ESPN has a fun profile of Commissioner Manfred..
Leaguewide attendance totals are down considerably this season (as compared with pre-pandemic totals), on pace to be the lowest since 1996. Among all American fans who watch sports on television, baseball fans are the oldest: the median age is 57, up from 52 a generation ago.
I appreciate that the commissioner is admitting the game is slooooooow and boring. I have stopped watching, and that’s WITH a first place Mens team. I realized that when I did watch I was either bored and super-tweeting to stay interested, or I couldn’t wait for it to be over. So thanks to some lousy scheduling by MLB (Weekday day games and a poorly timed for me West Coast trip, I broke the habit of watching SNY and I haven’t missed it at all. I peek at the score when I remember and then I go back to doing something that’s actually fun.
A pitch clock would give a pitcher 14 seconds between pitches with no runners on base; 18 or 19 seconds with runners on. There’s now an average of 23.8 seconds between pitches. With the help of testing and refining the pitch timer in its minor leagues laboratory, MLB projects a pitch timer would shave an average of 30 minutes off game times, getting close to fans’ “ideal” of 2 hours, 30 minutes. Manfred says the pitch clock represents one of the best ways for baseball to better compete in a world of countless entertainment options and ever-shrinking attention spans.
Good. I vote the pitch clock by 7 seconds and we find another 30 minutes.
The average time for video-replay reviews of umpire calls this season is 1 minute, 37 seconds, up 21 seconds from last year. In 2024, Manfred says, the automated ball-strike zone system, or as it’s commonly called, “robot umpires,” will likely be introduced.
My idea here is we place a referee near each base. That ref makes an immediate and binding non-reviewable call. That shaves the time down to effectively zero.
One idea I don’t hear anyone discuss is my idea for rebalancing the TV commercial load. Under my system, and I am serious, they should EXTEND early inning breaks by 30 seconds. The early innings aren’t the problem (unless there are openers, which should be banned) – it’s the back end. So when the game is new and fresh, you can handle a 2:30 break. Later, when it’s a slog, lets shorten to 90 seconds. If you watch games, including in NYC where teams are in first, a lot of the inventory is unsold anyway so what’s the point.
As for Openers – that’s a simple fix. If you start the game as the pitcher you are ineligible to pitch in the next 4 games. Done. Having a middle reliever opener start a game is bad for marketing.
But hey baseball, the damage is done. You’re going to need someone chasing 56 games or something amazing to happen to draw me in the way the NFL has with fun storylines (Brady Anything). You’re 15 years away from someone chasing Ripken, and Pete Alonso hitting 75 home runs isn’t going to do it – you played that card and broke the game.
I’ve stopped watching.
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