Major League Baseball issued a press release Monday to announce the formation of a new committee to improve the sport’s increasingly sluggish pace of games. It reads:

Major League Baseball announced that Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig has conducted a conference call with a new committee that will study the issue of pace of game. The goals of the committee will focus on decreasing time of game and improving the overall pace of play in the 2015 regular season and beyond.

The committee will be chaired by Atlanta Braves President John Schuerholz. Other members include (alphabetically) New York Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson; MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark; Boston Red Sox partner Michael Gordon; MLB Chief Operating Officer Rob Manfred; MLB Executive Vice President, Baseball Operations Joe Torre; and Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner.

Commissioner Selig said: “We have the greatest game in the world, but we are always looking for ways to improve it. The game is at its highest levels of popularity and we will continue to strive to identify ways that can build on its stature well into the future. With the cooperation of all appropriate parties, we can make progress on improving the pace of play, and we will have recommendations in the very near future for the 2015 season. I believe that this group has the experience and the perspective to be mindful of our game’s traditions while being creative about our approach in the future.”

Well good. Though, as Selig points out, MLB is doing just fine despite the near-constant hand-wringing about its imminent death, the league absolutely should be working to create a better nightly product. And that definitely includes speeding up games.

Even as offensive outputs have declined around baseball, the length of games has skyrocketed in recent years.

The independent Atlantic League tried out a series of changes this season to decrease the length of games. Some of those might make sense for MLB, but perhaps none more so than a couple of rules that already exist but are rarely enforced.

Pitchers are technically allowed only 12 seconds between pitches with no one on base, and batters should be limited in the amount of time they have to adjust all their gear outside the batter’s box. Less time between pitches, obviously, would mean more game action and less downtime.