Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Length of Games
Here's a nice little chart:
And the key point:
Longer games would be forgivable, even laudable, if there were 50 percent more of a game to watch. There isn’t.
So, there has to be some sort of tradeoff here. Is it actually enjoyable to be at the ballpark an hour more than in the olden days? Maybe.
When I used to play golf on Sundays, the regulars would hate on us, because we'd be 4 Sunday golfers, who all shot in the 80s-100s. And we'd be laughing, and yapping. To us, being at the golf course for five hours was great. The game itself was kind of incidental. If you are out all night, that's a good sign. The longer you are away, chances are, the more fun you had.
When I used to go to football games, we'd get to the parking lot 10-11AM for a 1PM game. Why? Tailgating. So, I'm out of the house before 10AM and I'm back home by 6PM. That's an 8 hour committment. The only unpleasantness is the traffic leaving the place. The pace before the game is great, and the pace of the game is good.
Is baseball like that? Is it more fun to simply spend four hours at the ballpark, hanging out with your buds? I dunno, maybe it is. If the game is close, sure. Though, those last three innings are really (really) tough if it's a 5+run game. At least in football, you'll see different strategies, the passing/running/kicking game is different.
On TV? No, I can't commit that time. Two hours is an easy commit. Two and a half, and I'm surfing during commercials, and I might miss a half inning here or there. In blow-outs, I leave. Three hours? And more? That's the kind of thing I reserve for The Godfather. And I've seen that movie dozens of times already.
***
The solution is fairly simple: no timeouts. Or at least, give each team a set number of timeouts. Can you imagine football, basketball or hockey with unlimited timeouts? That's ridiculous. So, why is it not ridiculous in baseball? If the batter wants to step out, for any reason (including injury) other than he just swung at a pitch, that's a timeout. Pitch clock on a pitcher, sure, why not. (And pickoffs do NOT reset the pitch clock. It only freezes it.)
That's all we're asking: penalize the PLAYERS for the dead time, rather than the fans. Unless Vin Scully is calling the game, then we'll accept all the dead time, and more.
***
Ok, reading the article:
Rather than wait for the established leagues to act so it could follow their lead, the Atlantic League blazed its own trail. It formed a Pace of Play Committee, chaired by ex-Houston Astros president Tal Smith, which solicited suggestions from fans and media as well as its own members. The league came up with a list of six measures, later trimmed to five, that it began implementing in games on Aug. 1, 2014. The measures were:
- Limiting teams to three “time-outs” a game for mound visits by managers, coaches or players, those time-outs limited to 45 seconds each. Pitching changes are not included, and an extra time-out is granted for the 10th inning and every third extra inning thereafter.
- Automatically awarding an intentional walk upon the signal of the manager or catcher, without the need to throw four wide.
- Limiting warm-up pitches at the start of an inning, or when a reliever enters, from eight to six.
- Directing umpires to apply and enforce Rule 6.02 (restricting batters “stepping out”) and Rule 8.04 (requiring the pitcher to throw within 12 seconds when bases are empty).
- Encouraging umpires to exercise their power to control the pace of play (and to call the book strike zone).
...
With many curious eyes observing, games in the Atlantic League promptly became brisker. In the first month under the new rules, average game time fell to 2:53, nine minutes quicker than in 2013. The proportion of regulation games lasting three hours or longer fell from 42 percent to 26, and regulation games lasting no more than 2:30 rose from eight to 22 percent. Major league baseball hasn’t seen that last level for a couple of decades.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 152 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers