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MLB 17-18 Offseason: The Giants are preparing for EYBS' return

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Timby said:
MLB's newest pilot program (again aimed at speeding up the game, because Rob Manfred is a bad commissioner) is launching in the minors this year: If a game goes into extra innings, each half-inning will begin with a runner on second. :barf:
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:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: (I don't feel like finding the Chinese girl rolling her eyes).

The one game with a lot of tradition and this idiot wants to homogenize it.

And all the ways they've tried to shorten game so far have resulted in, what, an average of 5 minutes savings?
 
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I run into a lot of people who think that baseball is slow and boring. What Manfred proposes will not suddenly make these people start watching baseball. Just stupid.
Baseball will never have the pace of the other three major american sports and that's because it isn't the other three major american sports. It's baseball :adore:
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
And all the ways they've tried to shorten game sso far have resulted in, what, an average of 5 minutes savings?
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The 20-second pitch clock was introduced to AA and AAA prior to the 2015 season. Thus far, the average time shaved off is something like seven minutes, yep, which matters precisely fuck-all to the people who don't already leave after the 7th inning or whatever.

If Manfred were really concerned with speeding up the game, he'd direct the umpires to enforce the rule about the batter remaining in the box, instead of allowing batters to step out after every pitch to balance their bat and adjust their helmet, their gloves, their jersey, their shin guard and their junk. Boom, you've sped up the game.

I feel, however, the real reason he's putting forth all of these pace-of-play proposals to the union is so that after 2021, when the CBA re-opens, he can pull the proposals off the table and claim MLB is making concessions to the union. Manfred spent literally his entire pre-MLB career at a law firm where he specialized in representing companies against organized labor, and he was hired by MLB in the '90s specifically to try to break the union. He knows what he's doing.
 
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Timby said:
MLB's newest pilot program (again aimed at speeding up the game, because Rob Manfred is a bad commissioner) is launching in the minors this year: If a game goes into extra innings, each half-inning will begin with a runner on second. :barf:
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I saw that earlier and your response is the most appropriate. :barf:
 
Jose Altuve signs a five-year extension with the Astros. $30 million dollar AAV.
 
Timby said:
MLB's newest pilot program (again aimed at speeding up the game, because Rob Manfred is a bad commissioner) is launching in the minors this year: If a game goes into extra innings, each half-inning will begin with a runner on second. :barf:
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“I hate this! It is revolting”

Terrible idea.
 
Kronos said:
The only way to really speed the game up is to take the games off of TV, everything else is just fluff that won't change jack.
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I think this is the dirty little secret. Ads have lengthened the game more than anything.

Within the game, at bats are taking longer because more batters are going deeper into the count and there are more strike outs. Now, how the hell do you change that? It's an organic thing. Want to speed up the game, tell hitters to freaking make contact with the ball and put it into play.

Hey, want to be really radical? Let's go to a two strike strike out and a three ball walk. Jeez.

The thing to remember too is that a baseball game may take three hours, but some will come in at 2:10 or so. An NFL game ALWAYS takes three or more hours, no matter how boring it is. I've also read several studies that show the average amount of real action in an NFL game is less than fifteen minutes and it can be as little as eleven. That's in a 60 minute game that can take more than three hours to complete.

Baseball needs to cut dallying, but why everyone is obsessing with the time of game is bothersome. The game is fine.
 
It's been four balls for a walk since 1889. Before that, it had been as high as nine. In 1887 it became three strikes for a strike out instead of four, but the rules on what was a strike weren't standardized until 1901. For what it's worth, before 1887, a batter could call for a high or low pitch.

I hope I was obviously being facetious about changing the counts for a walk or strike out. But the idea of starting extra innings with a runner on second is just as goofy. I was driving around with the Nats exhibition game on the radio and Slowes and Jageler were lambasting it. Apparently, the runner gets second on an error, though no one is charged an error, and it doesn't even count as a team error. At least that's how they explained it.

Makes the DH and orange baseballs sound downright quaint.
 
The real stupidity is considering extra inning games a way of shortening average game times in the first place. According to some research I found taken from Baseball Reference, between 2011 and 2016 only about 3 percent of MLB games went extra innings, and about three-fourths of those games were 10 or 11 innnings.

I think Kronos has it about right that commercialism has lengthened games. Almost every MLB game is televised. If the two minutes in between half innings that it's supposed to be were held to religiously, that accounts for 32 minutes of all game times (sixteen breaks). That time is inviolable because it's going to take what it takes for the teams to switch.

The thing is, if networks go over every half inning, that begins to add up. And we know they do. Let's say they run an average of thirty seconds over per break, that adds 8 minutes to the game. In the playoffs, the break time is even longer. An extra 45 seconds adds 12 minutes. And none of that is playing time. Then, there are the additional commercial breaks for pitching changes that take longer than the pitching change otherwise takes.

I heard some talk recently of trying very hard to make sure the time between the last out of a half inning and the first pitch of the next is 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Try to hold to that, and it would speed games up more than any ridiculous rule change could. It would likely affect revenue, of course. So -- .

Ar-Pharazon: Not sure about that. I've always thought batters did that, at least in modern times, as a timing mechanism or just as part of their own pre-swing ritual getting set.
 
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Franklin said:
Ar-Pharazon: Not sure about that. I've always thought batters did that, at least in modern times, as a timing mechanism or just as part of their own pre-swing ritual getting set.
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That certainly makes sense as far as "practice swings", and I could be mis-remembering something about how they sort of held the bat out there, almost like a bunt, harkening back to what you said about choosing a high or low pitch.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
That certainly makes sense as far as "practice swings", and I could be mis-remembering something about how they sort of held the bat out there, almost like a bunt, harkening back to what you said about choosing a high or low pitch.
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To Google we go! ;) :D
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
I found some references to the requesting high/low pitch you mentioned, but not how they requested it.

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/10-bizarre-baseball-rules-you-wont-believe-actually-existed/c-124363454
https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/12/14/major-league-baseball-used-to-have-some-ridiculous-rules/
https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/pitching-evolution-and-revolution-efd3a5ebaa83

Nothing that points to what I was talking about yet (ie: holding the bat out high or low). Maybe I imagined it :lol:
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Found it.

On the Vintage Baseball Factory site. Rules, customs, and strategies from the 1880s. Here it is:

Once the umpire announces "Striker to the line," and the batter steps into the box, the umpire will ask the batter for his "Desired strike zone preference." The batter can call for a low strike (belt to knee) or high strike (belt to armpits). The umpire will then announce to the pitcher "Striker has requested low (or high) strikes." Throughout the at bat, only low or high strikes will be called. If a batter does not make a request, both high and low strikes will be called. Note: The belt area is a strike for either zone.
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So he tells the umpire whether he wants high or low strikes called, and umpire informs the pitcher. Obviously, if the pitcher doesn't want to walk him, he'll have to try to get the batter out by throwing to his preferred zone.

Here's the link:
http://www.vbbf.com/rules.html
 
Ha, that's awesome! I had no idea that was once a rule.

They should bring it back to make things more "interesting," time duration be damned! ;)
 
Franklin said:
An NFL game ALWAYS takes three or more hours, no matter how boring it is. I've also read several studies that show the average amount of real action in an NFL game is less than fifteen minutes and it can be as little as eleven. That's in a 60 minute game that can take more than three hours to complete.

Baseball needs to cut dallying, but why everyone is obsessing with the time of game is bothersome. The game is fine.
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Not a good example if you want to defend baseball. That 11 minutes number is probably true, as it's just counting from snap of the ball until the whistle and adding those up.

How long do you think a baseball game takes if you only count from the second the pitcher releases the ball until each play is dead (out/strike/player safe at a base/etc.) ? Each play is seconds at best, many MUCH shorter. Might be that it's similar to football in that there's 10-15 minutes of action, but I'm guessing the number actually comes in a lot shorter than 15 minutes.

You need 54 outs, 51 if the home team wins. Between the two teams, what, 250-300 pitches? Internet says it takes 0.4 seconds to get to home plate (call it 1/2 second). So 2.5 minutes for every pitch in the game (balls, strikes, foul balls). 1-3 seconds for each out, with ground outs probably longer than fly outs, but decent average. Add another minute. Say 15 hits in the game, 10 seconds per hit until end of play? 2.5 minutes more. We're only at 6 minutes so far, and that's a decently-active offensive game. Gotta get to double this to tie the NFL game, and baseball takes the same 3 hours or so on average. My numbers can be pretty off and we're still in the range.

Baseball is almost ALL standing around waiting for something to happen. And even then, it's a pretty individual sport, so there's 9 guys hanging out and only 2-3 might actually do anything that play, or inning even. it's all waiting around, staring down the batter, adjusting gloves and helmets, etc.

At least football has the clock which gives the illusion of urgency, and makes it look like something is happening while they huddle up and chat about the next 2 second play. It's a mental thing, but at least it looks like things are still moving.
 
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