Major League Baseball’s New Time Rules Are Awesome

One of the best things about baseball is that it has no clock. It’s what makes the game different from all other sports. Well, that, and the fact that it’s the only one where the defense has the ball. It’s a leisurely game. You’re given nine innings to win and if you’re tied at the end of that, you get free baseball until someone wins.

However, there’s a big difference between a leisurely two-hour game and those regularly slogging in at three-and-a-half hours for only nine innings of play. So Major League Baseball put in new clocks — the baseball equivalent of shot clocks, essentially — to quicken the pace by shortening the breaks between innings and pitching changes. The League also instituted regulations requiring hitters to keep a foot in the batter’s box, with notable exceptions (e.g. foul balls, wild pitches, time outs). The shot clocks are 2 minutes, 25 seconds for locally televised games and 2 minutes, 45 seconds for nationally televised games. Pitchers have to throw their last warm-ups before 30 seconds remain.

The rules were met with much criticism. Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt said the baseball clock “makes me cringe.” Michael Brendan Dougherty, editor of the baseball newsletter The Slurve wrote, “We hate the pitch clock.”

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