TICK, TICK, TICK

 

               Baseball always has been the game without a clock, but no more. Starting this season there will be lots of clocks- in centerfield, around home plate, on the second-tier facades. They’ll be measuring the maximum time between pitches the rules specify (15 seconds with the bases empty, 20 when runners are on base), the time between innings (two minutes, 15 seconds) and the time batters have to be in the box and ready to hit (with eight seconds remaining on the pitch count). Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

               That’s just a few of the changes the lords of the game have decreed to take effect in spring training, and in the new campaign. Another will be a requirement that each pitch begin with two infielders on each side of second base with their feet on the dirt. That’ll eliminate the radical shifts that have helped prune batting averages in recent seasons. Still another will be an increase in the size of the base bags to 18 inches square from 15 inches. That’s aimed at reducing injuries and making it a bit easier to steal, the stolen base being another casualty of game trends. Retained from last season—surprisingly to me because it’s so unbaseballlike—is the practice of beginning extra innings with a runner on second base and no outs. Fewer extras has been the goal there.

               To all of those I say “Hurray!”  I’m old, and thus a baseball traditionalist in most things, but times change and so should the National Pastime. Baseball’s stately pace and low-octane offenses have been  detriments in this quick-thrill era, with declines in just about every measure of public interest.

               I’m a bit of an expert on the above changes because they’ve been previewed during the last two Arizona Fall League seasons, which I’ve attended extensively. I’ve no stats to back my judgement but I think the anti-shift measure will have the most noticeable effect. How can it not, opening as it does bigger holes for pull hitters to hit through? The likes of Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo must be celebrating.

               By cutting the base paths by a few inches (4.5, actually) the bigger bases should result in a few more “safe” signs, but a bigger boon to would-be thieves could be a new rule to limit to two the number of times a pitcher can throw to a base to hold a runner on. The main aim of that wrinkle, though is brevity, not larceny.

               Ever heard the term “Five O’clock Lightning”? It referred to the late-inning run barrages produced by the 1927 New York Yankees, a gang still revered for its offensive power. Baseball games back then—all day games—began at 3:30 p.m. and, thus, were in their late stages around 5. Game times ran about two hours-- so the fans could be home for dinner, one supposes.  

               Baseball has gotten fussier since, and game times are longer, exceeding three hours in recent decades. Last season’s average was three hours, 11 minutes. That’s too long for current tastes, thus the advent of the clocks. Will they work? Sure they will, and the effects should be relatively seamless.  I didn’t hold a watch to the Fall League games I attended last year and the year before, but I can’t recall one lasting more than three hours. The penalty for a pitcher exceeding the clock is an automatic ball, with an automatic strike for an unready batter. Such calls were made only once or twice a game here, with little dispute. Commentators can be counted upon to obsess about them early on, but complaints should quickly fade.

               Fall League games were contested by kids in their early 20s, though, and they do everything faster than their elders, so the net effect on game times in the Bigs is uncertain. The game’s rulers should heed the self-help plans, which note that there are things one can control and things one can’t. In the latter category is the one that, by me, has affected baseball most over the current century. That would be the improvements in pitching. Big-league pitchers these days are monsters—big guys who can throw strawberries through battleships. Ninety-five-miles-an-hour fastballs used to be rare, now they’re commonplace. So are the drop-off-the-table breaking balls that make the heaters look hotter, a product of the coaching pitchers receive from an early age.

 Breaking balls are tougher on young arms than fastballs, but now there’s Tommy John surgery for injured wings. Strikeouts are up--way, way up—by about 25% in the last 20 years, to over 40,000 a season since 2017, and the trend seems inexorable. There have been more strikeouts than hits in the Majors the last few years! More strikeouts mean more pitches, whatever the time between them.

 The way pitchers are deployed has contributed further to blunting offenses, sending the game-wide batting average last year to .243, the lowest since 1968. Time was when starting pitchers were expected to finish, or at least last well into games. Now they’re deployed in relays, the better to keep batters off balance. In the 1960-1980 period, teams utilized an average of about 2.5 pitchers a game. Last year’s average was 4.67. That movement also seems here to stay.

               Nothing turns off TV sets like a mid-inning pitching change, and little has been done of late to speed that.  One typically begins with a stroll by the manager to the mound, where he takes the ball from, says a few words to, and pats the fanny of the outing hurler. The reliefer saunters in from the distant bullpen and another discussion takes place. Then he fusses around a bit and throws up to eight warmup pitches. Eight?! What was he doing in the bullpen, for heaven’s sake? Tick, tick, tick.

               If baseball is serious about moving things along, the whole “warmup” issue—one that it can control-- should be addressed. It’s the only sport that allows players to practice on the field while a game is (supposedly) in progress.

               Enough warming up. Enough playing catch. Play ball, already.