January 18, 2018

The Syncohated Clock

It would appears that MLB is going to get a pitch clock, and the players hate the idea:

As one player involved in the talks told The Athletic, “I’ve seen players unified on issues before, but nothing like this.”

Players did bring ideas to the table:

Among their ideas: Reducing the time between innings (which would decrease television advertising revenues) and streamlining the video review process. According to ESPN.com, some players even proposed bringing back bullpen carts.

I am all for the reduction of time between innings, as I don’t think ad revenue would suffer that much as MLB as reduced supply should drive up the cost. That particular idea also shows how poorly the union values the players. If revenue did drop due to few ads, that money is going to come out of the pockets of the players. What they should propose is payment for playing faster. I’ve made proposals along this line in the past, but maybe MLB should pay bonuses to the players on teams who play quickly. MLB gets to improve the game, and the players get to increase their share of revenue. This seems like a no-brainer win-win to me, but I’ve only seen Bill James propose an economic solution.

3 thoughts on “The Syncohated Clock

  1. rbj

    I was all set to hate the pitch clock (and innings clock) at AAA. by the second inning of the first game I loved it. No more strolls around the mound, just get set and throw the ball.

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  2. Pft

    Teams dont get much from TV ads. The RSN’s do and its a small part of their revenue streams. Only a few teams have ownership stakes in RSN’s and they keep those separate from team revenues

    I think the umps wont like this much either.

    I’d simply eliminate all conferences except pitching change and force pitchers coming in during an inning to sprint in and pitch without warmup tosses preventing a commercial break. Might discourage some of these changes

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  3. Hank

    Some fans are convinced that games are 30+ minutes longer today because of commercial breaks and other ‘new generation’ factors.
    It’s all nonsense.
    It’s hogwash.
    Just read this artcile:
    https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length

    A game from 1984 is compared to one in 2014.
    Both games featured nearly identical stats in terms of pitches thrown, hits, runs and pitcher replacements.

    The games actually had the same amount of commercial time. Yes, 2014 had more minutes, but that was only because they broke for commercial during pitching changes while in 1984, they stayed live and spoke over the reliever warming up.

    The author presents the smoking gun by comparing time between ‘inactive pitches’. These are pitches where a ball, strike or swinging strike take place.
    It does not include 3rd strikes or ball four’s – only situations where the pitch was delivered, nothing happened, and the ball was returned to the mound.
    The game in 1984 had 146 Inactive Pitches, whereas the 2014 game had 144.
    Guess what? The 2014 game had 25+ more minutes added for wasted time between those pitches.
    TWENTY-FIVE!!!!
    That’s not 25 minutes of players discussing strategy or managers moving pieces across the board.
    These are 25 minutes wasted by players lollygagging.
    That’s guys like Pedroia stretching his face 83x or resetting his batting gloves 100 times between each pitch.
    It’s completely and utterly unnecessary.
    That is 25 minutes of absolute dead-time.
    Imagine watching a basketball game where a player takes 30s between each free throw to wipe his brow, dry his hands, scratch himself or engage in lamaze breathing exercises.
    “I need to do 30s of yoga between each free throw. It’s a different game from 1965. Free throws are harder to make these days”.

    If the players don’t like it, they need to look in the mirror. It’s their fault that MLB and Manfred want to remove the unnecessary dead-time between pitches.
    If every pitcher worked like Mark Burhle or hitter worked like Evan Gattis, every game would be done in less than 2.5 hours.

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