The Olympics deployed one without runners on base. It works. We need it in the majors. Time between pitches is the biggest reason games are longer than ever -- 23 minutes longer than for a nine-inning game, 34 minutes longer than and 35 minutes longer than A few years ago , Grant Bisbee studied two nearly identical games in terms of score, pitches thrown and baserunners -- one from and one from -- and found nearly 33 additional minutes elapsed in the game in dead time between pitches.
Rob Arthur's study at FiveThirtyEight in showed that velocity increases when pitchers take more time between pitches. With pitchers maxing out more than ever on every pitch -- especially relievers, who are throwing a higher percentage of innings than in or -- that walk around the mound and wipe of the brow adds up over pitches. So institute a pitch clock and force batters to remain in the box.
Both sides lose a little something, but pitchers will be forced to work faster and they probably won't throw quite as hard. Command pitchers who work fast think Mark Buehrle will be more in demand, batters will make more contact and fielders will get more opportunities to display their athleticism.
The concept of the strike zone is simple. The stewards of the game identify a vertical space over the irregular pentagon that is home plate. If a pitcher throws a baseball in that space over the plate, it is a strike. Anything else is a ball.
This sounds easy. It is not. It is not easy because the human eye is fallible and the human brain susceptible to bias. It is not easy because catchers have been taught to exploit these fallibilities and biases. It is time to end this charade and transition to the era of the robot umpire.
MLB has christened this system ABS -- automated balls and strikes -- because robot umpires sound like something Boston Dynamics would make. I don't care if it's a creepy Chuck E. Cheese animatronic behind home plate. If it calls balls and strikes accurately and consistently, it will be a massive upgrade. Yes, the technology remains a work in progress. Breaking balls are a challenge.
So is defining a hitter's proper strike zone. And the league-wide zone may adapt over time, as it often does. But at least it won't by dozens of different interpretations of the zone by individual umps. The underpinnings of the system are sound. The iterations being made after use in the Low-A Southeast League are instructive.
Last week's Field of Dreams experiment was an opportunity for Major League Baseball to break the mid-August monotony of the baseball season -- a marquee event with a pop culture tie-in to an iconic movie, and a made-for-TV spectacle in the cornfields of Iowa. Yet if you tried to watch a baseball game in Iowa through the MLB.
Dyersville, Iowa, is located four hours from Chicago, four hours from Minneapolis, three hours from Milwaukee and more than five hours from St. Louis and Kansas City. But it is worth noting that fans of basically every sports league not just the MLB have to find workarounds every year to watch home games for their favorite teams. This usually means a shoddy stream that at best has a toxic chat bar on the side and at worst lags. Nice to know blackout restrictions will still be in place in spite of the fact no fans even allowed to attend games.
Even more frustrating is the fact that the league will enforce the blackout rules in despite fans quarantining through the COVID pandemic. And fans seem to have picked up on the insanity of that. MLB will still blackout games in your hometown even though no one can go to them, including visiting TV broadcasters. But don't worry, y'all — there will be a runner on second in extra innings just in case there is a risk you'll see a little extra baseball.
So, the league will have more fans than ever before turning to streaming options to watch in Despite the general consensus, the commissioner of the league, Rob Manfred, cannot magically fix the blackout problem. Yes, even Forbes got it wrong :. If Manfred is sincere in his comments about baseball being a part of the healing process, the league should lift its arcane blackout policy for Yes, you read that right. Because the regional networks will force the teams back to the table to devalue the deal if they feel it is compromised.
This brings us to the biggest misconception about MLB blackouts. The blackout policy associated with watching Major League Baseball games is a source of constant frustration for fans. But while the frustration persists, the confusion is something we can fix. This is probably the most pervasive, incorrect idea out there. Brown even suggests this in his Forbes piece:. Unlike other sports that use blackouts to drive fans to games, in many cases across the country, territories can be so far afield as to make blackouts as a means to get fans to games, ridiculous.
Baseball blackouts are based on regional television broadcasting rights. This is the 2nd most pervasive misconception, often manifest in the idea that Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball could simply wave a magic wand and make blackouts go away.
Again, even Brown suggests this:. If Manfred is sincere in his comments about baseball being a part of the healing process, the league should lift its arcane blackout policy for As a fan, this meant that those games were available to watch free.
They earn not only the ad revenue during game broadcasts, but a percentage of every single cable subscription in their broadcast area assuming they are on the basic tier. The RSN therefore benefits by drawing itself as large an area as possible, even overlapping with other teams.
Here in Des Moines, our local cable provider long featured the Chicago teams in the basic tier. Several years ago, they switched to Fox Sports Midwest and Cubs fans lost their mind. It was a beautiful time.
0コメント