New rules getting a mixed reception

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It took 2 hours, 19 minutes for the Miami Marlins to beat the Houston Astros 4-3 in a spring training game Monday — a game so fast that Ryan Murphy, a lifelong Houston fan, found himself lingering in the ballpark for a while after.

“I’m a baseball fan,” said Murphy, wearing 2022 Astros World Series gear, “so if I stay here for four hours, for two hours, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Faced with criticism of dwindling cultural relevance and a laggardly product compared to other major sports, Major League Baseball introduced a set of new rules this year to speed up games and attract younger fans.

The bases are bigger to improve player safety and may also encourage more aggressive baserunning. Pitchers can only disengage from the pitching rubber twice per plate appearance. And there’s a new pitch clock that gives players 30 seconds to resume play between batters. Between pitches, pitchers have 15 seconds with nobody on and 20 seconds if there is a baserunner.

Less than a week into the spring training exhibition schedule, MLB seems to be getting what it wants, shaving about 20 minutes off the average length of games compared to last spring.

Players have been mostly pleased with the rollout.

“The game feels more exciting,” Washington Nationals left-hander Patrick Corbin said. “Even some of the highscoring games are under three hours.”

Fans seeing the newlook sport for the first time this week have had mixed reviews. Some, like Murphy, are indifferent to the changes.

“It’s irrelevant to us as fans, honestly,” said Murphy, who traveled from Utah to West Palm Beach for Houston’s exhibition season. “Players might think something different of it, but for us it’s all the same.

“How would I know the bases are bigger, honestly? I mean, we see a pitch clock out here, and we know it’s there, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

Some fans like the idea of being in and out of a game in under three hours, which is about how long an average nineinning baseball game lasted in 2022.

Others feel a nostalgic pull to how the sport has always been.

“I’m not a big fan of the pitch count,” said Mark Mezzatesta, who traveled to Florida from Queens in New York. “I feel like that’s rushing the game. I feel it was fine the way it was. Pitchers do take a while. And batters do take a while, too. Fifteen seconds with nobody on base and 20 seconds with somebody on base is too short.”

Barbara Schiffman of Roseland, New Jersey, said she’s OK with some of the rules but “they should never let a game end on either the pitch clock or the batter clock.”

She was referring to a recent game between Atlanta and Boston that ended in a tie after Braves prospect Cal Conley was assessed an automatic strike for a pitch clock violation.

Conley originally thought he’d won the game with a two-out, bases-loaded walk but instead was given an at-batending strike after the umpire said he wasn’t set in the box as the clock wound under 8 seconds.

“When you get to that point in the game,” Schiffman said, “you’ve got to let the game play out without the clock. That would be my only concern.”