CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
Props to Manfred for changes that help grand ol’ game keep pace in modern era
Pitchers pitch.
Hitters remain in the box and swing the bat.
Major League Baseball games featuring 21 combined hits are completed in just 3 hours and 11 minutes.
Dang it, Rob Manfred. This is working. And I have to give MLB’s commissioner credit.
It’s way too early to say anything definitive about the 2023 Astros, other than the fact they should be in the playoffs again.
If you worry about Alex Bregman still hitting .000 after three games, that’s on you, not one of the best third basemen in the sport.
But the Astros’ nationally televised season opener Thursday only needed 2:38 to be played.
The team’s follow-up victory lasted two minutes longer.
And on a perfect weather Saturday afternoon as April began and 37,519 kept booing Chicago White Sox reliever (and loser) Joe Kelly over and over, a professional game that would have required at least four hours a season ago was inked into the official history book with 3:11 attached to a 6-4 Astros win.
Ten total runs. Twenty-one hits and the same amount left on base.
One error.
Kelly giving up two hits and a run while Chicago collapsed in the late innings, and one of the biggest whiners in sports was handed another L.
Three hits for Yordan Alvarez, and two apiece for Jeremy Peña, José Abreu and Kyle Tucker.
And you could watch it all, in person or at home or in a bar or on your phone, in barely more than three hours, and then still have time to grill out and watch the first game of the NCAA men’s Final Four after the Astros won.
I don’t want to overpraise MLB’s commissioner after a very small sample size.
It’s just three games, right?
Let’s see if there’s midseason slippage.
The real pace-of-play test will be in the playoffs, when pressure becomes white hot and every pitch truly matters.
But I will publicly state that this Saturday at the ballpark was a smooth and fast-paced one, even with all the hits and nine different pitchers.
Is this America’s pastime again?
Heck, no.
The NFL rules all, college football isn’t far behind and you could spend a week (if you want to go crazy) watching ESPN in the morning without ever seeing a glimpse of the grand ol’ game.
But three contests into the long 162, Manfred’s determined push to improve pace of play appears to not just be working but making a considerable impact.
At least inside the home of MLB’s reigning world champions.
“The clock makes guys get in the box quicker on the hitting side,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “It makes pitchers aware of the clock.”
He also said “not really” when asked if baseball with a pitch clock in 2023 is comparable to baseball in the good ol’ days.
Baker compared the ever-present clocks in center field to a shot clock. Primarily because college basketball was on his managerial mind. But also probably because that’s what MLB’s pitch clock is comparable to: a hardwood shot clock.
They glow golden and distantly hover above the playing field.
Sometimes it’s 0:20. Others, it’s 0:15.
But the clock is always waiting. And the second that a pitcher receives the ball, the clock starts tick, tick, ticking and the familiar chess match begins again.
Only faster and with much less wasted time in our already super-busy lives.
“(Pitchers are) taking it down to the limit a whole bunch of times,” Baker said. “You hope that they’re psychologically and mentally and emotionally ready to throw the next pitch. It doesn’t give you a whole bunch of time to catch your breath or regroup. But guys are adjusting.”
I spent the last couple years begging for Manfred to ban an absurd shift that had turned real MLB games into a video game.
On Saturday, comebackers and singles found holes that would have been covered up with infielders swarming one side of the infield.
“That was a prime example of where the shifts have helped the offense,” said Baker, who specifically highlighted the benefits that Tucker and Alvarez received. “Thank God for that, that they changed the rules.”
Tucker still had time to go 2-for-5 with two RBIs. He was only a few feet and an outstretched White Sox glove away from going 3-for-5 with an electric home run.
Tucker could do all this in 15 seconds and still make hard contact: Step outside the box, rub his hands with dirt, perform a half-swing, touch his helmet and uniform, lift his hands above and behind his head.
Sometimes he even touched home plate with his bat before another pitch was fired, and the latest replacement arm on the mound still had a couple extra seconds to spare.
If Manfred really wants to fix MLB, he’ll find a way to have starting pitchers last longer than five innings. Pitching changes, and all the dead time required, are still the real drag.
Baseball is the most beautiful game in the world when it is played the right way.
Playing a baseball game in 2:38, 2:40 or 3:11 in 2023?
Manfred is finally making a mark on the game, in a good way.