MLB to limit mound visits

beckdawg

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Am I the only one who really doesn't care about the length of baseball games? Truth be told if there's anything that bothers me about a broadcast it's that there are unnecessary lengthy periods having little to with normal baseball. Breaks between innings are likely longer than need be. Pitching changes are longer than need be. Honestly there's nothing worse than sitting through between inning commercials only to have a guy pitch to one batter then have them bring in a different reliever which sends to commercials again.

That's what bothers me not a batter stepping out or more mound visits.
 

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I think they need to limit number of pitching changes per game personally. Mound visits don't bother me.
 

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Am I the only one who really doesn't care about the length of baseball games? Truth be told if there's anything that bothers me about a broadcast it's that there are unnecessary lengthy periods having little to with normal baseball. Breaks between innings are likely longer than need be. Pitching changes are longer than need be. Honestly there's nothing worse than sitting through between inning commercials only to have a guy pitch to one batter then have them bring in a different reliever which sends to commercials again.

That's what bothers me not a batter stepping out or more mound visits.
Games used to take 2:05 hours, now it's 3:05. Some delays can't be controlled like commercials and extra pitcher changes in a modern game.

But some of it is arrogance, as in, no one can tell me what to do. You also see this in golf. Some of this is center stage "look at me" by the pitcher. Why should I waste an additional hour of my life? Millenials wont put up with it with all their other options (whining, napping in their parents basement, filing unemployment claims and masturbating)

Baseball needs to adapt
 

CSF77

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Games used to take 2:05 hours, now it's 3:05. Some delays can't be controlled like commercials and extra pitcher changes in a modern game.

But some of it is arrogance, as in, no one can tell me what to do. You also see this in golf. Some of this is center stage "look at me" by the pitcher. Why should I waste an additional hour of my life? Millenials wont put up with it with all their other options (whining, napping in their parents basement, filing unemployment claims and masturbating)

Baseball needs to adapt

Well at least Steve Trachel retired. That helped.
 

SilenceS

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Games used to take 2:05 hours, now it's 3:05. Some delays can't be controlled like commercials and extra pitcher changes in a modern game.

But some of it is arrogance, as in, no one can tell me what to do. You also see this in golf. Some of this is center stage "look at me" by the pitcher. Why should I waste an additional hour of my life? Millenials wont put up with it with all their other options (whining, napping in their parents basement, filing unemployment claims and masturbating)

Baseball needs to adapt

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SilenceS

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Well at least Steve Trachel retired. That helped.

Haha, great reference. I remember him making defenses worse because he took so long to pitch they would start day dreaming. I used to get annoyed with nomar with his batting gloves. Took forever for that guy to get in the box


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I don’t agree with this. This is part of what makes baseball beautiful. Cat and mouse. Who can out think the other


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It's baseball, not chess. You don't need 3+ hours of thinking. There can still be plenty of strategy in 2 hours. Plus, if these thing are seriously reduced it will require the skipper to think even more.
 

chibears55

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They should also limit the amount of times a pitcher can throw over to first base as well as requiring the batter to stay in the box.
They cant put a number on throws to 1st..
Say it 2 times, runners will then take enormous leads knowing pitchers cant throw over..

It part of the game, it baseball

The difference between today baseball and yesterday baseball that grossly affects the TOG is the commercial breaks between half innings...

AND

pitchers and players take time getting out there, pitchers fiddle around then toss their 8 pitches..
then chat with catcher and 5 minutes gone by before a pitch is thrown

Back in day...
Players take field, pitchers throw their 8 warm ups, catcher throws down to 2nd, ready to go



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CubsFaninMN

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I think the coaching, from the minors on up, has been preaching "slow the game down, make the other guy wait, make him give you your pitch (or swing at the pitch you want to throw), put it on your terms, not the other guys'..." They've been training the players like this for a while, now.

So, you get pitchers who try to stare down hitters or baserunners, or batters who try to wait until right before the pitcher starts to move and then steps out.

The MLB game has been mind-fuck baseball for quite a while. It's just been getting more and more codified and trained-in for the past couple of decades. And that ends up slowing down the game somewhat.

It's the extra commercials, the waits for challenge decisions, and more than anything else the much larger number of pitching changes per game, and their associated inning-break-length commercial breaks, that have been making the games significantly longer.

That said, I really don't mind if the games run three and a half hours, when they're exciting. And I've seen a lot of very exciting nine-inning games that lasted three and a half hours. They were usually high-scoring, with lots and lots of coaching moves. Great, fun games.

It feels like they want to give me less entertainment per game. And I don't like that.

Baseball is the one game left that is just supposed to end when it ends, nothing forcing it to try and rush and end on some mythical "on time" embraced by people who don't know when to breathe if it's not marked in their day-planners.

I firmly believe that even the millennials will welcome coming back to this game, as it exists now, in their later years -- a place where they don't have to be in such a damn-fool hurry... :)
 

85Bears

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I'm ok with limiting it, but 6 visits per game seems a little too few. It's arbitrary, but 9 seems fair to me.

I lol'd at your Contreras comment, Ommy...
 

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I think the coaching, from the minors on up, has been preaching "slow the game down, make the other guy wait, make him give you your pitch (or swing at the pitch you want to throw), put it on your terms, not the other guys'..." They've been training the players like this for a while, now.

So, you get pitchers who try to stare down hitters or baserunners, or batters who try to wait until right before the pitcher starts to move and then steps out.

The MLB game has been mind-fuck baseball for quite a while. It's just been getting more and more codified and trained-in for the past couple of decades. And that ends up slowing down the game somewhat.

It's the extra commercials, the waits for challenge decisions, and more than anything else the much larger number of pitching changes per game, and their associated inning-break-length commercial breaks, that have been making the games significantly longer.

That said, I really don't mind if the games run three and a half hours, when they're exciting. And I've seen a lot of very exciting nine-inning games that lasted three and a half hours. They were usually high-scoring, with lots and lots of coaching moves. Great, fun games.

It feels like they want to give me less entertainment per game. And I don't like that.

Baseball is the one game left that is just supposed to end when it ends, nothing forcing it to try and rush and end on some mythical "on time" embraced by people who don't know when to breathe if it's not marked in their day-planners.

I firmly believe that even the millennials will welcome coming back to this game, as it exists now, in their later years -- a place where they don't have to be in such a damn-fool hurry... :)

MLB has always been a "mind fuck". People have to look at what's actually changed in the game. Defensive shifts take time. Fiddling with your batting gloves takes time. The most significant change in the game from even the early 70's is the role of the Relief Pitcher. For the first 100 years of baseball Starting Pitchers went to the mound expecting to throw complete games. Now? Not so much. All the cat and mouse regards pitching changes for matchup purposes. If they really want to speed the game up, they eliminate the 3-4 pitcher changes in one inning late in ball games. 1 pitcher per inning from 6th through 9th. Also place significant restrictions on defensive shifts. The 3B doesn't need to be shifting over to 2B side of the base. That's the SS job. 3B becomes SS, etc. Some stuff is just dumb, because the stat geeks have data. The beauty of the game was that it was simple. Today? Not so much. It needs to be simplified.
 

fatbeard

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I wonder how much of the intra-AB time is just from changes in approach. Hitters work the count deeper than ever because they're less averse to strikeouts and because it generally works to their advantage. Pitchers take more time than ever in between pitches because they're throwing at maximum effort, every pitch (the average time in between pitches was 23.8 seconds in 2017, the worst ever). I've never considered that a pitch clock could be a way to constrain SP "effort," but it would have a lot of implications if MLB wanted to use it that way: Less velo, more contact, fewer Ks, more balls in play, more defense, more baserunners. More of the stuff that makes baseball exciting.

Of course, any kind of pitch clock really messes with the cat & mouse dynamic of the running game, which is a suspenseful and great part of the game, particularly in playoff baseball. Maybe instead of a "pitch clock," you could have a "set clock" where the pitcher must come set by, say 12 seconds, but can still hold the ball after that before delivery or a throw to a base. If he simply holds it to stall, the ump has the discretion to call a ball.
 

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