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With Major League Baseball's games constantly increasing in length, the league took a big step toward quickening play on Wednesday.
According to Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk, MLB will experiment with a number of rules in this year's Arizona Fall League in the interest of speeding up games in the future.
Barry Svrluga of The Washington Post revealed a few of the most significant regulations that Arizona Fall League batters and pitchers will be asked to adhere to:
MLB going to try pace-of-game improvements in Ariz Fall Lge: one foot in batter's box, no-pitch intentional walk, a clock timing pitcher etc- Barry Svrluga (@barrysvrluga) October 1, 2014
The timing rules are worth monitoring in particular. Per Calcaterra, pitchers will have just 12 seconds in between pitches with nobody on base. There will be a strict two minutes and five seconds between innings. Also, teams will have only two minutes and 30 seconds to complete pitching changes.
Jesse Spector of Sporting Newspoints out that many of the Arizona Fall League rules are essentially already in place in MLB, but they simply aren't enforced with consistency:
I enjoy that MLB's 'experimental' plans for pace of play changes in the Arizona Fall League largely amount to 'enforce existing rules.'- Jesse Spector (@jessespector) October 1, 2014
That figures to change now that the league has placed an emphasis on speeding up the game. MLB recently formed a Pace of Game Committee, and commissioner Bud Selig is hopeful that the Arizona Fall League experiment will translate to the big leagues, according to MLB Public Relations on Twitter:
Commissioner Selig on experimental pace of game initiatives to be game-tested during 2014 Arizona Fall League: pic.twitter.com/3JLydZSytc- MLB Public Relations (@MLB_PR) October 1, 2014
As seen in this graphic courtesy of BeyondTheBoxscore.com sabermetrician Scott Lindholm, the length of games has unquestionably gone up in a major way over the past 60-plus years:
#MLB Game length 1950-2013 pic.twitter.com/NfuJPJ8nyf- Scott Lindholm (@ScottLindholm) January 16, 2014
MLB is finally starting to realize the potential problem, and it is refreshing to see the league taking steps to alleviate those concerns.
Baseball is seemingly more reluctant than other sports to make rule changes due to traditionalism. Now that instant replay has been expanded, though, this is the time to pick up the pace as well. Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter
Post By http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2216961-mlb-implementing-experimental-pace-of-play-rule-changes-for-fall-league
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