Too Slow?

Here’s an interesting article for you: https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/03/17/baseball-preview-pace-of-play-crisis

I must admit, when I first saw the headline, I thought, “here we go, a bunch of fringe people trying to generate buzz about something of which they have no real understanding.”  But then I read the article, and it has some good points.

The irony though, is that while they fault analytics for a lot of the problems of the game, they cite (incessantly) detailed stats (analytics) to show how the game is suffering.  Something like, “Baseball clubs implementing the shift because they know player X hits the ball to the left side 73% of the time is the reason why baseball games are 13.9 minutes slower than they were in 2010.”

I mean, baseball is a game of stats and analysis, but when does it become too much? 

So I gave it a good reading, and I like some of the suggestions – like limiting pitching staff.  The author points out that starting pitchers know they won’t be going that deep into games (or at least that they don’t have to), so they’re throwing full gas from the start. Fastballs are getting faster and hits are coming less frequently.  And batters help by swinging for the fences. Limiting pitching staffs forces a manager to leave his pitchers in longer, so the pitchers in turn have to adjust their pitching to conserve their arms.

But yeah, reading the article you can see how pace of play is taking a hit. But another problem of course is that teams are trying to get every statistical edge they can. It’s detracted from the purity of the game – the “just go out and play” aspect. This seems somewhat apparent in analyzing the amount of time it’s taking between pitches because pitchers have so many other calculations and situations to think through before delivering the ball.

Personally, I can’t say that there’s much wrong with the game right now. The article faults the amount of time people are actually moving, but have you seen an NFL game?  Sixty minutes long and only a quarter of that actually action.  But apparently we like pretty, shiny things; and so we’ve got to make those changes because people just don’t have the patience for it anymore.

In the end, some part of me wants to think it’s all about the money – what can we squeeze out of a game in advertising?  Just sitting there and actually enjoying it just doesn’t cut it, and this is another sad reminder that we’re losing so much to the frenzy of life.