Ask almost any baseball fan what they think about some of the MLB’s most recent rule changes, and you’re likely to hear a lot of negativity.
The MLB has been making a series of changes to the rules of baseball in an attempt to speed up the game, and therefore attract a wider (and younger) audience.
The MLB calls these changes “pace of game” changes, and the changes include limiting team mound visits to six per game, disallowing batters from leaving the box during their at-bat, timers to ensure that the middle of the inning doesn’t take too long and allowing managers to challenge plays from inside the dugout.
These are just a few of the changes to the game, and several of them make sense—letting managers challenge plays from the bench makes sense; it’s pretty typical for sports. Timing
the middle of the inning to ensure it doesn’t drag on too long is also a good idea because that just means fewer commercials on television and less waiting when you’re at the game in person.
However, the other changes disrupt the traditional flow of the game. Baseball is a fairly psychological game—which is why baseball players are some of the most superstitious athletes out there.
On top of that, much of baseball is about timing and rhythm.
Mound visits, batters stepping out of the box, pitchers taking a while to set up: these are all aspects of the game that change its pace and have a mental effect on the opponents.
Pedro Martinez, a former World Series Champion pitcher for the Red Sox, tweeted out, “Pitching is all about timing and rhythm,” and he has explained that on many occasions his strategy for pitching against dominant batters, like the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, was to disrupt the batter’s flow.
When batters are on deck waiting for their at-bat, they will watch the pitcher in an effort to develop a sense of how he is throwing the ball and will take practice swings in time with the pitcher to try to develop a readiness that they can bring with them to the plate.
When a batter steps out of the box, he is trying to regain his composure while disrupting the pitcher’s flow (the pitcher may be rushing him) so he can go for a hit. Likewise, for a pitcher who needs a breather, a mound visit from his catcher can allow him (and the whole team, for that matter) to take a short break while the pitcher discusses what needs to be done with the catcher.
Other changes include no pitch intentional walks, where the pitcher merely indicates that he would like to walk the batter and no pitches are thrown. This is another unnecessary change to the game, as walking a batter should have consequences associated with it, that consequence formerly being that the pitcher had to throw four balls, which would drive up his pitch count.
Additionally, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says that he will be enacting a 20- second pitch clock sometime this season “no matter what the players say.”
So, clearly the MLB is very concerned with speeding up the game—but they’re not that long to begin with.
The average major league contest during the regular season in 2017 was three hours and five minutes long, while the average game length during the 2017 postseason was three hours and 29 minutes long.
However, there’s another very important piece to the puzzle here: The MLB audience demographics.
It’s no well-kept secret that baseball has the oldest viewing base of any major sport in the United States, with 50 percent of the MLB’s viewing audience over 55. The average baseball viewer’s age is 53, while the NFL is 47 and NBA is 37.
So, Rob Manfred is really trying to sell ice to Eskimos here. The young people who aren’t interested in baseball dislike it because they think it’s a boring game, not because it’s a long game—and the young people who are interested in baseball are just irritated that Manfred is making the game more boring just for the sake of trying to keep the game popular.
If Manfred keeps this up, he’s going to find that he’s made baseball boring for not just the young people, but for everyone.
But what can you expect from a guy who keeps Joe West on the payroll?
