Should MLB Institute a 20-Sec Pitch Clock?
Photo: cbssports.com
For a while now, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has been foolishly obsessed with shortening the length of major league baseball games. I’ve never been a fan of Manfred, simply because he is always trying to change aspects of what is already the greatest sport in the world. It was recently announced that instituting a 20-second pitch clock is a real possibility for the upcoming MLB season. For right now it is being implemented in Spring Training games as a test to see how well it works and if it’s something that should be carried over into the regular season.
Here’s how the pitch clock is supposed to work: The 20-second clock will start running as soon as the pitcher receives the ball back from the catcher. The pitcher must begin his windup or at least come to a set position before the clock reaches zero, or the pitcher will be assessed a ball. On the other side, if the batter is not in the box when the clock has five seconds left, he will be assessed a strike.
Manfred hopes the pitch clock will shorten the length of play for major league baseball games, which averaged 3 hours and 4 minutes last season. Realistically, if the clock were to be implemented, it would shorten the game by less than ten minutes, like Dodgers’ pitcher Rich Hill stated. “I think there has to be a serious conversation about this because I don’t think it’s going to make any difference. We’re going to speed up the game by five minutes? Is that ten minutes going to make a difference? I don’t think so.” Hill went on to question the reasoning behind it asking, “Or is it somebody else’s agenda because they want to leave their mark on the game to say ‘Look what I did’ as opposed to leaving the game alone? Leave the game alone. In my opinion, it’s great the way it is.”
Photo: Morry Gash/AP
Rich Hill is far from alone in feeling this way. His teammate, and arguably the best pitcher in the game, Clayton Kershaw says he won’t pay any attention to it. “If I go over [the time limit] then I go over. I’m not going to change anything I do. I’m not going to pay attention to it one bit, and if it becomes a problem, I guess I’ll have to deal with it then. But I think there’s ways to fake it. You can step off (the rubber). I’m sure there are ways around it.”
Photo: cbssports.com
Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer, who many would argue is the best pitcher in baseball, was even more straightforward about the issue. “It just shouldn’t be in the game. Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that’s messing with the fabric of the game. There’s no clock in baseball, and there’s no clock in baseball for a reason.” After a recent Spring Training game in which Scherzer pitched with the clock for the first time, he quoted, “I think it’s more of a distraction than anything. I get that there are parts of the game we can clean up, and I think that there can be meaningful changes. I’m fundamentally against this.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Max Scherzer. This is not a small change, and like Scherzer put it, it would be “messing with the fabric of the game.” Rob Manfred needs to let go of his ego and enjoy the game of baseball for what it is. And that is America’s favorite past time. Baseball has stood the test of time for a reason: it is a great game. You never mess with something that is already great. Sure, there are small changes that could be made here and there, but this goes beyond that. Manfred is inventing new ways to get balls and strikes; I’d say that’s a pretty big change. And like Scherzer put it after experiencing it for the first time, it’s a distraction. A pitcher, just like the hitter, has to be in the zone to perform well. Pitchers have to worry about what pitch to throw, where to throw it, how the next pitch can set up the following pitches, what the batter did last at-bat, what the batter did last at-bat on a certain pitch, and any runners on base. The last thing they need to be concerned with is a pitch clock and not getting penalized a ball because of it. They would be looking at the clock to make sure they get their pitch off on time, rather than focusing on the important aspects of the game.
Hopefully Rob Manfred listens to the players. When you have guys like Kershaw and Scherzer (the game’s two best pitchers) against it, you have to listen. It shouldn’t be about what Manfred wants, it should be about what the players want. And for that matter, who is complaining anyways? The people that whine and complain about the game being too long aren’t true baseball fans in my opinion. There’s so much thought and strategy that goes into baseball, between every pitch, that real baseball fans love to analyze. I would also bet that the people complaining, don’t even watch much baseball. They need a knock on the sport they’ve never really been into in the first place, so they make it about the time of play. True baseball fans don’t sit down to watch a game and get bored with it. If we’re comparing it to the ever-popular NFL, the average length of their games are longer, at 3 hours and 12 minutes. The NFL has widespread popularity throughout the world, even considering their lengthy games. People either like the sport enough to watch it, or they don’t, but the length of baseball games being an issue is being blown way out of proportion. Hopefully the Players’ Union fights this enough to where the pitch clock will never be implemented in our great American game.
Credit: https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers-kershaw-pitch-clock-20190218-story.html