By Ethan Miller ‘23
For the 2023 season, Major League Baseball implemented a clock for both pitchers and hitters in efforts to speed up the game. Pitchers have 15 seconds to deliver their next pitch; batters must be in the batter’s box with more than 8 seconds left in that clock. MLB has been searching for a way to “appeal to the youth” and make the game of baseball more exciting to watch. Maybe they have. But they’ve sold the soul of America’s pastime in the process.
To MLB’s credit, game times have decreased significantly so far in 2023. According to baseballreference.com, the average time of game in 2023 is currently at 2 hours and 39 minutes. In 2022, the average time was 3 hours and 6 minutes. A 27-minute difference is certainly nothing to sneeze at. But the game, which I have always loved, now feels unnatural. The large, doomsday-esque countdown clock behind the plate is garish and distracting. Every game feels rushed, every at-bat hurried, and every play frantic. The beauty of baseball had always been that there was no clock, and now, that beauty is gone.
Many players, especially pitchers, have expressed their distaste for the new pitch clock. Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Matt Strahm echoes the sentiment that the game has lost part of its identity.
“Even as a player it feels like we’re playing more so basketball than baseball,” Strahm said. “It’s constant up and down.”
Strahm, and other players have also discussed concerns about injury due to the rapid speed of the game in 2023. If players have less time to rest between pitches, they will wear out and sustain injuries at a more frequent rate.
Additionally, the forced pace-of-play rules harm the performance of pitchers and hitters alike. If a pitcher is “in the zone”, the batter has no time to adjust and regroup after a few bad swings. If a hitter, and to a greater extent, an offense, is seeing the pitcher well or the pitcher has lost his control of the strike zone, the pitcher has no time to catch his breath. This development has resulted in more “crooked” games, where the winning team wins by a lot.
A critique of pitch clock would be a poor one without some praise for the other changes that MLB implemented this year. The larger bases, planned to increase stolen base attempts, have worked exactly as designed and have created numerous exciting moments that do not feel cheap or contrived.
The pitch clock, however, is an insult to the history of baseball. It makes games feel unnatural, and causes more harm to players than it does to benefit them. Designed to draw in new fans to the game of baseball, the pitch clock and MLB have done more to alienate their diehard fans who love America’s pastime.