TEMPE, Ariz. — A year ago, major-leaguers were facing a largely unknown world: baseball with a clock.
Now, they may be used to it, but that doesn’t mean they’re all happy about it.
“We don’t like it, but we’ve got to embrace it,” Angels closer Carlos Estévez said.
Major league baseball had been played at an increasingly … deliberate … pace over the past couple decades, slowing to the point that the sport’s leaders adopted a pitch timer in 2023. Pitchers had 15 seconds to begin their delivery with the bases empty, and 20 seconds with at least one runner on base. Hitters had to be in the box and ready for the pitch by the time the timer hit eight seconds.
The result was the average game decreased by 24 minutes.
This year, the time has been cut to 18 seconds with a runner on base.
“I think everybody got used to it,” Angels second baseman Brandon Drury said. “At first, it was weird. Obviously we had never played like that before. I think last spring I got used to it. Nothing you can do it about it, so you’d better get used to it.”
Drury said he ended up with no complaints about the timer. And he even enjoyed it when he was in the field.
“I did like playing defense better with the pace,” Drury said. “Sometimes if you have someone out there who takes forever each pitch, you are less in a rhythm on defense.”
Hitters also had the option of taking a timeout once during an at-bat. Drury said his practice, which seemed to be common among most big-leaguers, was to take a timeout after getting to two strikes.
Pitchers, however, didn’t have the same freedom. A pitcher could step off the rubber or throw a pickoff to stop the clock up to three times with a runner on, but with the bases empty the pitcher could not call a timeout. He would have to use a mound visit.
“It seems kind of unfair, right?” Angels left-hander Patrick Sandoval said. “It would be cool if we got at least (timeout). We should get one.”
Sandoval said…
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