Former New York Mets general manager and current TSN baseball analyst Steve Phillips revealed his idea on Toronto 1050AM Thursday morning, explaining that there’s a far better way to speed up games than by merely modifying the intentional walk.

“My solution to this, and nobody likes it, and yet I think it is something to consider: three balls is a walk and two strikes is a strikeout,” Phillips said. “That would increase the rate of the game and pace of the play. Forty percent of at-bats go to a 1-1 count anyway, so that’s effectively what you are doing, starting from a 1-1 count. In my mind, that’s the solution.

“From 1-1, you’d end up with the same number of strikeouts and the same number of walks as we currently get in the game today,” Phillips continued. “So it’s not impacting the numbers — because that’s the other thing that is sort of sacred — but that’s my solution for it. You’d save close to 40 pitches per game and think how much more quickly the games would go.”

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Well, okay then.

Phillips does have a point — eliminating the fourth ball from a walk and third strike from a strikeout would increase the pace of play. Pitchers threw almost four pitches per pate appearance (3.88) in 2016, the highest it has been since 2006, the first year baseball instituted leaguewide drug testing. Taking one or two of these away would certainly shorten the length of games, but Phillips’s plan may go further than he expects.

There were 65,374 at-bats after the count went to 1-1 in 2016, 39.5 percent of all at-bats last season. So yes, Phillips is correct with his 40-percent figure. But the rest is folly. Under his system, the league would theoretically lose approximately 53,000 at-bats (based on pitches that occurred on 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, 3-0, 3-1 and 3-2 counts via MLB’s Statcast), roughly a third (32.1 percent) of the season total. It would cost significantly more plate appearances (around 59,000).

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And, as expected, eliminating pitches would reduce the length of a major league game. Based on the pace of play from last season (an average of 22.7 seconds between the pitches in the plate appearance), Phillips plan would shave almost 30 minutes off a traditional nine-inning game.

Plus, there likely wouldn’t be the same number of strikeouts and walks as we currently see in the majors due to a reduced pitch count. Since 2006, pitchers strike out more batters per nine innings during their first 50 pitches than they do over their next 50, so you could expect there to be more strikeouts due to fresher arms if you reduce an individual pitcher’s workload by implementing Phillips’ plan. That would depress scoring as well, leaving fans with a shorter, potentially less exciting game.

The hosts gave Phillips an out, asking if he was serious about this radical plan, and Phillips did not waver.

“Yeah, I am being serious,” Phillips said. “I called and left it on the commissioner’s voice mail box in the middle of the night.”