I personally don't care how long the games are. I love watching baseball either way and the more baseball the merrier in my opinion, but I thought it would be interesting to discuss ways to shorten the game on here since it's still 7 weeks until opening day.
it's interesting...both MLB and the NFL talk about this a lot...but in the end actually do very little about it. Hesitant to make the major changes necessary
I wouldn't mind seeing AB's being capped at nine pitches. Base goes to the batter afterwards like a walk. What really makes a game drag is when there's one AB that lasts 20 minutes because the batter has foul tipped 10 pitches on a 3-2 count. Then the pitcher is gassed and pulled early because they hit 100 pitches by the sixth inning.
Major League Baseball plans on testing a rule change in the minor leagues this season that automatically would place a runner on second base to start extra innings, according to Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan.
The rule will also be implemented in the upcoming World Baseball classic next month. Major League baseball could experiment with the rule used in the Gulf Coast League and Arizona League.
That's fantastic. I am now a Joey Votto fan. This approach alone would sufficiently shorten the games for me.
I also like the idea of relievers getter zero or maybe, 4 max warm up tosses after they've entered the game.
I'd be interested to see how much time instant replay has added also.
Put an earpiece in the home plate umpires ear that tells him balls and strikes. Now you've got no more arguing balls and strikes which adds time to the game for consultations and ejections.
This earpiece can also communicate replay calls to the umpire as soon as the manager challenges it. It shouldn't take 3 minutes for them to determine out/safe, etc. As soon as a close call happens, the booth should be watching and ruling long before the challenge is initiated.
Don't allow the batter to leave the box unless they are physically forced to by injury or by motion of swinging/bunting/dodging. Reduce the pitch clock to 20 seconds from 25 and issue a ball if the motion is not started by then. If the batter steps out for no reason then leave it live for the pitcher to throw.
That Joey Votta at bat averaged roughly 12 seconds per pitch.
From 1960 to 1980, game lengths stayed the same. The from 1980 to 2000, they increased by 24 minutes. Two things changed - cable television and specialization. At least that's what comes to my mind.
Maybe batters are seeing more pitches, but that seems to be only the last 20 years.
I would suggest more in-game advertising (shorter breaks), and speeding up at-bats and pitching changes.
I also like the idea of relievers getter zero or maybe, 4 max warm up tosses after they've entered the game.
You have to give them something to give them a feel for the mound conditions, so maybe 4. Personally, I don't think 8 adds a whole lot of time to the game. I certainly wouldn't focus on that until a few other things are ironed out first.
From 1960 to 1980, game lengths stayed the same. The from 1980 to 2000, they increased by 24 minutes. Two things changed - cable television and specialization. At least that's what comes to my mind.
Maybe batters are seeing more pitches, but that seems to be only the last 20 years.
I would suggest more in-game advertising (shorter breaks), and speeding up at-bats and pitching changes.
IMO the best way reduce the length of games is to get umpires to actually call the strike zone as defined by the rule book. The zone has widen and dropped as called by blue and this means far too many pitches that are called strikes can not be put into with any authority. This does not only lengthen games because hitters are forced to work the count, it makes for little action because a large percentage of ABs end in either Ks or BBs.