User:Ace Winfield/secondsandbox

Pace of play

A pitch clock in use in a game.

As an experimental step to accelerate pace of play, MLB implemented 20-second pitch clocks during spring training games in 2019.

After a successful trial in Low-A West in 2021, MLB allowed teams to use PitchCom, a wireless communications system, to request pitches starting in the 2022 season. Through their first 54 games in 2022, the New York Yankees played 25 games (about 47%) in less than three hours. In 2021, only about 25% of the Yankees' games finished in three hours or less.

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On September 8, 2022, MLB announced a set of rules changes that take effect in 2023, including the use of a pitch clock. These rules were implemented from the start of spring training prior to the 2023 season (though they were not in place for the World Baseball Classic, played during 2023 spring training) to allow players, managers and umpires to adjust to the rules. Player representatives to the competition committee, the body responsible for the rule changes, voted against implementing the pitch clock and infield positioning restrictions.

Among the 2023 rules changes designed to improve pace of play by leaving less dead time between pitches and balls in play were the following:

• Implementation of a pitch clock (or pitch timer): Upon receiving the ball from catcher or umpire, a pitcher will have fifteen seconds to make their next pitch. If there is a runner on base this is extended to twenty seconds. Exceeding this window will result in a ball being assessed. Batters must be in the batter's box, alert to the pitcher and ready to receive a pitch with no less than eight seconds left on the pitch clock. Batters not ready for a pitch with eight seconds remaining on the pitch clock are assessed a strike. Additionally, a thirty second clock will run between batters.
• Limited batter time-outs: Batters may only ask the umpire for a time-out once per at-bat. After a requested time-out the pitch clock will be restarted at fifteen (bases empty) or twenty (one or more runners on base) seconds.
• Limited pick-off attempts (or disengagements): Pitchers are allowed only two disengagements in any at-bat. These include both an actual throw to a base and a step-off from the pitching rubber. A third attempt that does not result in an out will be called a balk with baserunners advancing one base. First and second disengagements reset the pitch clock and a runner advancing via stolen base or balk resets the disengagement allowance.
• As in the last four seasons teams are limited to five mound visits per nine-inning game, but visits to remedy Pitch Com malfunctions are excepted. Pitch Com is the system that allows catchers to electronically signal to the pitcher which pitch they want thrown. During spring training teams were allowed to experiment with an additional Pitch Com option that allows pitchers to signal their pitch to catchers.

Near the end of the 2023 spring training MLB sent a memo to clubs clarifying some of these rules, among others, and noted that umpires had discretion to extend between-innings timing, delay the start of the pitch clock or make other allowances when the course of play required it, provided players were not viewed as attempting to game the system. In particular this was meant to address situations when catchers required time to put on protective equipment between innings, when pitchers ended a play well away from the mound and to reduce the opportunities for pitchers to game the pitch clock with quick pitches.

Additional rule changes, including restrictions on defensive positioning in the infield and an increase in the size of bases, were also designed to result in more balls in play and more baserunning activity, though not explicitly to increase the pace of play.

2023 Spring training games played prior to March 22, 2023 averaged two hours, 36 minutes, about 25 minutes faster than the average time from 2022. Timing violations by pitchers and batters fell from 2.03 per game during the first week of spring training to 1.03 per game during the fourth week.