used to enjoy the contest of pacing between batter and pitcher. baseball is a lot less relaxing now with that fucking clock ticking down in the corner of the screen. if you must have a clock at least stop fucking showing it on the overlay graphics MLB
:baseball-crank:
I went to a baseball game. I hadn't been in years but I loved the faster pace. It could actually hold my attention. I watch a couple innings here and there on tv and same thing, way more likely to hold my attention.
I'm not a real baseball fan tho so idk how this effects stuff like the dynamic between pitcher and batter.
Hmm I might agree that it's less relaxing but I it's still somewhat relaxing imo
You say CRANK, I say CRUNK, baseball is LIT now :party-sicko:
But fr I'm a fan of the pitch clock. It really helps to keep the game on a more enjoyable pace during the regular season. Especially for people (such as myself lol) with shorter attention spans. Also I suspect that the rules committee will tweak (or even eliminate) it for the playoffs; they've already made small changes like allowing exceptions for milestone moments.
As far as integrating the countdown timer in the scorebug on the broadcast, I don't personally mind the implementation I've seen so far. I haven't watched a game from every single network this season though, so Idk if it's worse on the broadcast for the particular team you root for.
Here's a reddit post that shows most of the pitch clocks in their respective scorebugs. What do you think about the various implementations?
Edit: formatting the link properly
yes. and another thing is the most fun I have watching baseball is stolen bases and pickoffs
and I feel like this destroys the whole balance of throwing to keep runners on base
Indeed they have, they're pretty much back up to their rate in the 80s when Rickey Henderson was tearing up the basepaths
I haven't looked at the stats but that would support that the balance is off/changed
I don't understand your point then, you like stolen bases more when they basically never happen?
I don't care how long the game takes, put it on and get Lulled to sleep
It's harder now tho :( i miss Vin Scully's voice as a dodger fan
The rules committee had 4 rank and file union representatives for the players and all 4 voted against the pitch clock and defensive shift ban. They all supported the increased base size.
This is not just a fan issue but a working conditions issue
Certainly fair. I wonder if the players were an even 2 and 2 position players/hitters and pitchers
I wonder how much of that player input is driven by simple preference vs. concern about working conditions. The shift, for instance, doesn't seem to have a big impact on working conditions.
Yeah, that one I can see being a legit working conditions issue (especially if pitchers think it will impact the likelihood of injury). But voting against both suggests at least some of the decision is just preference.
I'm liking the pitch clock. Keeps the pace of game high plus most games are less than 3 hours now.
This battle was lost a long time ago. Baseball players generate a lot of stats, and these can be analyzed by assholes with spreadsheets. What was it, 20 years ago? When one of them won a World Series while never setting foot inside a stadium. That was the end of baseball.
I'm with you. I guess I'm a outlier, but I like longer, slower games. I love a game that goes 18 innings (which is a lot less likely with the extras rules now). The pitch clock is fine I guess, but you're totally right that it makes it harder to relax watching the game.
Hopefully the pitch clock leads to the end of Manfred runners in extra innings. Those suck and with the games so much shorter now, anyway...
Hopefully. I seriously don't know if I've talked to a single baseball fan who likes that rule.
Now this is a baseball crank take!
Only thing I'd change about the pitch clock is turning it off in the 9th + any extras, maybe lengthening the time between half innings slightly, and making it a teeny bit longer in the postseason.
lengthening the time between half innings slightly
Unfortunately this would just mean longer tv and radio ads lmao. I will say I can definitely agree about the 9th inning or any further, maybe add a "within 4 or 5 runs" clause. Also I'd go so far as to say they should bump it to :20 with bases empty and :30 with any runners on in the playoffs. It's just weird because compared to a 162 game regular season, even though only the best teams make the playoffs they're still somewhat of a crap-shoot. Just look at the Phillies last year, they knocked off Atlanta in 4 games in the NLDS last year when Atlanta finished 14 games ahead of them in the National League East Division lol. I think it'd be good to minimize potential greater-stakes cluster-fuckery in the playoffs with a much more lenient pitch clock.
I don't mind the pitch clock. But yeah, they probably shouldn't show it, just another distraction on the screen among all the other stuff that is overlayed on the picture.
Don’t care about the pitch clock, but I am devastated about the shift ban.
You are supposed to tell me that the hitter getting paid 10 million dollars to hit a ball can’t adjust to not hitting the ball where the entire team is standing?
It was the last chance we had to get the game back to something more than strikeouts and homeruns. God how I hate the home run
yeah I'm a fan of small ball personally. grinding, steals and good placement hitting
So much more exciting, I’m dying to see either a triple or a triple play live. Something actually rare these days.
Watch the pitch clock just lead to 8pm starts or longer commercial breaks….
Honestly one of the things they could have done to speed the game up was cut ad time. Obviously something that would never happen.
I hate ads as much as the next communist. But, aside from the post-season, broadcasts have never increased the time between innings in the way you're implying. The relatively brief down time of inning breaks has pretty much always existed. The players have to switch from fielding to batting and vice-versa, the pitcher has to throw a few warm-up pitches, and the catcher has to put their pads back on. It' a natural part of the game that has existed since the 19th century. One day the human race will live free from the scourge of capitalist advertising and enjoy baseball the way Fidel intended :fidel-bat:
they literally did this in 2019, the time is like 2 minutes or something and you can't cut it much lower because guys need to get in position and the pitcher needs to toss some warmups
I do wish we could kill the ads and just see an ambient camera view of the field between innings, but that's what we can fight for in the revolution
More than likely in our lifetime, baseball will end up being a pay-per-view service where you buy viewing rights (like boxing), but there will still be ads.
I could see that for the NFL because there are comparatively so few games per (regular) season (17 games per team with 32 teams), but an MLB regular season has 162 games each for 30 teams (and the All-Star game too haha). Unless an individual game costs less than $2 in 2023 money, no way are most consumers even thinking about paying for that imo
Once I went to a game where they turned a triple play, but I was looking down at the food I was eating trying not to make a mess of myself when it happened lmao
That's Japanese-style baseball. Manufacturing runs. Swat at the ball and run like hell.
BORING. Baseball fans like dingers! They want to watch power hitters DESTROY the ball.
the shift ban has encouraged more small ball and less three true outcome play. the problem with the shift is that it was created by computers, and those same computers said that the best way to beat the shift was to try to hit a home run every at bat.
banning using your short stop as a second right fielder means the stat dweebs can start to value slap hitters and small ball guys, and so far this season is working
In general I'm with you. It feels like an (especially) arbitrary tactical restriction.
However, your second point is kind of ironic: you have it backwards. Hitters started swinging for the fences (more than they ever did previously) precisely because of the shift ( :think-about-it: can't use the shift if the ball leaves the park).
The shift came about because Stat Cast data is available for every MLB player since 2015. Stat Cast tracks all balls in play. Team would set up their defensive positioning plan for each batter on their opponent's roster for every individual game based on this data. You can view each player's data for yourself on Baseball Savant. Select a random player and see his spray chart. Pick a previous season since this one just started; there will be more data points available in order to give you the best idea of how this all works.
Regarding strike-outs and homers, the other such outcome, in that it does not involve fielding, is walks. All three went up year in year out (if I recall correctly) between 2015 and 2022. See this video for more on this: Joey Gallo Personifies the Extremes of Modern Baseball.
Finally, while this isn't necessarily relevant with regard to the statistical aspect of this thread, Joey Gallo is actually one of my favorite players. At his best he's exciting to watch in the batter's box and in the field, and I was disappointed to see him struggle during his tenures with the NY Yankees and the LA Dodgers after he got traded from the Texas Rangers before the 2021 trade deadline. In general his performance seems to be on the upswing this year after he signed a one-year contract with the Minnesota Twins.
There's a pitch clock? Is that what that number is? I don't really follow the news, I just watch games sometimes and I had no idea that that's what that was.
Yeah, here's a video (only the first half of the video is relevant) of the first player to run afoul of it
Edit: first in the regular season. First in spring training here
I think the broadcast didn't set the timer to actually go to :00 lol, you can kind of tell that :01 stays up longer than it should
I'm with you 100%, but I'm determined to try and still enjoy the games regardless. I am just as annoyed with the strike zone box, too. MLB keeps making little changes that are hindering my enjoyment - pitch clock, strike zone box, instant replay, DH in the NL, etc. Eventually I could get to the point where I'm just not watching anymore.
I'm also for a brisker pace but I could have sworn I saw someone do the research and it showed cutting down on ad time between half innings would be the most impactful action for reducing the time a game takes.
I think it's nice what watching a baseball game on TV now doesn't require my whole evening and the only cut content is guys standing around picking their asses
That's the whole point. Tension. It's what the majority of sport ball fans want.
Call me a baseball purist! The world baseball classic is proof that the game is just fine!
I miss breaking up plays at 2nd base, i miss home field collisions,
This pitch clock nonsense is not for the game it's for more ad revenue
