TORONTO — It feels as though Major League Baseball has spent the better part of the 21st century trying to figure out ways to speed the game up.
Despite the fact that baseball is as healthy as it’s ever been — with over two decades of labour peace, sky-high attendance and billions of dollars in annual revenue — there seems to be an overwhelming desire on the part of the game’s top decision-makers to make things on the field move more quickly in order to appeal to younger fans, who presumably have no attention span.
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There are definitely issues with pace of play at times. It’s no fun when a baseball game drags on and on, and there’s no question that things can be done to address that issue. But the changes that the Commissioner’s Office is reportedly looking at not only don’t do that, they also don’t really make any sense.
The two most-discussed changes this winter are the elimination of having to throw four pitches to issue an intentional walk and the idea of starting extra innings with a runner on second base. One is irrelevant, the other is ridiculous.
Pointing to first base instead of throwing four intentional balls will do nothing to increase the pace of play or to shorten the average time of a game.
In each MLB season, there are 2,430 games played. In 2016, there were a grand total of 932 intentional walks issued, or an average of 0.38 per game. The vast majority of those come in the National League, where it’s often advantageous to walk a batter in order to face the pitcher, and the senior circuit had nearly twice as many intentional passes issued (0.49 per game). In the American League, the average was only 0.28 per game.
It takes about a minute, maybe less, to throw four pitches intentionally wide of the strike zone, and often batters will speed things up by taking off their elbow and shin pads while the walk is being issued. Remember, too, that even if it’s only ball four that’s thrown intentionally wide, that counts as an intentional walk, so some of those free passes don’t even require four pitches.
In order to save about a minute once every other game in the National League and once every fourth game in the American League, MLB would take away the potential for a wild pitch, a stolen base and even the possibility of the hitter putting the ball in play, as Yankees rookie Gary Sanchez did last season, hitting a sacrifice fly while supposedly being intentionally walked.
Really, what’s the point? The average length of a game across the big leagues would drop approximately 20 seconds. I don’t think too many “kids today with the phones and the video games and the snapchagram” are tuning out because intentional walks actually require pitches to be thrown.
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As for starting extra innings with a runner on second base, as is done in international baseball, again the sight is trained on the wrong target.
First of all, during international tournaments, having a game go 14 or 15 innings (or more) can really mess up a schedule. There are usually multiple games being played at the same venue on the same day, so there’s a real need for games not to go incredibly long. Also, teams playing in an international tournament don’t have a minor-league system they can look to for a fresh arm in the case of a worn-out pitching staff. There’s no comparison — at all — to the major leagues.
More importantly, extra-inning games aren’t the problem. By definition, a game has to to be tied to get to a 10th inning, and from that point on they’re either tight or very close to being over. Fans are engaged and excited in close, tense games.
Joe Torre, Hall of Fame manager and now MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer, told Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan that “it’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing in a utility infielder to pitch.”
I beg to differ.
How many Blue Jays fans have fond memories of watching Ryan Goins wriggle out of an 18th-inning jam this past July? Watching Mike McCoy or Frank Menechino on the mound? Even though it likely means the home team is heading for a loss, it’s still pretty awesome. And remember, when Cleveland refused to use a position player on the mound in the Canada Day game in which both Goins and Darwin Barney pitched for the Blue Jays, it wound up blowing up their pitching staff and costing them the next two games of the series.
These proposed changes totally miss the mark, because it is fun to have the occasional long extra-inning game, having a 14th-inning stretch, watching both teams have to wear out their bullpens in an effort to keep the opposition off the board.
What’s not fun are several things nobody seems to be talking about.
What’s not fun is watching a manager send a catcher out to the mound to kill time while a pitcher warms up in the bullpen, and then as soon as the catcher gets back to home plate, watching that manager pop out of the dugout and amble slowly to the mound to kill even more time before he signals for the reliever.
What’s not fun is having a pitcher throw eight warm-up pitches to get ready to start an inning or start a relief outing, and then after the final warm-up pitch is thrown, to have the catcher go out to the mound to discuss strategy, as though something has changed since the last time they talked.
What’s not fun is having a catcher go out to the mound to talk to a pitcher three or four times inside the same at-bat (are you sensing a pattern yet?).
What’s not fun is trying to stay awake as a pitcher takes 45 seconds to throw the damn ball, even though there’s no one on base.
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Those are the things that make the game drag, those are the things that have fans at home change the channel and fans at the ballpark start to wonder when the heck they’re going to get out of there.
Those are the things that MLB doesn’t seem to be terribly interested in changing, opting instead to investigate the “Hey, look — we’re doing something!” fixes that don’t address the problem.
Teams stalling or being unprepared are the biggest reasons that MLB games get slow. Not extra innings, and not having to actually throw the ball four times for an intentional walk. The Commissioner’s Office says it plainly — there is a problem with “pace of play,” which is not the same thing as “length of game.”
Not a single fan cares if a game is two hours and 20 minutes long or three hours and 20 minutes long if it’s tense, close and exciting.