Home plate umpire Jim Wolf waits as the pitch clock counts down during a spring training game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday in Phoenix. Morry Gash/Associated Press
The first day of the rest of Major League Baseball history arrived Saturday in Florida and Arizona, where all 30 teams played spring training games with the newly implemented pitch clock serving as a metronome, one that MLB officials hope will liven the game’s rhythms and broaden its appeal.
The first crisis of the new rules regime came approximately 2 hours, 39 minutes later when home plate umpire John Libka called a game-ending third strike on the Atlanta Braves’ Cal Conley with two outs and the bases loaded in a tie game in the ninth inning – a strike he called because Conley was not in the batter’s box by the time the pitch clock showed eight seconds remaining. His Braves and the Boston Red Sox ended their spring debut in a 6-6 tie.
“I don’t think this (rule) was intended for a game to end like that,” Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker told The Athletic, and of course he was right. MLB officials did not push the once-unthinkable pitch clock into America’s pastime to change its outcomes. They implemented it to shorten games and create less downtime, to quicken the pace and shorten the time between baseball’s more exciting actions. And Saturday, the unofficial start of the pitch clock era, it did all of that with a flourish.
Eight Grapefruit League games began at 1:05 p.m. Eastern. All eight were complete by 4 p.m. The Red Sox and Braves combined for 12 runs, 19 hits and eight walks but finished in 2 hours, 39 minutes. The Toronto Blue Jays and Pittsburgh Pirates combined for 16 runs on 20 hits and 10 walks. They were done in 2:47 – faster than the average regular season nine-inning game in 2022 by 16 minutes with almost double the average runs scored.
“It was a nice pace,” Cincinnati Manager David Bell said after the Reds’ 4-3 win over the Cleveland Guardians lasted 2:23. “It wasn’t rushed, but it just kept everything moving.”
Per MLB, the average time of the first 17 spring training games has been 2:36. The average time of spring training games in 2022 was 3:01 – or 25 minutes slower. MLB officials laughed when they saw that last number Saturday: When they tested the pitch clock in the minors last year, the average game time dropped by . . . 25 minutes, a number MLB representatives trumpeted when selling the rule this winter.
“It’s going to take some getting used to for some guys, but some guys, the feedback was they liked it because they had to get ready,” Washington Nationals Manager Dave Martinez said. “There wasn’t much thinking. Some of our infielders said, ‘You got to get ready right away.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s good.’ It keeps you focused.”
Executives from MLB’s baseball operations department fanned out around Arizona and Florida to see the new rules in action. Most of them had seen it all many times before – at minor league stadiums across the country, where time limits were tested in recent years. They know skeptics posited that Braves-Red Sox scenario – high-leverage, game-ending situations, particularly in October, not February – as a knock against the clock. But those executives also know that, for the rule to work or to have any power by the time the playoffs roll around, the umpires must enforce it firmly now. Learning to endure an awkward tie in February could help everyone avoid a postseason-altering moment in October.
Conley said Libka told him the player was looking down when his allotted time expired. Conley said he was looking at the catcher, whom he remembered as standing. Replays showed the catcher, Elih Marrero, was indeed standing at the time of the violation. But the rule states the catcher must be in the catcher’s box with nine seconds left on the clock. It does not require him to be in a crouch.
“Not really sure if the pitcher was ready to go – catcher definitely wasn’t,” Conley told reporters.
“You’ve got to forget about (what the catcher’s doing); you better be attentive to the pitcher, like the rule says,” Snitker said. Then he floated the idea of trying to use the catcher to distract the batter into violating the timer. If anything is guaranteed by the pitch clock, it is that everyone in the sport is brainstorming ways to exploit it.
The same seems true of the rule that hamstrings the infield shift. Few players pushed the limits of the rule, which requires two infielders on each side of second base, with their feet in the dirt, when the pitcher releases the ball. But infielders from multiple teams, including Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Josh Harrison, waited until the last second to move their feet from the edge of the grass to the edge of the dirt.
But the pitch clock grabbed the most notice Saturday. MLB hopes that by Opening Day it will be earning very little notice at all.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
