Report: Baseball will implement pitch clock in minor leagues
Baseball is reportedly taking another step toward bringing a pitch clock to the big leagues. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports are reporting that pitch clocks will be implemented this year in Double-A and Triple-A, the next step in attempting to remedy baseball’s pace-of-play concerns.
In September, MLB initiated its “Pace of Game” committee that would be exploring ways to speed up games — which had reached a record 3:08 in 2014. In 1984, the average game time was 2:40, so MLB has added almost 30 minutes in 30 years.
Many pace-of-play experiments, including the pitch clock, were enacted during the Arizona Fall League, with varying degrees of success. The pitch clock reportedly coming to the minors would be the same as the Arizona Fall League, where pitchers had 20 seconds to deliver a pitch. The penalty for a pitch-clock violation is a ball added to a batter’s count.
Here’s more from Rosenthal and Morosi about the pitch-clock addition and what else is coming:
In the minors, baseball will enact other changes that it tried during the recent Arizona Fall League season, one source said. Those changes include a rule requiring a hitter to keep one foot in the batter’s box, a time limit on pitching changes and also a limit on breaks between innings.
The introduction of the pitch clock would be the most significant innovation, one that baseball ultimately may adopt at the major-league level. Multiple players and coaches told FOX Sports recently that they found the pitch clock to be effective and not disruptive to the flow of the game.
Major League Baseball Advanced Media will pay for the clocks, according to one source. Such an expenditure would require the approval of the owners.
Fans who are savvy about the MLB rulebook are probably shaking their head and saying baseball should just make umpires enforce Rule 8.04, which is already on the books and gives pitchers a 12-second limit. It doesn’t come with a big ol’ clock, though.
Here’s a video from the Arizona Fall League that shows the clock in action, as a pitcher prepares to deliver a pitch:
How’d this work in Arizona Fall League? Well, the 17 games in which a pitch clock was used were 10 minutes shorter than the average AFL game the season earlier. There are a lot of variables in baseball, of course, so seeing what happens for an entire minor-league season will be a stonger indicator of how much the clock actually helps.
But if the results hold up, don’t be surprised to see this in a major-league ballpark near you in 2016.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
