Why MLB should continue with their pace-of-play solutions.
Three hours and eight minutes.
Depending on your attention span, that may seem like an eternity or simply enough time to squeeze in a Major League Baseball game.
Only the National Football League has a longer average game time at three hours and ten minutes. The National Hockey League averages two hours and twenty minutes and the National Basketball Association comes in at two hours and fifteen minutes.
Although NFL games are technically longer on average, the popularity discrepancy is massive between football and baseball. Thirty-five percent of Americans called the NFL their favorite sport and just 14 percent chose MLB. This data was collected by the Harris Poll surveying fans 18 and older about their favorite sport.
The issue of pace-of-play has become increasingly obvious in baseball during recent years. The MLB has taken steps during the past two years to develop a few rules cutting down on the constant readjusting of gloves, hats and helmets taking place in ballparks across America.
Last year the Arizona Fall League, a league for top minor league prospects to showcase their talent in October and November, used a multitude of rules in attempt to speed up the games.
Those rules included the batter having to keep one foot in the batter’s box at all times during the at-bat, a pitch clock of 12 seconds if no runners are on base or 20 seconds with runners, intentional walks had to be signaled with four fingers held up by the catcher rather than throwing four intentional balls, a limit of three mound conferences per-game, a 2-minute and 30-second time-limit for pitching changes and two minutes and five seconds for the break between innings.
Those changes shaved 24 minutes off the average game length for the AFL and came with mostly positive reviews. Afterwards, MLB announced a pitch clock would be used this upcoming season in both Double-A and Triple-A. MLB also proposed a rule Tuesday requiring pitchers to be ready 30 seconds before the start of the next half-inning and 20 seconds for batters.
Those changes should be welcomed. Baseball needs to compete with fast-paced sports like basketball and hockey and keep up with the action of football.
It seems that MLB realizes the need to improve its pace-of-play and is taking steps in the right direction. While a shortened season should be next on the list, we will have to take what we can get for now. If baseball purists want their sport to remain America’s pastime, they need to be willing to adapt to America’s attention span.
Times are changing and maybe our “national sport” needs to follow suit.
Matt Fout is a freshman studying journalism and is a sportswriter for The Post. What do you think about pitch clocks? Let him know @Matt_Fout or mf056713@ohio.edu.
