The Pace of the Postseason Drives Me Nuts

[Orioles4Life21]

I do get your point, but I don't think your are taking away substance. Again, what happens when you bunt a ball foul with 2 strikes? MLB limits pitches in that event. I feel that under my sick, twisted rules batters would still have plenty of opportunity to hit strikes and see plenty of pitches. I just don't think that foul balls are exciting and do much to add to the game. If, by the fourth strike pitch of an at bat, you can't put the ball into play, then take a seat on the bench.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but this idea is just lunacy. It changes the game in a big way and it's not for the better. Fortunately for me, there is no chance that any rule close to this will be put into place.

You must really want to see a batting champion hitting .230.

[Crabby9]

Honesty, we've played five games in the last 14 days, and tonight looks like a wash-out. Way too much down time for me.

Also, the pace of the games themselves is hideous.

3:42

3:41

3:41

4:37

4:17

Pretty mind-numbing stuff if you ask me.

Another good point, Frobby. And all these off days could be used towards having a best of 7 in the division series. Let's play ball!

[DrungoHazewood]

The commercial breaks are too much, but I also think MLB should seriously look at a way to stop batters from extending appearances with 6 or 7 foul balls. I don't think anything slows down a game more than a 10-12 pitch at bat. To further complicate matters, those at bats then up the pitch counts which lead to more pitching changes ... thus leading to more commercial time.

I think a batter should get one two-strike foul and the second should be a strike. End of story.

I don't think it fundamentally changes the game. You aren't eliminating foul balls ... this only happens when the batter gets to two strikes. They've had 2 chances to put the ball into play and then a third with the extra foul. They would only be out on the fourth chance. Some guys have made an art out of slapping away pitches to drag out at bats.

I agree that they are quality at bats under the current rules, but I think MLB should consider it for alacrity and, frankly, entertainment purposes. If you find 5 straight emergency hacks and foul balls exciting, then all the power to you.

I know that my opinion isn't that popular, but I also am not one that is big on those who call themselves baseball "traditionalists". If you were a "traditionalist", you'd be watching cricket. Baseball has constantly evolved over the past century and a half and I think it should be open to further evolving.

I'm all for brainstorming out-of-the-box ideas. But if you did this you would certainly accelerate the decline in offense we're already seeing. Something like 30% of plate appearances involve five or more pitches. 6-7% are 7 or more. You'd have to do some real analysis to figure out the exact impact, but I'd assume strikeouts would go up by another 10%? 20%? Under current rules longer at bats favor hitters - the deeper you go the more likely the hitter is to get a favorable outcome. You'd be reversing that, and turning all (now relatively) long plate appearances to heavily favor the pitcher. There would be relievers averaging more than 2K per inning, and batters striking out 250 times a season. We would certainly see fewer balls in play than at any time in history (since we're already there with the possibility of 14-pitch at bats).

Basically, you'd have to have some proportional advantage added for the batter or you'd see runs scored drop by quite a lot. And that's in an environment that's already considerably lower-scoring than the historical average of just over 4.5 runs/team/game.

Edit: There is a historical precedent for something similar to what you're talking about. In the 1903-04 timeframe the two leagues instituted the foul-strike rule. Prior to that foul balls (except bunts from 1894-on) weren't anything, balls or strikes. The 1890s were the highest-scoring era in history. The 1905-1919 era was the lowest. The foul-strike rule wasn't the only driver, but it was a very significant one.

[DrungoHazewood]

Certainly would have been a helpful rule against those monster Red Sox and Yankees lineups during the lean years, that's for sure. Those guys would stand there fouling off pitches for ages.

(Disclaimer: none of this will ever happen, since baseball places great value in never changing the on-field rules.)

To balance the pitcher-batter equation they'd have to make some other changes, otherwise scoring would drop to near historically-low levels. To me the most obvious way to do that would be to make a walk three balls. I think that would make the new rule less useful to combat those rake-and-take teams.

[weams]

I don't think it fundamentally changes the game. You aren't eliminating foul balls ... this only happens when the batter gets to two strikes. They've had 2 chances to put the ball into play and then a third with the extra foul. They would only be out on the fourth chance. Some guys have made an art out of slapping away pitches to drag out at bats.

I agree that they are quality at bats under the current rules, but I think MLB should consider it for alacrity and, frankly, entertainment purposes. If you find 5 straight emergency hacks and foul balls exciting, then all the power to you.

I know that my opinion isn't that popular, but I also am not one that is big on those who call themselves baseball "traditionalists". If you were a "traditionalist", you'd be watching cricket. Baseball has constantly evolved over the past century and a half and I think it should be open to further evolving.

I could be convinced to try this at a milb level and then see where it goes.

[DrungoHazewood]

So they will make the changes and you will be home 15-20 minutes earlier. There are things they can do to speed it up but baseball is baseball there is no clock.

I know that a lot of die hard baseball fans don't have an issue with very long games, but there's a big chunk of the ticket-buying public which pays for a lot of baseball's $8B in revenues who think pace and length of games is a bug, not a feature.

There are die hard cricket fans who thinks any sport that doesn't take five days to play is a joke. When they started playing 20/20 cricket matches (that can be played in two hours instead of days) two things happened: 1) the traditionalists said it was the end of the world, that it wasn't real cricket, and it was an abomination, and 2) there was a pretty big surge in the popularity of cricket among the other 95% of the population.

Go back and watch games from the 50s, 60s, 70s on Youtube. Nobody ever stepped out of the batters box between pitches. It's absolutely ridiculous the glove adjusting and stepping out after every pitch nowadays.

Just make a rule that says it's a called strike every time the batter has either foot leave the batter's box between pitches without specifically being granted time by the ump. And instruct the umps to only grant time when it's an obvious case of needing it (like dirt in eyes on windy day or broken bat or similar). Very quickly it becomes ingrained in everyone that stepping out of the box is rare.

Also, it is a hole in the rules to limit the number of pitches but not throws to other bases. In the 1870s and 1880s they iteratively reduced the number of balls for a walk to keep pitchers from toying around and never throwing hittable pitches. But they never thought to limit throws to the bases for some reason. There are creative ways to implement a fix.

[canonfaz]

The commercials are way too long. I feel like they are twice as long as they usually are.

[SeaBird]

All of you are dead wrong on placing blame here on pickoff attempts, extra commercials, etc. it's the dang KC hitters fouling off pitch after pitch after pitch until somehow they get on base. They never seem to go three up three down either unlike the Orioles. Their hitters also seem to step out and call time a lot. If you take notice it seems to take forever for the Orioles to get the 3 outs in an inning on them even when they don't score any runs!

That's what good batters do. Work the at bat to get the pitch count up and wear down the pitcher. They wait for a good pitch to drive.

[Can_of_corn]

That's what good batters do. Work the at bat to get the pitch count up and wear down the pitcher. They wait for a good pitch to drive.

I wouldn't say that trait is the delineating line between good and not good hitters.

[weams]

I wouldn't say that trait is the delineating line between good and not good hitters.

Nope. It is not even a tendency of them. Good hitters do have better than average strike zone awareness though. I'll grant that.

[DrungoHazewood]

The commercials are way too long. I feel like they are twice as long as they usually are.

I don't understand why they can't try shortening commercial breaks and charging more for each unit of time. In otherwords, you now have four minutes of commercials at $100,000 per minute, you then shorten the break to two minutes and charge $200k per. (All times and costs made up for illustration purposes.)

[Dipper9]

The commercial breaks are too much, but I also think MLB should seriously look at a way to stop batters from extending appearances with 6 or 7 foul balls. I don't think anything slows down a game more than a 10-12 pitch at bat. To further complicate matters, those at bats then up the pitch counts which lead to more pitching changes ... thus leading to more commercial time.

I think a batter should get one two-strike foul and the second should be a strike. End of story.

Hey, works for my beer league softball games!

[Emory Eagle]

I don't understand why they can't try shortening commercial breaks and charging more for each unit of time. In otherwords, you now have four minutes of commercials at $100,000 per minute, you then shorten the break to two minutes and charge $200k per. (All times and costs made up for illustration purposes.)

I have absolutely no idea, but I suspect the market for TV advertising prices on a per viewer basis. Perhaps the certain ratings and demographic bracket offered by the O's (or baseball generally) is just a subset of a much larger supply of similar ad-time. If so, choosing to lengthen or shorten baseball commercial breaks may not appreciably affect pricing and the incentive is just to sell as much time as possible. Of course, I'm a lawyer, not an economist, so not sure that even makes sense.

[PaulFolk]

Just make a rule that says it's a called strike every time the batter has either foot leave the batter's box between pitches without specifically being granted time by the ump. And instruct the umps to only grant time when it's an obvious case of needing it (like dirt in eyes on windy day or broken bat or similar). Very quickly it becomes ingrained in everyone that stepping out of the box is rare.

They're currently testing out something similar to this in the Arizona Fall League. Batters have to keep their foot in the box between pitches. There's also a pitch clock for the pitcher to deliver a pitch when there are no runners on base.

[Witchy_Chick]

I am going to have to mainline coffee tonight to stay awake. Nodding off at my desk. :eektf: