New pitch clock working but can be improved

Iconic moments could be lost on a clock violation

Pitch Clock can be Improved with Late-Inning Tweaks

Would Bautista, Kirk Gibson HR moments have been in jeopardy with new clock

For those that truly love major-league baseball, there is some work to be done in terms of maximizing the positive impact of the new pitch clock. Certainly, there can be no denying, there are positives emerging with which to work.

It’s a small sample size, but even the harshest of critics would be hard-pressed to argue that, overall, in the first few days of spring exhibitions, the plan has not been working. But what is also of little doubt, is that the blueprint to shorten games is in its infancy and remains imperfect. There is still room to tweak before it’s too late. Before moving forward with any suggestions to help the game, let’s think about and cover off possible worst-case scenarios, before they actually have a chance to happen.

Imagine the iconic Jose Bautista bat-flip moment in 2015 vs. the Rangers. Imagine it playing out under the new rules. What if Jose, while glaring out at the pitcher Sam Dyson, from time-to-time had to sideways-glance at the pitch clock as it relentlessly wound towards his mandated nine seconds to be ready and alert in the box. Would the drama of that moment have been as memorable? Would the obvious Joey Bats intimidation or Dyson’s rattled nerves have been affected? To what result/

Imagine Game 1 of the ‘88 World Series with limping Dodgers’ pinch-hitter, Kirk Gibson facing Hall-of-Fame closer Dennis Eckersley. At the time L.A. was trailing by a run in the ninth and Gibson was supposedly unavailable with knee and hamstring issues. I was there and in awe of the moment as anyone. I also believe that as the count reached full in this one-on-one for the ages, there were multiple violations of the 20-second pitch clock, before we saw something we had never seen before.

The rest is legend. There was magic, timeless appeal in that home run. But imagine if the late Hall-of-Fame umpire, Doug Harvey had called automatic strike three on Gibson as he stretched and limped circles around the box trying to breathe life into his wounded knee. Don’t say it couldn’t happen. Harvey’s nickname in clubhouses among players was “God”.    

For those that are not yet aware, here is a summary of the specifics of the new rules. The pitcher has 15 seconds to initiate his delivery to the plate with nobody on base and 20 seconds with runners on. The clock is highly visible. Also, with runners on base, the pitcher has a maximum of two disengagements from the pitching rubber. On the third step off or throw over, if an out is not recorded, it results in a balk.  

As an aside, that would have drastically changed an amusing tradition at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium for Expos games in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The scoreboard schtick was that whenever there was a pickoff attempt, a cartoon chicken would go up on the board, with accompanying squawk. The Expos stole a lot of bases those years. The Phillies rotation later admitted that every time Tim Raines, Ron LeFlore or Rodney Scott reached first base, out of a simple curiosity, they would keep throwing over to see how many chickens they could get on the screen. Under these new rules, the Big O scoreboard crew could have kept just two chickens and barbecued the rest.    

Back to the question of how to improve the new pace-of-play rules and their impact on the present game. It's a small sample size, but the immediate results in terms of decreased time of game, covering the first four days of the spring exhibition schedule in Arizona and Florida is being celebrated, largely by a slew of baseball executives in suits, the TV Networks and gamblers.

There are two obvious MLB reasons for the new rules. 1-To fit the game more easily inside a three-hour window for television and 2-for a new generation of baseball fans with a TikTok attention span.

First 4-day Results: On Friday and Saturday, in the 19 games of the early Grapefruit/Cactus League schedules, the average time of game was 2:36, which, for spring training, with rosters brimming over and too many pitching and position changes, is amazing. In fact, it’s almost a 30-minute reduction from last year’s regular-season average which was over three hours. Following up on Sunday-Monday, those 31 exhibitions averaged three minutes longer, 2:39. Over this 50-game sample, only seven of them reached three-hours -- all featuring run totals of 14 or higher.

But let’s throw some nuance on the early, time-saving effects of the pitch clock. Many of the players in the first 50 games, the ones that are given a chance to strut their stuff early in the spring are non-roster or minor-league prospects that have likely played under the restrictions of the pitch clock in the minors their entire careers. Equally, for veteran pitchers who have never seen the pitch clock, they were on the clock earlier in February for all their live BP sessions and in most cases, this early in the spring, are working on honing their repertoire rather than getting hitters out. So, it’s been easy for them to comply when stats aren’t important. Wait until real games are on the line.

MLB history is built on suspense, tension and drama: Baseball is a game of memories. Snapshots of the mind passed down in detail from fathers/mothers to sons/daughters. Those memories are timeless. All of baseball’s iconic finishes in history have been non-pitch-clock dramatic, with hand-wringing fans on the edge of their seats, battling mounting suspense and tension, discussing their own versions of suggested strategies, revelling in the crucial one-on-one matchups playing out on the field before them. In moments like those, nobody ever looks to their watch.

And what of Joe Carter’s “touch ‘em all” moment? Might that celebration have been hijacked as Mitch Williams maybe gasped for air for 21 seconds before delivering the decisive pitch? Carlton Fisk waving his home-run fair? Maybe. Then there are unique pitcher-hitter matchups like rookie Dodger righthander Bob Welch staring down Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson in the 1978 World Series. So many moments that could be lost in the mists of time by a rule designed to get to our local news on time.

Imagine dealing with disappointing memories of a future Game 7, discussing the non-drama of a winning bases-loaded walk called by an umpire, as the pitcher grappled with a clock, dealt with a maelstrom in his head, or the need for new signs. There are parallels of timelessness being very important in other art forms, as well.

Psycho: Consider that baseball may be the major pro sports equivalent of the great suspense-film director, Alfred Hitchcock. The art of building tension and the jumpy anticipation of alternate outcomes are keys to enjoyment for both art forms. Now imagine, back in the day, if producers of the movie Psycho felt the Hitch classic was about six minutes too long, so they went and suggested that maybe he could save time by having that guy Norman Bates enter the bathroom and start hacking away at Janet Leigh while she was leaning into the bathtub to set the water temperature. “We need to save some time.” The end result would be the same, but surely something integral would have been missing for true fans of the genre. Baseball becomes that producer.

Griff’s Suggested Solutions: Shut the pitch clock down from the eighth inning on. Use it for the first seven innings to get the game to its final chapter, then let the result play itself out over the last two innings and extra frames, with the managers, the pitchers and the hitters deciding the outcome. Seven innings of clock would already save 78-percent of the time that MLB is looking to pare off the game and still give late-inning drama some room to breathe and be epic.

Sure, you can blithely insist something bad will never happen. It never does in life until it does. You can point out, hey, the Bautista homer in 2015 was in the seventh inning, but in the big picture, we know that glitches and hiccups are possible — nay, inevitable — and that no matter how compelling would be the entirety of an affected series, if a post-season game were to be decided on a pitch-clock violation, that would remain the only aspect for which that series was remembered.

And for pseudo-purists that say you can’t have different rules for different stages of a game, a reminder the NFL keeps its game clock running on out of bounds plays until the final five minutes of each half at which time the clock stops whenever a player runs out of bounds and starts again at the snap of the ball. And, although it’s unofficial, we know that NHL referees, late in games, and playoff OTs, put away their whistles for minor infractions in order to let the drama play out.

Final advice for MLB, to borrow from your own slogan of a couple of years ago, once the games get to the eighth inning and beyond, “Let the Kids play!”