Colorado Rockies: What the new pace of play initiatives mean for baseball

Yesterday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced the new pace of play initiatives for the 2018 season and they were a bit peculiar.

Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the new rules for to help “pace of play” for games in baseball.

There are a few aspects of this that will make it interesting. Here are the new rules:

1. Each team will be limited to six mound visits (that aren’t for substitutions) per game. In extra inning games, teams will be granted one more visit per inning
2.         Commercial breaks will be cut down by 20 seconds, with the exception of postseason games. This means that locally televised games will go from 2 minutes, 25 seconds to 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Nationally televised games will go from 2:45 to 2:25. Commercial breaks in the postseason will remain at 2:55.

Exceptions to the mound visit rule

There are exceptions to the mound visit rule, however.

• A pitcher-catcher conference between batters.
• An infielder goes to the mound to clean his spikes during rainy/muddy conditions.
• Any visit involving a potential injury.
• Any visit after a pinch-hitter is announced.

Also, if a team has used all of their allotted warm-ups, the home-plate umpire is able to allow the catcher to visit the pitcher following a cross-up of pitches.

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Commercial breaks and pitchers warming up

For the commercial breaks, now, pitchers will be allowed to warm up with as many pitches as they like as long as they fit within the time limits. Here’s how the countdown will go.

• 25 seconds left: Umpires direct pitcher to complete final warm-up pitch.
• 20 seconds left: Batter is announced by the PA announcer and must leave on-deck circle.
• 0 seconds left: Pitcher must deliver his first pitch to the batter.

The umpire can award the pitcher additional warm-up pitches under special circumstances, like a potential injury, the grounds crew tending to the field, etc.

Also, when the timer starts will depend on the situation.

• Between innings: Timer begins immediately after the final out is recorded.
• During pitching change: Timer begins when the reliever leaves the bullpen and crosses the warning track (or foul line in the case of bullpens that are located on the field of play).

Takeaways

With the commercial breaks, quite frankly, I’m shocked that they are cutting them down. If you check out old games (on radio or TV that are from the late 80s or earlier), commercial breaks are often 1:15 or less. So, cutting back on the commercial breaks will help out a lot.

However, personally, I don’t think the mound visit rule will be helpful at all. As Joel Sherman of New York Post and MLB Network notes, there is no penalization for the teams that make more than six mound visits.

So, for example, if Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black want to have more visits for his team himself, he may not raise an argument if the opposing team uses more than their allotted six visits. However, if they do, as Sherman noted, there could be some issues. One person commented to Sherman’s post said this, which will probably be very true…

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In other words, the rule will probably cause a delay, which wouldn’t happen if this stupid rule, in my opinion, wasn’t in place in the first place.