this is a fantastic articulation of a fun debate my friends and i have often had. baseball and tennis are the two sports without a clock that marks the end of competition and that makes them the only two sports where you or I could never beat the best in the world. in all other sports(football, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc) there is some combination of lead/time remaining where even me, you, mike schur and your two daughters could beat the milwaukee bucks(20 pt lead, 30 sec remaining?), but even if you were up 6-0, 5-0, 40-0 against roger federer in his prime, you're probably not winning that match, and even staked a 20 run lead with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth, jason kander's adult league team probably isn't beating the houston astros.
"this was how they played the game when I was young" was precisely my reaction. We didn't need a pitch clock to move the game at what we thought was a leisurely pace. Now they do. What changed?
In my view it's the measurement of every pitch and swing. Every time you throw a curve that breaks a little less or a fast ball with a little less gas it gets logged. Or every swing and miss, chasing a ball out of the zone. And a trend forms. And you see that data during your arbitration hearing and it costs you money because you're told "THIS IS WHAT TODAY'S DATA SAYS ABOUT YOU IN 3 YEARS!"
The result was pitchers making SURE they were ready on every pitch. Even if they were about by 6 runs in the 7th inning and there were two outs and no one was on base. Same for the hitters. Hell, we don't have video of my most of the games from the 70s and 80s, let alone the velo, spin rate, F/X data we have on EVERY SINGLE PITCH today.
Joe...The first baseball game I attended was in 1952 and my team was the Hollywood Stars, I have had Dodger season tickets for about 40 years. I love baseball, and I can’t wait to watch the game played with a pitch clock. A nine inning game shouldn’t be three hours long unless it’s 10-9, 3-2 three hour games just don’t make sense to me. Next they need to limit the time between innings.
Hi Joe, It has been my observation these last two decades or so that the biggest batting offenders are found in batting order 3-5 and the higher the salary the more glove, cap, and shirt adjustments. My favorite is the raised arm asking the umpire to keep the pitcher from throwing as they dig in in the same position in the box on the second plus pitch after they already dug their holes on the first pitch. Good on the pitch clock. One more thought, Will there be a time clock on commercials between innings of televised games? Ric Offerman
your thinking on all this and its evolution mirrors mine - and not only was there a time limit for many years, just as you note, on pitchers delivering the ball and thus prior to this season’s implementation of a pitch clock, way back in 1901 the NL first established a 20 seconds rule in this regard (at same time they created the now taken for granted foul strike rule) - the difference being that at that time, and also when the 12 seconds 8.04 rule was first put on the books, pitchers rarely exceeded the limits so enforcement became almost nonexistent; it was only when a significant number of pitchers began taking forever to throw the damn ball, and a similarly significant number of batters began taking forever to stay/‘re-step’ into the box and be ready to hit, that a CLOCK (quite visible to all) became, well, necessary!
So, Joe, if the fundamental timelessness of baseball is that it is measured by innings and outs, may I assume that you as appalled and infuriated by the artificial manipulation of extra innings by starting with a runner on second?
I am looking forward to an improved pace of play enforced by the pitch clock, but am apoplectic about the zombie runner (I won’t even get started on seven inning doubleheader games).
The greatest game I have ever seen was the 13 inning Red Sox-Yankees on July 1, 2004. While that game did include the famous play when Jeter leapt into the stands after saving the game by catching a pop fly in short left field, that amazing play was by no means the most exciting part of the game. It was the constant lead charges right through the bottom of the 13th when the bottom of the Yankees order (can you name them?) incredibly overcame the one run deficit caused the solo shot by MBM in the top of that 13th inning. 13 innings. Not one out less. Now, that game could never be played again.
This is a profound of the fundamental structure of the game.
You are 100 percent correct, Joe! The "no clock" thing means that a team that is trailing in a game never runs out of time. It runs out of outs, but there's not a ticking clock that at some point determines the outcome. Whoever the poet was, he wrote "Keep getting hits, keep the rally alive, and you make time stand still." That's what no clock means, and that hasn't changed.
The fundamental thing here is, a batter cannot call time, he can only ask for time and the umpire has to grant it. But it had never been an issue so the umpires just let it go. And what happened was, hitters began "calling time" after every pitch, and because the hitters had then taken control of the pace of play, the pitchers responded by staking their claim - stepping off the rubber, fiddling around, exerting their control after every pitch. Both guys trying to disrupt the other guy's timing. If the batter is tensed and ready for a pitch, and the pitcher decides to make him stand there an extra long time, inevitably the batter will call time to reset himself.
So what we've had is basically the game has allowed every team, every player, to call an unlimited number of time outs. That's not an exaggeration. In basketball, in football, in hockey, teams are given a fixed number of time outs. In baseball, we reached a point where players could call as many time outs as they want and never reach a limit. It seems OBVIOUS that this was never intended, but it took root so gradually that a lot of people just came to believe it was a part of the game, and now they're upset that "Manfred is changing the nature of the sport." No, the sport changed, and baseball is taking steps to *restore* the nature of the game. Watch an old clip of Bob Gibson pitching, or Koufax, or whoever. Watch how briskly the game moves along. We need to get that back.
Thanks for drawing attention to the history of the pitch clock. The National League implemented a 20 second pitch clock in 1901 (just look at Rule 32 section 2 of the NL rules as printed in the 1901 Spalding Baseball Guide). Bill Veeck even put a pitchometer on Comiskey's new scoreboard in 1960; it showed how much time it took a pitcher to deliver a pitch. But enforcement was never feasible. Umpires weren't going to keep a pocket watch or stop watch on them. Then MLB reduced the 20 second clock to 12 seconds, as Joe noted, in 2006.
This is very tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I wish that there was more effort to improve the pace of play starting in little league. People complain about the pace of MLB and say it's costing them fans, but I think most prospective fans are lost when they experience the tedium of kid-pitch 10U baseball. I've coached my kids in leagues across three states, and even I (a huge baseball fan) can barely stand these games where it's all walks and strikeouts with only a small handful of balls in play in a 1.5-hour game.
My solution: scale the size of the roster to the age of the players. If a team (say, 10U) had only 7 kids on it they would get to bat twice as much, they would get better and hit the ball more frequently, and they would have more fun.
Last season my son was on a team with 18 kids. He got one at bat per game (same as everyone else), and decided to quit baseball.
Mike Schur is right. Game length blame lies with the epic Red Sox - Yankees games. Those were epic chess matches between two very evenly matched teams looking for ANY advantage. Once the rest of baseball saw that it could work, well, here we are.
I'm not going to miss hitters preening and pitchers mentally debating how to throw the perfect pitch. Huge advantage to pitchers that trust their stuff.
Prediction that more pitchers will be used this year as teams realize that some guys simply cannot pitch. They only can throw and need too much time to get it right.
So am watching the Nationals-Mets game (it is 38 degrees and pouring here in Virginia, so this is quite pleasant). Trevor Williams is consistently throwing his pitch as the clock hits zero. Every time. Scherzer is much faster.
Just watched that Pirates-Astros 9th inning and something happened (besides the obvious) that I absolutely loved.
After Pat Meares' HR makes it 8-4, the color announcer (is it Bob Walk?) says, "A lot of hoopin' and hollerin' but ... the horse is already out of the barn." I probably would've been thinking the same. No chance for a comeback. But when they do come back, when Giles goes deep to win it, the color announcer offers a really nice, really smooth mea culpa. "Seven runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, he hits a grand slam homerun off possibly the best closer in baseball ... That is just phenomenal. Well, they went out and found that horse, put a rope around his neck, and let him back in the barn."
Pirates fans, is that Bob Walk? Whoever it is, fantastic job.
this is a fantastic articulation of a fun debate my friends and i have often had. baseball and tennis are the two sports without a clock that marks the end of competition and that makes them the only two sports where you or I could never beat the best in the world. in all other sports(football, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc) there is some combination of lead/time remaining where even me, you, mike schur and your two daughters could beat the milwaukee bucks(20 pt lead, 30 sec remaining?), but even if you were up 6-0, 5-0, 40-0 against roger federer in his prime, you're probably not winning that match, and even staked a 20 run lead with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth, jason kander's adult league team probably isn't beating the houston astros.
"this was how they played the game when I was young" was precisely my reaction. We didn't need a pitch clock to move the game at what we thought was a leisurely pace. Now they do. What changed?
In my view it's the measurement of every pitch and swing. Every time you throw a curve that breaks a little less or a fast ball with a little less gas it gets logged. Or every swing and miss, chasing a ball out of the zone. And a trend forms. And you see that data during your arbitration hearing and it costs you money because you're told "THIS IS WHAT TODAY'S DATA SAYS ABOUT YOU IN 3 YEARS!"
The result was pitchers making SURE they were ready on every pitch. Even if they were about by 6 runs in the 7th inning and there were two outs and no one was on base. Same for the hitters. Hell, we don't have video of my most of the games from the 70s and 80s, let alone the velo, spin rate, F/X data we have on EVERY SINGLE PITCH today.
I just realized something. Baseball once HAD a clock…the sun! Am I the first one to think of this?
Hard yes to a Joe mailbag
Joe...The first baseball game I attended was in 1952 and my team was the Hollywood Stars, I have had Dodger season tickets for about 40 years. I love baseball, and I can’t wait to watch the game played with a pitch clock. A nine inning game shouldn’t be three hours long unless it’s 10-9, 3-2 three hour games just don’t make sense to me. Next they need to limit the time between innings.
Hi Joe, It has been my observation these last two decades or so that the biggest batting offenders are found in batting order 3-5 and the higher the salary the more glove, cap, and shirt adjustments. My favorite is the raised arm asking the umpire to keep the pitcher from throwing as they dig in in the same position in the box on the second plus pitch after they already dug their holes on the first pitch. Good on the pitch clock. One more thought, Will there be a time clock on commercials between innings of televised games? Ric Offerman
your thinking on all this and its evolution mirrors mine - and not only was there a time limit for many years, just as you note, on pitchers delivering the ball and thus prior to this season’s implementation of a pitch clock, way back in 1901 the NL first established a 20 seconds rule in this regard (at same time they created the now taken for granted foul strike rule) - the difference being that at that time, and also when the 12 seconds 8.04 rule was first put on the books, pitchers rarely exceeded the limits so enforcement became almost nonexistent; it was only when a significant number of pitchers began taking forever to throw the damn ball, and a similarly significant number of batters began taking forever to stay/‘re-step’ into the box and be ready to hit, that a CLOCK (quite visible to all) became, well, necessary!
I thought the point of a baseball game was to win the game. Never knew the point was to have something that is untimed. [insert sarcasticeyeroll.gif]
I would say that the players' objective is to win the game. The purpose of the game itself (at the MLB level) is to entertain fans.
So, Joe, if the fundamental timelessness of baseball is that it is measured by innings and outs, may I assume that you as appalled and infuriated by the artificial manipulation of extra innings by starting with a runner on second?
I am looking forward to an improved pace of play enforced by the pitch clock, but am apoplectic about the zombie runner (I won’t even get started on seven inning doubleheader games).
The greatest game I have ever seen was the 13 inning Red Sox-Yankees on July 1, 2004. While that game did include the famous play when Jeter leapt into the stands after saving the game by catching a pop fly in short left field, that amazing play was by no means the most exciting part of the game. It was the constant lead charges right through the bottom of the 13th when the bottom of the Yankees order (can you name them?) incredibly overcame the one run deficit caused the solo shot by MBM in the top of that 13th inning. 13 innings. Not one out less. Now, that game could never be played again.
This is a profound of the fundamental structure of the game.
Do you agree?
You are 100 percent correct, Joe! The "no clock" thing means that a team that is trailing in a game never runs out of time. It runs out of outs, but there's not a ticking clock that at some point determines the outcome. Whoever the poet was, he wrote "Keep getting hits, keep the rally alive, and you make time stand still." That's what no clock means, and that hasn't changed.
The fundamental thing here is, a batter cannot call time, he can only ask for time and the umpire has to grant it. But it had never been an issue so the umpires just let it go. And what happened was, hitters began "calling time" after every pitch, and because the hitters had then taken control of the pace of play, the pitchers responded by staking their claim - stepping off the rubber, fiddling around, exerting their control after every pitch. Both guys trying to disrupt the other guy's timing. If the batter is tensed and ready for a pitch, and the pitcher decides to make him stand there an extra long time, inevitably the batter will call time to reset himself.
So what we've had is basically the game has allowed every team, every player, to call an unlimited number of time outs. That's not an exaggeration. In basketball, in football, in hockey, teams are given a fixed number of time outs. In baseball, we reached a point where players could call as many time outs as they want and never reach a limit. It seems OBVIOUS that this was never intended, but it took root so gradually that a lot of people just came to believe it was a part of the game, and now they're upset that "Manfred is changing the nature of the sport." No, the sport changed, and baseball is taking steps to *restore* the nature of the game. Watch an old clip of Bob Gibson pitching, or Koufax, or whoever. Watch how briskly the game moves along. We need to get that back.
Are doubleheaders still 7 innings?
no
Thanks for drawing attention to the history of the pitch clock. The National League implemented a 20 second pitch clock in 1901 (just look at Rule 32 section 2 of the NL rules as printed in the 1901 Spalding Baseball Guide). Bill Veeck even put a pitchometer on Comiskey's new scoreboard in 1960; it showed how much time it took a pitcher to deliver a pitch. But enforcement was never feasible. Umpires weren't going to keep a pocket watch or stop watch on them. Then MLB reduced the 20 second clock to 12 seconds, as Joe noted, in 2006.
This is very tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I wish that there was more effort to improve the pace of play starting in little league. People complain about the pace of MLB and say it's costing them fans, but I think most prospective fans are lost when they experience the tedium of kid-pitch 10U baseball. I've coached my kids in leagues across three states, and even I (a huge baseball fan) can barely stand these games where it's all walks and strikeouts with only a small handful of balls in play in a 1.5-hour game.
My solution: scale the size of the roster to the age of the players. If a team (say, 10U) had only 7 kids on it they would get to bat twice as much, they would get better and hit the ball more frequently, and they would have more fun.
Last season my son was on a team with 18 kids. He got one at bat per game (same as everyone else), and decided to quit baseball.
Kids shouldn’t pitch when they are 10 or younger. That would solve it.
Mike Schur is right. Game length blame lies with the epic Red Sox - Yankees games. Those were epic chess matches between two very evenly matched teams looking for ANY advantage. Once the rest of baseball saw that it could work, well, here we are.
I'm not going to miss hitters preening and pitchers mentally debating how to throw the perfect pitch. Huge advantage to pitchers that trust their stuff.
Prediction that more pitchers will be used this year as teams realize that some guys simply cannot pitch. They only can throw and need too much time to get it right.
So am watching the Nationals-Mets game (it is 38 degrees and pouring here in Virginia, so this is quite pleasant). Trevor Williams is consistently throwing his pitch as the clock hits zero. Every time. Scherzer is much faster.
Just watched that Pirates-Astros 9th inning and something happened (besides the obvious) that I absolutely loved.
After Pat Meares' HR makes it 8-4, the color announcer (is it Bob Walk?) says, "A lot of hoopin' and hollerin' but ... the horse is already out of the barn." I probably would've been thinking the same. No chance for a comeback. But when they do come back, when Giles goes deep to win it, the color announcer offers a really nice, really smooth mea culpa. "Seven runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, he hits a grand slam homerun off possibly the best closer in baseball ... That is just phenomenal. Well, they went out and found that horse, put a rope around his neck, and let him back in the barn."
Pirates fans, is that Bob Walk? Whoever it is, fantastic job.