(04-29-2014 09:25 AM)Da.Owl Wrote: (04-29-2014 08:43 AM)georgewebb Wrote: If anyone were serious reducing undue delays in baseball, the time devoted to instant reply would be the least of their concerns.
+1 ... Let's kill throwing the ball around the infield after a putout. Tell the batter not to go through the "resnap-every-snap-on-the-uni-after-every-pitch" routine. Let the pitcher pitch the ball !
None of this will happen until TV $$$ demand the game fit into a predefined time slot for broadcast purposes.
Man, that is excruciating!
Tennis, which similarly has no game clock, has clear rules for maintaining pace of play, for example:
- Server to serve within 20 seconds of end of previous point
- Server not to serve until the receiver is ready, BUT the receiver to play to the pace of the server -- i.e. server should not have to wait on the receiver
- Receiver, once ready, not allowed to become unready
- After a fault, second serve to be right away (not a new 20 seconds)
- 90 seconds on change of ends
- Two minutes between sets
The penalties for time violations are a formal warning, and then a point penalty.
These seem readily translatable to baseball:
- Pitcher to be ready to pitch and batter ready to hit within __ seconds previous play
- Batter to play to the pace of the pitcher
- Batter, once ready, not allowed to become unready
- After a pitch with no fielding play (i.e., it's a called strike, swing and miss, or ball), next pitch to be right away
- __ seconds between at-bats
- __ seconds between innings
One tricky issue is how to take base running into account (for which tennis offers no analogy). Making the pace of pitching faster necessarily makes it more predictable, which necessarily advantages the baserunner. But I think some increased base stealing as the price of faster play* is a tradeoff worth making. After all, watching people and things in motion (whether a pitched ball or a baserunner) is a lot more interesting that watching people and things standing still.
*To be clear, pace of play and length of game are not exactly the same thing, but baseball needs to improve both.