MLB's Stance On Pace Of Play Makes Me Feel Like I Am Taking Crazy Pills

MLB - Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr., Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark and Atlanta Braves President John Schuerholz, the Chairman of Major League Baseball's Pace of Game and Instant Replay Committees, today jointly announced additions to the sport's pace of game program, which will be effective in Spring Training, the regular season and the Postseason, and a series of modifications to the instant replay system. The World Umpires Association also has given its assent to the new efforts, which will be reviewed by the parties following the conclusion of the 2015 World Series.

Remember that Twilight Zone episode where the guy wakes up and everyone is acting crazy but he is the weird one because he is not acting crazy? Ok, full disclosure, I have never seen that Twilight Zone episode but I can assume that it does exist. Well, that’s how I feel about Major League Baseball’s infatuation with “pace of play”. For some reason MLB is under the impression that the many breaks the game of baseball has (in-between pitches, innings, pitching changes, or pretty much any span of time where seemingly nothing is happening), is driving away fans or making it harder for young kids to get into it. Well it simply just makes no sense. It’s almost as if they are trying to blame the fact that the game popularity has been surpassed by football on the basis that baseball is “slow”. Hey, I’m not going to argue that baseball isn’t a slow moving game, it most definitely is, but so is football. You can almost make an argument that football is exponentially slower than baseball. This is all just a knee jerk reaction to football taking over as “America’s Pastime”. But it’s all bull shit.

I am a somewhat baseball purist but I wouldn’t say that I am a nut about it or anything. I don’t mind the DH, I have my issues with defensive shifts but I do think that the manager can play his 9 guys wherever he pleases. But adding a clock to things in baseball, I believe, is against the games core. The beauty of baseball is that it isn’t timed. Games can go on for days if they had too. Jimmy Fallon has a line in the movie “Fever Pitch” when asked when the baseball game is over. “it's not like a Broadway musical where it ends with a big Hawaiian number” It’s what makes the game so good. There is a mystery. It is not as stiff and ridged as football with their 1^st and 10’s and 3 yard gains. Every game is the same but completely different. Every team gets 27 outs but the outcome is different every time. It’s a team sport but is very individual. It’s a game that has stood the test of time for over 150 years. Not to say it hasn’t been tweaked over those years, but thinking a clock would make a difference in bringing fans to the game is just asinine. No one is saying, “Hey I don’t like baseball but if they eliminated 9 seconds each inning I would watch it every day”.

MLB seems to have an inferiority complex with the NFL. They are both spectator sports but that’s where any comparison ends. The reason NFL gets more fans than MLB is not because a guy takes 20 seconds in between pitches. It is caused by a simple economic principle they teach you in 7^th grade. Supply and Demand. Each NFL team plays 16 games plus 4 pre season games. MLB plays 162 games plus around 30 pre season games. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to figure out that there is less opportunity to see a NFL game so there is more demand to see it. You have 162 chances to see a baseball game. The market is saturated with baseball. This leads me to the next issue.

If baseball is losing fans so much that we have to add a clock, then why are these regional sport networks paying billions of dollars to get the rights to show their games. That seems weird right? Why would Time Warner pay 6 billion dollars to broadcast games of a sport that is supposedly losing fans?  Then to make the matters worse, these regional sports networks make it MORE difficult to watch the games. Most Dodger fans still can’t see their team on TV. Are you telling me that this isn’t a bigger issue than a 20 second wait in-between pitches? Come on now.  MLB also has a weird policy when it comes to sharing their content on social media. They are very against making their videos and highlight packages available to be posted on websites and social media. It’s the 21^st century, this is the way the world is going, you need to adapt.

The game has been around a long time. It has gone through many ups and downs and there has always been a sure fire way to get fans, Super Stars, players who transcend sports. Ever since Former Commissioner Bud Selig let the game turn into the wild west with PEDs, people are now skeptical on every superstar that comes through. These milestones that used to be held sacred are now clouded and almost discounted. Baseball writers, who at the time, couldn’t get enough of Sammy Sosa and his 60+ home run reasons. They now don’t even acknowledge his existence. The writers knew that there was no testing program; they knew that these guys were doing something; they just wanted to pretend that it wasn’t PEDs. Then when Barry Bonds started to hit everything in the ocean they couldn’t pretend anymore. Thus changing the narrative of baseball. The writers then turned fans against the players. Once beloved players were now villains. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez are now considered scumbags because they dared to try to be better at a sport.

Baseball may have 99 problems but “Pace of Play” isn’t one of them. If people have no problem waiting 40 seconds in-between snaps of a football game, then people wont have a problem with 20 seconds in-between a pitch. Try fixing the outside factors first and see if that changes the attendance. I can almost guarantee that if there was less than 162 games, the games were made readily available across all platforms and the writers didn’t make villains out of the Super Stars, more people would be watching the games.