Pitch clock doesn’t feel right

Imagine going to your favorite restaurant.

You’ve gone there hundreds of times before, love the food and even know some of the wait staff.

You sit down and order your regular meal. Once your food arrives, you start to dig in and it just doesn’t taste right. It’s not bad, but it isn’t the taste you’ve become accustomed to. After powering through the meal, you’re left dissatisfied and with a nagging feeling of being cheated out of your favorite meal.

That’s how it felt finally going to my first Major League Baseball game this season.

In an effort to speed up games this season, the MLB has implemented a new pitch clock rule.

Pitchers only have 15 seconds before they need to throw their next pitch when the bases are empty, and when there are runners on, it is increased to 20 seconds. If they fail to do so, the umpire rules an automatic ball in favor of the batter. Conversely, the batter needs to be in the batter’s box and ready to hit with no less than eight seconds on the pitch clock, or it is ruled an automatic strike.

While some see this as taking away a pitcher’s ability to control the pace of the game, some pitchers have found ways to make it work.

The Milwaukee Brewers’ Corbin Burns is an example of this. With two outs, runners on first and second and a 3-2 count, he chose to hold the ball until the pitch clock was near zero.

Knowing that the baserunners would be getting a head start, he turned to pick off the runner at second base, ending the inning.

In short, while it does take the opportunity for the pitcher to just hold the ball and make the batter uncomfortable, it doesn’t eliminate all strategy.

I have also found that the new pitch clock rule makes the product better for viewing on television.

In the past, I would often find myself getting distracted. In the top of the second inning, I could look down at my phone and when I look up all of the sudden it is the top of the third. When a game is nationally televised, the problem gets even worse with broadcasters who are unfamiliar losing my interest quickly.

Now that there is less downtime between each pitch, it is easier to stay focused. Watching on TV means that you only view what the camera is focused on at that time. You can’t get lost in what the third baseman is doing and miss a pitch. With less downtime between pitches, there is less time with a camera just focusing on people standing around doing nothing.

In the middle of April, I had the opportunity to go back home to Oak Creek and eventually make it to a Brewers’ game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Overall, it was a good game. The Brewers won 4-0, Woodruff had a good outing on the mound, and Willy Adames treated us to a home run. Yet, the game still felt like it was missing something. It didn’t feel like the typical game-day experience.

I came to the conclusion that the game went by too quickly. Just as I could get distracted and miss chunks of a game on TV in the past, it felt like small distractions at the ballpark ultimately detracted from my attention to the actual game.

The pace has also become a problem for drinking at ball games.

Teams traditionally cut off alcohol sales after the seventh inning to allow fans to sober up before getting into their cars and driving home. With faster games, those final two innings go by quicker and provide less time for fans to sober up. Rather than stopping alcohol sales earlier, many teams (including Milwaukee) pushed them later into the game to make up for lost revenue due to innings one through seven going by quicker.

Not only is this unsafe, but it is another way the pitch clock degrades the game-day experience for responsible fans.

The pitch clock clearly isn’t all bad. Living 300 miles away from Milwaukee means I have to stream most games anyway and it provides new interesting situations to occur.

Going to games now feels like getting food from your favorite restaurant that just tastes off. I get excited for a product I love and have consumed hundreds of times, but the experience leaves you feeling a little bit empty. Then realizing that you paid an arm and a leg for this disappointing experience just adds to the feeling of being cheated, but that’s a conversation for next time.