MiLB To Implement Pitch Clock in 2015

Major League Baseball is moving closer to having the pitch clock implemented into play. As the owners and Players’ Union have been figuring out ways to speed up the game, they have moved closer to the idea of using a 20-second rule to get off the pitch. Now, it will be tested at both the Double-A and Triple-A levels in 2015.

The pitch clock was tested this season in the Arizona Fall League in limited games. Dubbed the Salt River Shot Clock, as it was used mainly is Salt River Rafters games, it worked quite successfully. Essentially, it is a timer that allows the pitcher 20 seconds to get his pitch down the pipe. If he can not get it off in the allotted 20 seconds, the umpire can issue a ball to the batter.

It seemed to go rather well as most pitchers were not affected by it. The times that it seemed to be most needed was when a pitcher was trying to hold a runner on first. Houston Astros superstar-in-waiting Mark Appel was tagged twice in the same game for violations, both times with runners on first base.

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It’s a particular touchy subject in a game with so many traditionalists. Joe Torre, Major League Baseball’s Chief Officer, was not keen to the idea of having pitchers clocked. However, after a few AFL games, he seems to have changed his tune.

"“It was part of the discussion,” Torre told MiLB.com. “It’s something that we’d certainly like to see more testing done with, and there is a chance that will happen. I was never a proponent of introducing the clock in baseball, but I went out [to the AFL], and I was pretty impressed. [The clock] was there, but it really wasn’t intrusive in any way.”"

Here’s the thing baseball fans. There is already a pace of game rule in place for pitchers. There is technically already a 12-second “pitch clock”. The rule has been in place for years, but is hardly enforced. Do players and managers even know the rule exists? Most likely not, considering I didn’t even realize it until researching the rule implementation for the 2014 AFL season.

It is a sad state of affairs when the game of baseball needs to be sped up for viewers. Growing up, there was nothing like a day (or night) at the ballpark. The smell of pretzels and stale beer, the screaming both negative and positive from die hard fans and watching the sun set into the distance as the bright stadium lights took over was half of the majesty of the game. Now it seems like people want to be in and out quicker than they are in a movie theater. That’s simply not baseball. Other sports get away with it because they have set times, but despite four 15 minute quarters, everyone knows they aren’t leaving a football game in under three hours. But for some reason, that’s ok and in baseball it is not.

Can a pitch clock be useful? Sure, there are pitchers that abuse the time they have on the mound. But if there has been a 12-second rule for decades that no one has enforced, you have to ask what good this “new rule” will do. Will simply having the clock on the field instead of the umpires head do the trick? The upper levels of the minor leagues will soon find out that answer.