Major League Baseball wants a 14-second pitch clock with the bases empty and a 19-second timer with runners on, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The two numbers were settled on after experiments in the minor leagues, including in Low-A in 2021, where game times were cut by about 20 minutes. A 15/17-second clock was used there but baseball determined less time was needed for pitchers with the bases empty and more time with them occupied, according to sources, hence landing on 14/19.
The desire for a clock comes after years of increasing game times, culminating last season where the average length of a nine-inning game was a record, 3 hours 10 minutes. That’s 20 minutes longer than just a decade ago when the average length was 2:50.
Games in Low-A West last year were reduced from 3:02 to 2:41 with the clock. There have been some mixed results with pitch clocks at different levels of professional baseball but the league believes it can only help speed up the big league product.
Rule changes have been a storyline during recent collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the players union, though the sides have discussed various on-the-field issues for the last couple of years.
As part of the talks which took place in Florida recently, the league was interested in speeding up the process to implement rule changes — like the pitch clock — but it remains to be seen if they’ll be successful. The sides continue to negotiate for a new CBA with another round of talks scheduled for Sunday. The first two series of the 2022 regular season have been canceled after owners locked out the players in December when the last CBA expired.
Under those terms, the league could unilaterally implement rule changes one year after formally proposing them to the union. They’re arguing to speed up the process, wanting to give 45 days’ notice while still getting input from players. They offered a panel consisting of six management officials, two player reps and an umpire.
In the past, major league players have expressed mixed feelings on the use of a pitch clock, with many veterans coming down against its use.
“I know as players, that’s something that MLB is trying to negotiate,” union subcommittee member Max Scherzer said in 2019. “I don’t think there’s negotiation here. As players, it just shouldn’t be in the game. Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that’s messing with the fabric of the game. There’s no clock in baseball, and there’s no clock in baseball for a reason.”
Recently, retired pitcher CC Sabathia took an opposite view.
“This is a time to make some changes fundamentally to the game,” Sabathia said on his Ringer podcast R2C2. “But the thing is that players are like most baseball purists, they don’t want the game changed. Some of these guys still want a DH in the National League and all this different s— like no pitch clock. Have you been watching the f—— games we’ve been watching?”
In the last 50 years, the length of a game has increased by 45 minutes but 10 of those minutes have come since just 2017. Skipping the shortened pandemic season in 2020, games increased by five minutes in consecutive years — from 2016 to 2017 and then again from 2019 to 2021.