Written by Jeff Shand-Lubbers at Sporting Charts
By now, baseball fans have long since heard all of the complaints about the modern game; the games take too long… pitchers take too long between pitches… batters adjust their gloves after every pitch…batters take too many pitches, etc., etc., etc. As a result these rituals have led to a longer and less interesting game for serious fans, but especially casual fans, and have led to the implementation of a number of changes for the 2015 season designed to reduce the overall length of games.
Of course, as we’ve discussed on multiple occasions on this site, there’s more to just a slower game than longer game times. It’s one thing for games to take a long time when there is constant action (such as a lot of pitches being thrown late in a close game), but it’s another thing when the time between pitches is increasing during times of less activity (such as batters constantly asking for time in the fourth inning of a blowout game). The latter was one of the issues baseball was working to fix with the 2015 season, such as by requiring batters to keep at least one foot in the batter’s box following most pitches.
By threatening (but apparently not carrying out on) fining players who didn’t follow these improvements, baseball saw a total decrease of six minutes in the average game time in 2015 compared to 2014. Most viewed this as an overall win for baseball, as many were skeptical of any attempts to speed up the game.
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