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Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Frayed Knot Feb 16 2016 02:00 PM

That's what Joel Sherman suggests Basically his point is that baseball already has an unlimited amount of time-outs -- mostly at the mound -- so the way to get a handle on them is to formalize them and slap a limit (he suggests five/game) on the number of times that a team can congregate on the field. So catcher/pitcher or infield/pitcher conferences: you burn one of your limited T.O.'s each time you do that. Need to change the pitcher: Fine, but why does that require a manager visit? And if the skipper thinks the incoming pitcher needs a talking to before facing the next hitter (like this is some batter that the opposing team just snuck onto the roster two innings before) then that's one fewer time he can go out later. Not sure how/if this will work. In general I think there are far too many time-outs in American sports* and that baseball would be far better looking towards futbol as a model rather than to football. But as a way of capping mound visits and getting rid of the dead time in the game, I think this sort of idea is worth considering. * I turned on CBS on a Sunday afternoon two weeks or so ago and there was 4:12 left in the college hoops game that preceded the golf tournament I was looking for. So I left the set on only to watch, between the coach's time-outs, TV time-outs, replay reviews, and everything else, that the final 4:12 took just shy of a half-hour to play, all for a game that wasn't even all that close.

MFS62 Feb 16 2016 02:19 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Holy oxymoronic, Batman! That's like the officer telling his troops to maintain "detached contact" with the wagon train in the movie comedy Hallelujah Trail. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059250/ When one trooper asks what that means, the officer answers, "I don't know. Its in the manual". I saw the movie while it was in the Army, and that line has stuck with me ever since. This idea seems just as dumb, as exemplified by the situation FK mentioned above. Later

Edgy MD Feb 16 2016 03:52 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Is baseball still too slow or is Joel Sherman just committed to that notion. Football, of course, has the equivalent of a mound conference after every play.

Centerfield Feb 16 2016 03:54 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

I don't know. Seems very strange. Let's introduce time out, a means to stop the game clock, to a sport that has no game clock. I guess I could get used to it. The biggest adjustment would be pitching changes without a mound conference. Seems completely foreign right now, but they might be on to something here. Even if the timeouts don't work, this makes a lot of sense. Talk to your guy from the dugout phone before bringing him in. Also, I know I'm in the minority on this, but I got no issue with the length of games. Now that my kids are old enough to sit through them, there's no place I'd rather be. In fact, I went to see the Syracuse game in December and I felt like I barely settled in before the game was over (college basketball games are about 2 hours). And if I'm watching at home? Hell. Play all night.

bmfc1 Feb 16 2016 04:11 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

I don't know if time outs will help but I like anything that will move things along. One simple fix is that the manager/coach cannot leave the dugout to talk to the pitcher without removing the pitcher. No more freebie just to chat.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Feb 16 2016 04:55 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

It seems like reducing the mound-conference delays is more about changing the nature of taking out pitchers in general. IOW, its so customary to be "warned" before you go the real adjustment would be on the pitchers themselves. Surely you could signal a change without a second visit very easily. Would a rule stating 1 non-accumulating visit, per pitcher, per inning go far enough?

Fman99 Feb 16 2016 05:04 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

It's like trying to speed up sex by adding more titties! Oh, wait, that works actually. My bad.

Frayed Knot Feb 16 2016 05:08 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

One simple fix is that the manager/coach cannot leave the dugout to talk to the pitcher without removing the pitcher. No more freebie just to chat. Or, as Sherman is suggesting, you can go out there to chat but because you only get so many opportunities to stop the action -- including your replay challenges, any defensive conferences, etc. -- each mound visit you do make better be used wisely. And that goes for your catcher too. Shit, Posada would have used up the Yanqui timeout allotments by the second inning in most games. college basketball games are about 2 hours Yeah, an hour 40 minutes for the first 37 minutes of the game and then another half-hour for the final three. Again, it's the pace rather than just the raw length. The problem is that the exact same baseball game takes some 20-30 minutes longer than it did, not 100 years ago but more like 20 or 30. It's one thing if it's added time but it's another if all that added time is nothing but dead time. Nothing wrong on the surface with a three hour baseball game. It's the 3 hour average baseball game that I object to. Is baseball still too slow or is Joel Sherman just committed to that notion I mean, it's an opinion, but I think it's a widely held one and one to which I subscribe. As he notes in the linked article to that linked article, MLB chopped off 6 minutes off games from 2014 to 2015, but that's partly only because it had hit a record 3:02 and even in the improvement last year they were backsliding as the year went on. Games in the first half were down to 2:53 but up to 2:59 after the ASB.

Edgy MD Feb 16 2016 05:36 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Well, if data suggests they're going in a positive direction, and that has the potential to continue with inculturation and reinforcement of new norms, I would be hesitant to endorse any maneuver that fundamentally changes the game. Cutting six minutes per game (even from a peak) in one season is pretty big stuff!

Frayed Knot Feb 16 2016 08:27 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Although I think the worst thing MLB could do on this topic would be to hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner over their 6 minute decrease so I certainly don't have a problem with at least entertaining suggestions that might chop off another couple of minutes and Manfred is giving the opinion that this is a major cause of his. Not that that means he's scanning the papers for every proposal by the ink-stained wretches across the country but yaneverknow.

Frayed Knot Feb 25 2016 06:11 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Announced with the same press release with the 'Utley Rule', MLB has issued additional 'Pace of Game' initiatives: - manager and/or pitching coach visits to the mound will be limited to 30 seconds. I'm not sure they typically go much longer than that now and this does nothing to cap the number of visits or of catcher/infielder drop-bys. The other thing I'd like to see is an elimination of the incoming reliever warm-ups (or at least a cut back from eight pitches on top of his pen work) but perhaps the reliever union objected. - the between innings clock, which was newly installed last season, will be tweaked down by 20 seconds so as to more conform to the allotted commercial time. That time is 2:05 for local telecasts and 2:25 for national games (FOX Saturdays & ESPN Sunday night) but the timer that was put up on the scoreboard for the umps to monitor was set to 2:25 & 2:45 so there was still some dead time after the station came back from its break but prior to the first pitch being thrown. This should cut back on that gap although I suspect it's also going to result in a fair number of missed first pitches in an inning as stations try and jam as much ad time as possible into those 125 seconds, but I guess we'll see.

Edgy MD Feb 25 2016 06:30 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

I generally think umps do a perfectly fine intuitive job alternately indulging and breaking up mound conferences. Except in the (one time in 20? one in 100?) circumstance where a manager doesn't know if he's going to the pen until he speaks with his pitcher, there's no reason other than stalling that a skipper needs to walk to the mound to pull a guy. But that's part of the game's pageantry and we accept it. Embrace it at some level even. I'm not sure, but I tend to think they're thinking long games=bad, but not actually going after the right stuff. Tighten up the appeals system.

Ashie62 Feb 25 2016 11:02 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

How do NFL games go three hours to the minute? I do not know.

Frayed Knot Feb 25 2016 11:15 PM Re: Speed up the game by adding Time-outs ?

Ashie62 wrote: How do NFL games go three hours to the minute? I do not know. They don't. NFL games are longer, on average, than MLB games (with college games lasting longer still).