Sports

The radical rule change to fix MLB’s pace-of-play problem

Pitch clocks? Sure, go ahead. Commissioner Rob Manfred very well might just go ahead soon enough, unilaterally if he must, on that reform.

But The Post likes to think bigger — in minutes, not seconds, as Major League Baseball works to cut its game times and appeal to more young customers.

And if we’re talking about shaving off chunks of time rather than nibbles, getting contests closer to that 2 ¹/₂ -hour sweet spot, then we need something more radical than regulating how quickly a pitcher releases the ball.

We need to limit pitching changes.

In 2018, teams set a new record by averaging a combined 8.41 pitchers per nine-inning games, according to data provided by Major League Baseball. That broke the previous mark of 8.20, set in 2017, which surpassed the standard of 8.00 established in 2016, which … you get the idea. Clubs teamed to use an average of 6.91 pitchers in 1999, and here we are now.





Analytics — the cause of, and solution to, all of baseball’s problems, as Homer Simpson once said of alcohol and life — can own this evolution. You can’t be surprised that the introduction of the opener last season resulted in more pitching changes than ever.

I love the opener. I love the ever-increasing usage of data, which gets more sophisticated by the season, to inform any and all strategy. Yet something has got to give. The beauty in restricting pitching changes — an innovation that has been discussed by MLB and the Players Association yet is less likely to be instituted for 2019 than pitch clocks — comes in the reality that doing so wouldn’t mitigate the game’s intellectual component. It would simply recalibrate it.





Here’s my proposal: When a pitcher enters the game, he must face a minimum of three batters in his first inning unless he records the third out prior to reaching that threshold. Simple enough, right? If you go to your southpaw with two outs and he retires the lefty batter, beautiful, you can insert a new pitcher the next frame and we’re none the slower in game time. If that hitter reaches base, though, we don’t have to sit through the manager sauntering right back to the mound to execute a second switch in two at-bats. The pitcher must stick around and pitch to the next batter.

Already thinking about injury shenanigans to circumvent that rule? The Post, too. Hence this addendum: If a reliever departs the game with a purported injury before completing his three-batter minimum, then he becomes ineligible to pitch in his team’s next game. We always can tweak that — if it’s the pitcher’s second straight game, then he misses the next two games and so on — if we suspect an outbreak of foul play.





MLB officials contend a difference exists between time of game and pace of game. However, the two are inextricably linked. When do people look at their watches (or at the clocks on their phones) and utter profanities over how late it’s getting? Most likely during a break in the action.

Baseball nicely corralled one such break last year, collectively bargaining a cap on mound visits (six per team per game, with one more for each extra inning) with the players, who grumbled even as an agreement became public. It turned out to be a total win, producing zero controversy and shaving average combined mound visits per game from 7.41 to 3.94, nearly a 50 percent cut. Not surprisingly, the average time of nine-inning game shrunk from an all-time worst of 3:05:11 in 2017 to 3:00:44 last year.





Given how well that initiative went, don’t be surprised if the mound-visit maximum gets cut further for this season. Unfortunately for fans, the smoothness of this operation did nothing to smooth over the massive tensions between the teams (and the league) and the players (and their union). A second straight disappointing free-agent market, with the chase for Bryce Harper and Manny Machado devolving from a sweepstakes to a sleep-stakes, has ensured that any and all discussions feature significant venom.

Nevertheless, it’s impossible to envision Manfred doing nothing on the pace-of-play front. Because he first proposed the pitch clock two years ago, the commissioner possesses the legal right to introduce it this season without obtaining the players’ consent. Given that a 20-second pitch clock has existed at the Double-A and Triple-A levels since 2015, many young pitchers should be familiar and comfortable with it, and it would speed up proceedings. As Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci recently noted, citing FanGraphs, the average time between pitches increased from 21.7 seconds in 2008 to 24.1 seconds last season.

Based on past negotiations, Manfred has the ability to implement a 20-second pitch clock in all situations. Violators would get charged with a ball, although there could be a grace period with warnings.

None of it can hurt. Though how many fans really harumph when Masahiro Tanaka takes his time delivering the ball to home plate? Nowhere as many, I’m betting based on common sense, who yawn at yet another pitching change.

Baseball, in a bit of a funk with a depressing winter threatening a fourth straight attendance decline, needs to think big on all fronts: shortening the service-time requirements for free agency. More expressions of emotion on the field. And quickening the darn pace. The sooner they embrace such grand changes, the sooner their games will end … with more satisfied customers, to boot.





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