[iifold]

The 2015 season is just around the corner and the powers that be are in panic mode. They want to shorten the games, help offenses score more runs, and continue to distance themselves from the ongoing steroid issue. I'm sick and tired of hearing about Arod, pitch clocks, shifts, and smaller strike zones! All of these problems are a direct result of baseball turning a blind eye to steroid use the last time they thought the game needed to be fixed...

Lay off Arod! He is no different than everyone else he played with in that era. They were all cheating, BECAUSE THEY HAD TO!! In order to compete, they had to cheat. How hard is this for people to understand. The baseball higher ups made you hate Jose Canseco to divert attention away from themselves. Gotta love propaganda! They knew what was going on, hell, they might have even got the ball rolling! So please, don't fall for their tactics again, direct your anger towards them!!!

I actually heard some moron on TV yesterday say they should declare shifts as an "illegal defense." This was not some hack that called into a show, it was a panelist on MLB Network! Where's the great Tony Gwynn when you need him? I bet he would have chuckled if he could hear this nonsense. What's next? Play with 8 fielders? Make the ball bigger?? Make them learn how to bunt and go the other way...

And now they want to bring in pitch clocks! There is no need to shorten baseball games! People need to widen their attention spans! Baseball is for the father in his work shop listening to the game while he works on his project. Baseball is for the mother cooking dinner, catching an inning or two in between dishes. Baseball is for the young couple that want to go to the park and hang out together. Baseball has never been about just baseball, and everyone should strive to understand this one day...

Instead of changing this great game to cater to some tattooed goofball wearing an affliction shirt drinking a redbull, how about catering to baseball by changing the fans...

[actiondan]

People have dishwashers now

[Holtgetsback]

all those people baseball is for have passed away

baseball is for hipsters now and rebellious types

[Big Bear]

baseball has plenty of fans.

only a few teams struggle with attendance mainly the Rays, Marlins, and Padres and thats bc people there would rather spend sunday afternoon at the beach than the ballpark

[BigBusiness]

all those people baseball is for have passed away

baseball is for hipsters now and rebellious types

[jjgold]

Baseball is absolutely a dead sport now as soccer is gaining quickly in the United States the young generation has lost interest in watching major league baseball

[krk1030]

I don't see how anyone could argue with shortening the games, it's eliminating BS, not making the games 7 innings. Nobody in their right mind wants to watch a pitcher pace around the mound for 45 seconds between pitches.

The sad thing is offense is way down...which should shorten the games and they are just getting longer. It used to be a 2-1 game would fly by, but now it seems to still run 3 hours.

It's pretty easy to shorten games and still take nothing away from the game that "old school" baseball people love.

Pitch clock (get the signal and throw it, it will probably make you pitch better anyway)

No stepping out of the batters box after not swinging (you stood there as a ball went by, how could your batting gloves be loose)

Starting action as soon as media break is over (we dont need to watch warm ups, be ready to go when the media break is over.)

[jjgold]

I don't think I've watched more than three innings on any baseball game in over three years

[Mr KLC]

Rob Manfred and Joe Torre, MLB’s chief baseball officer, both say there will be plenty of discussion this winter on how to trim the “dead time” that’s lengthening games.

“I don’t think it’s as much the length of the game as it is the dead time that’s in the game that we’d all like to eliminate,” Torre said. Torre mentioned players fiddling with batting gloves and walk-up music among the elements that might add time to games, as well as pitchers not delivering the first pitch of an inning in a timely manner.

“I think it’s a combination, pitcher and hitter,” Torre said. “Years ago, there used to be a lot of, ‘Here, I dare you to swing. I dare you to hit it.’ I think there’s more careful pitching now. Not that it’s wrong. It makes for high pitch counts and 3-and-2 counts. I think the game’s a little bit different than it was years ago.”

He added: “There’s a lot of stuff that happens now and it’s become routine. The one thing we don’t want to do in trying to take out some of that time is interfere with a hitter’s routine. It’s like strategy in a game. You can talk about trips to the mound, but a lot of that is strategic.”

But, Torre admitted, some of those trips aren’t to discuss how to pitch to an upcoming dangerous hitter, but to stall to give a reliever enough time to warm-up. With managers juggling reliever usage and how many times they have a pitcher warming up, it can reverberate through pace of play.

“As a manager, you don’t want to get him up and then sit him down,” Torre said of a reliever. “So you probably wait until the last moment. Now when you get him up, you need help to get him ready, so that’s the catcher going out or the third baseman or the coach…Once you get guys up, then sit them down and get them up again, they might not be as effective. So there is a strategy part to it, but not all of it. That’s not the only reason catchers go out.

“And I think catchers go out probably too much.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/ba...ball%2FNets%29

[lolz_69]

How come none of these old idiots ever bring up eliminating batters levaing the box after every pitch, taking off their gloves then putting it back on, scratching their balls, etc and wasting so much time

[Mr KLC]

According to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of Baseball-Reference.com data, the number of foul balls increased by just under 12 percent compared to the 1998 season. That equates to nearly 14,000 more foul balls overall, or nearly six more foul balls on a per-game basis. It might not sound like much on the surface, but with batters also being more patient at the plate, the extra pitches add up quickly.

From FiveThirtyEight’s report:

Overall, there were 26,313 more pitches in baseball in 2018 (724,447) than in 1998 (698,134). That’s the equivalent of adding 88 games, or roughly a week, to the schedule.

A record 3.9 pitches were thrown per plate appearance in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, according to Baseball-Reference.com, up from 3.73 pitches per plate appearance in 2002 and 3.58 in 1988. And about half of the growth in total pitches can be attributed to foul balls.

With the pitches adding up, so too is the extra time. The average time of a nine-inning MLB game in 1998 was two hours, 47 minutes. Last season, it was three hours flat. On the bright side, that was down five minutes from 2017’s average game length, which was the highest average in league history. So at least some fixes, like limiting mound visits, appear to be helping.

[Mr0ctober]

Im not sure how far back they increased commercial time in between innings......How about reducing the commercial time in between innings??....... oh wait that would cost them money!