last year.
This is indeed the argument for gamesmanship. It’s fine. But it should be balanced with sportsmanship – especially when you consider this is arguably the biggest rule change in the 100+ year history of the sport.
The biggest "rule changes" were first not allowing black players and then many years later allowing them (these weren't written rules but they certainly worked as if they were for many decades.)
“Cheating is not merely countenanced in baseball, it is loved.”
In the current competitive baseball climate (essentially anything beyond Little League or its equivalent), it really feels like players have to have mental toughness first and foremost. There are people working against you before you can even get a chance to play. If you cannot handle opposing players trying to get you out of your game, you aren't likely to be very effective.
100%. In the sports I coach, sportsmanship is usually defined as roughly "a practice where treating the opponent with respect is more important than winning or momentary advantage". It's important in amateur sport, where e.g. in places you call your own fouls, it's assumed that you play with a certain regard for an opponent's safety or dignity or make calls in line with certain standards or whatever (and will get ostracized if you don't, even on the rec center basketball court). Where sports can be a morality lesson, to a small degree, for all the reasons we have our kids play youth sports.
Great post.
It's been an entire season already! I was actually pretty shocked more teams didn't steal more aggressively last season, but with another full winter to prepare, it makes even more sense for teams/fast players to be aggressive on the bases this season.
Seriously. If anything, I was disappointed because teams (and especially the Red Sox, IMHO) weren't prepared to take advantage of the new rules.
And the funniest part of your complaint was that I was neither talking about base stealing – nor this season.
How long into a season, would you say, would it be sportsmanlike for professional athletes to wait before taking advantage of rule changes?
Amusingly Jansen himself has essentially tinkered with the rules on his own by being so uncomfortable with a runner standing on second that he intentionally balks him to third.
