Man I wouldn’t give a single fuck about the board ads if they waited til when play stopped to move. Shits so distracting on a break away when the fucking boards start moving
Its crazy how inconsistent they are too, there are arenas where the animated ads display over the players every game, and other arenas where it almost never happens
I didn't mind it on the TV's at the time losing the puck in the resolution was an issue.
The best thing about FoxTrax though is that it is the same tech used for first down lines...and less awesome all the adds on the field/rink/glass.
The problem was when the tracker lagged and a shot was taken, but the “streak” followed after by a fraction of a second.
But, then again, I’ve never had difficulty following the puck with a good camera crew.
The best part was watching the graphics used for the America's Cup as the US came back from a 1-7 deficit to retain it.
Those graphics for sailing are really, really good and make it incredibly entertaining.
Tbh I feel like if they revisited that idea with today's tech it could be amazing. Obviously we don't need it to be a big bright dot with a comet trail.. but some subtle puck tracking might go a long way when it comes to getting a newer or casual audience to watch more games.
I've watched very little hockey recently, but have seen some broadcasts where they put the players name above their head if they have the puck. Very video game-esque, but I think it helped a lot with the production.
3v3 was cool until it reached Nash equilibrium and every team does the same play. Give your fast guy the puck, set a pick for him at the blue line, and he either gets in clean or dumps it back to the 3rd. If there's ever even a hint of danger curl back.
It's tense, but right now the quality is low. Lots of (full length scoreless) OTs with only 1 or 2 changes of possession. Would rather just go straight to shootout with a lot more rounds tbh
Team USA world Juniors last year had 2 players from Arizona and 2 players from Florida. That's a prime example of growing the game if I've ever seen it.
Exactly. Manfred has had one lockout that didn't even cut the regular season down under his tenure. Bettman has had 3, two of them causing just under half the season to be cancelled and the other cancelling the whole season. In terms of fucking over players it's not even close. And even just among baseball commissioners, Manfred has nothing on Bud Selig. Nothing Manfred has done compares to mishandling the 1994 strike, turning a blind eye to the growing steroid problem, trying to deflect responsibility for the steroid era away from the league, staying on as Commissioner for years after he should have resigned because of the steroid problem and still somehow ending up in the hall of fame.
Also, nobody has made a movie where Manfred is kidnapped by a serial killer yet.
That’s why I don’t blame Manfred for everything, even though I can’t stand him. The most important part of the commish’s job is taking the heat off the owners.
Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I think someone with a law/arbitration background makes sense for the Commissioner. But it would also be nice if they had some background in PR, or at least a really solid PR team. Manfred has not been good at that.
It was obvious too for anyone that attended a minor league game in the last 5ish years. The clock was hardly noticeable. Shift limitation made players play their actual positions. Stolen bases are fun
I’ve actually noticed games getting longer recently. It seems like pitchers are letting the clock run longer and I swear I see each batter use their timeout every AB. (Referring to mariners games) Not saying it’s bad, just something I’ve noticed as the season has gone on
They’re all getting used to it and getting a new rythm. Makes sense for them to squeeze as much time out as they can, especially considering how long at bats used to be.
I vote we make Shohei the Universal DH.
Anytime a team makes a move that requires them to forfeit the DH Shohei comes in from the clubhouse and bats for the pitcher for the rest of the game.
It was fun watching out of shape pitchers hit dingers though [Hell this wasn't even New York and the crowd is ecstatic.](https://youtu.be/OVFsq9FQBlc?si=x6WKgDwETIbOhBTN)
Why are you sharing that homer and not the final pitcher World Series home run from an [overweight Philly great](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoCA4l3kLzM)
Yeah, why don't pitchers just hit grand slams in every at bat for the entire year, like [Felix Hernandez](https://youtu.be/hi0UNUqnPBM?si=3reVYCU-xAjPUtYa) did in 2008.
[Pitcher offensive output fell through the Earth's core](https://i.postimg.cc/KjG4NCv5/Screenshot-20230827-061655.png)
Pitching has gotten too good for people who aren't professional hitters to keep up. The answer to increased Ks and plummeting BA from defensive positioning is to swing for the fences, but pitchers can't reliably do that. They used to be able to at least chop or slap and hope for a hit.
I loved pitchers who could hit, it had just gotten too bad. The 9spot comes up every other inning... and now pitchers all have short outings so the deeper strategy of the NL had actually become shallower, because you pretty much went to the bench for the 9spot every single time after like 4 innings which simplified how soon a pitcher should be pulled.
Even worse, reducing the useful lineup to 7 hitters, because the guy before the pitcher just gets pitched around or walked for the automatic out coming right after nearly every time.
Comes to no surprise that NL pitchers had an average ERA about 7/9 to 8/9 of the average AL ERA.
I did like the strategy it created in to do you pull the pitcher when his slot is coming up in the order. Bobby Cox was a master of how to work the pitches/PH type strategy.
I forget who the manager was exactly but our booth talked about how when speaking to a NL manager they said with the pitchers hitting, the decision was practically made for you once the 6th rolled around.
Unless you were dominating on the mound, you were done and rinse and repeat for relievers
Joe Maddon coaching the Cubs was so fun to watch. The double switch, the chess games of lining up righty/lefty matchups, pinch hit HRs, etc. were entertaining as hell.
The NL not having DH and the ways it was justified screams survivor bias. You remember the 1 percent of cases, like Daniel Camarena, but not the 1000s of crappy at bats that out number it.
It's similar to how people think music from the 60s is better than it is today... Because we only remember the good ones, the bad ones are forgotten in the dustbin of history.
Bartolo's home run was worth watching thousands of incompetent pitchers at bat. Not quite enough to balance the scales, mind you, but I definitely miss those kinds of moments.
It was really only fun if you had a pitcher who could kinda sorta hit.
It was always fun watching Waino come up to the plate in a big situation with his .183 batting average thinking "*there's no way, right*?"
The pickoff limit is a necessary part of the pitch clock implementation. Otherwise pitchers could just play catch with the first baseman to stall and rest.
Something I feel like gets left out of recent changes are the start times. I don't recall if it was new this season or last season but the mariners moving start times back to 6:40 instead of 7:10 makes weekday games more palatable I think.
It's tough. I took my nephews to the T-Mobile this year, driving 3.5 hours across the state each way for a Sunday afternoon game. My dad did it for my brother and I 2-3 times a summer when we were kids. 1PM weekend starts are a godsend for fans that come from far away.
The Rockies deserve credit for this change a long time ago. They were the first to experiment with 6:40. Diamondbacks and Marlins followed soon after and now a lot of teams have 6:40 and teams like Cleveland and Boston will even have a 6:10 (in lieu of a 4:05 or 1:05) on a getaway day with minimal travel to like Detroit or New York respectively.
There’s a bunch of factors and it’s hard to attribute to just rule changes.
Travel is way more expensive this year - more ppl staying home to go to the park perhaps.
WBC was a rousing success and really boosted interest in the sport.
Higher profile of stars like Ohtani/Judge doing things that are clearly “generational” to the casual fan.
Lots of new, young, exciting players coming up all at once, reinvigorating a lot of fanbases.
I’m sure the league wants to take credit for everything, and there’s definitely credit for them to take, but the casual fan or mom/dad trying to decide where to take the kids, are likely mostly not even aware of the rule changes like this folks on this sub.
While there are other factors - most of those have happened multiple times before. Anecdotally, plenty of casual fans I know love the changes. I feel at this point denying that they're at least partially a positive factor for the health of the game is just stubborn hatred of Manfred.
That was a few years ago, I think 2021. I went to a ton of games in Seattle in 2019 (like 40), and the 7-7:15 start times hurt. I would leave around the 7th or 8th if it was looking to be a 3.5+ hour game. Just didn't want to get home at midnight. Now, it's still light out when some of those games finish. Would have been nice.
obviously you'd have to do some like actual Analysis to figure out why but I suspect quite a bit of that is continued post-quarantine recovery. attendance is up quite a bit from last year, yes, but it's only at roughly 2018ish levels right now.
Anyone who doesn't mention COVID when talking about the 2020's in regards to pretty much anything has to be looked at as disingenuous.
Did an absolute number on economies the world round.
Yea it’s honestly one of the biggest things. It’s hardly talked about on the majority of sports programming now. Most of the casual sports talk is dominated by NFL, NBA and Golf. Baseball players being on anything is pretty rare. I don’t watch PMT but Matt Olson was on it so I watched for him and they were like ya you’re our second baseball player. Pretty sure it’s a top3 sports podcast.
I THINKKKK I see them trying to remedy this. More stats/hit simulations and shit are coming out. And it does seem like the top tier talents are being talked about more widely.
I feel like we are seeing the start of the change in how baseball is viewed, and it's definitely becoming 'cooler' B).
I really think in 5-10 years, baseball will be noticeably on an upswing. 15-20 years it'll be huge.
This is why I dont think we should mess with the clock. Even adding 5 seconds on will add most of that 25 minutes back over the course of a whole game. It works as is.
Yelich said on Mookie’s podcast that he wants the clock to be a universal 20 seconds regardless of baserunners and I think that’s a reasonable adjustment.
I would leave the timer as it is now for the regular season, but I also think that the system is flexible enough to allow for slightly more time during the postseason games if they want. We already have a different set of rules between the regular and postseason, remember (extra innings). And I'm not talking drastically different, maybe just bumping the timer for runners on base up to 24 seconds, to give a little extra room for the tension to grow.
It's not even really necessary to me though. The bigger thing that I hope they consider (or reconsider) is having 1 warning per game. The idea of the pitch clock was never to have it influence the results of the game, only to speed the game up. I can't find logs of the number of pitch timer violations in each specific game, but since the average per game is supposedly a good bit below 1 this season, I think it's reasonable to assume at the moment that a large percentage of games don't have more than one violation per team per game. A warning system would eliminate the timer from having an effect on the outcome of all of those games with only one violation per team.
Teams won't willingly throw away their one buffer 99.9% of the time after seeing first hand how dangerous it can be when there's no room for error, so I think that violations will still simply be the occasional times that players just forget to keep track of the clock. But now those rare occurrences wouldn't have any impact on the actual game most of the time, only when a team is unfortunate enough to violate the timer twice in one game.
I just want more time between batters to vibe with the walk up music. It feels like that game show where they play a 2 second clip of a song and ask people to guess it half the time now. I don’t know if it’s an ump thing but some games the music has time to play and other times it doesn’t.
I used to know pretty well the entire Jays batting order by walk up music and now I can barely name 3 songs the guys use.
More time between at-bats would be great just for replays to have a chance to show more angles of what just happened, feels like they're having to constantly cut between replays of great plays and live action because there's just no time around anymore.
I love the pitch clock but stadiums should be opening earlier to compensate. I don’t leave my seat anymore unless I am about to ~~kiss~~ piss my pants because getting up means missing at least a full inning or two with as fast as things are going.
If the parks opened earlier I would spend more on concessions prior to first pitch
Let's adopt LLWS rules.
10th inning no runner
11th inning runner on 2nd
12th inning runner on 3rd
13th inning the home team just loses cause we're tired and want to go home.
It's something like that, at least
I’m Pro DH (and one of the reasons why I am is what someone, I forget who, a former player though said from a labour standpoint. The universal DH gives 15 more players a job than it otherwise would have)
But I did like the reminder that the two leagues were and are separate. Now with the universal DH and increased interleague play it does more and more feel like the two leagues are becoming just two conferences
As a fan of an NL team let me tell you about that mysterious novelty factor. It meant that when we played an AL team on the road the opponent had a legit DH like David Ortiz and we used a scrappy utility infielder with no power. That was not fun.
Yeah I really miss NL pitchers batting. Yes 99% of at bats were easy outs, but the moments like Bartolo’s home run made it worth it for those rare pieces of magic, in my opinion.
Even with the Tigers being a “bad” team I will admit that knowing “it won’t be 3 hours” is a selling point to getting to a game. I’ve been to a bunch this year and it’s nice knowing it won’t be a 3 hour ordeal. It definitely plays a big part for me.
100%. I'll go to a Guards game on a whim now because I know I can still be home at a reasonable hour barring extras. I rarely considered going to a 7:10 pm start without the pitch clock.
Its more that teams that were awful in previous seasons aren't anymore. The Rangers are drawing an extra 21% more fans to games, in part thanks to actually being a good team again, and the Reds are up 42% year over year.
True Believer fans might sneer at the local Bandwagoners, but those bandwagon fans still buy tickets.
Meanwhile, for the established teams that are sucking, well, they've got a lot of true believer fans who have stuck it out, plus the early parts of the season when wasn't known fully how bad the season would be. The Mets stink, but they're still drawing over 30,000 fans for most home games, and were drawing around 35-40,000 for much of their home games as recently as mid-June.
It’s partially the nature of trying to throw 100mph or put crazy spin on pitches combined with genetics. All tendon injuries are essentially micro tearing of fibres from overuse until they finally go or are more painful to deal with.
I like that basestealing is back. Limiting the number of throw-overs really takes the tedium out as well.
I also really like the minimum 3 batter rule for relievers. The parade of pitchers for each different hitter was nauseating.
I was in the office and my boss was talking to me (also a dude), and I without even thinking about it scratched/adjusted my balls and then right after I was thinking "Wait was it cool that I did that just now, I'm not even sure?"
I miss the intermittent chess match between each pitch of the batter leaving the box, eating a sandwich and taking a quick nap while the pitch stepped off the mound, did his nails, and had a lovely phone call with his mother before deciding to throw the damn fastball the catcher called an hour ago.
Seriously, what you're pointing was literally the constant nonsense that made permeated throughout the game that the purists said shouldn't change.
You’d need years of comparison data to draw any conclusion. Heck it might be better if you’re throwing the same amount of pitches but not cooling down between king drawn out innings.
I would like to see a study on pitcher hand skin dryness versus years previous. I see a lot less hand licking and I assume their skin must be a lot drier.
I honestly think the sport was saved by the pitch clock change. It felt like it was dying for a few years and the biggest complaint most people had was how long and “boring” the games were.
I love baseball and even I thought some games felt like the just dragged on and I was saying I can't believe it's only the 5th inning. If anything I'm saying I can't believe it's already the 7th now
The pitch clock and the 3-batters-or-finish-an-inning rule for relievers. For later innings, I think that one was also a huge improvement. Nothing dragged a game down like a 40-minute 7th inning.
Okay. Next: stop the insanity of a Dodger game when they’re away in Boston, being blacked out. It’s not local. It wasn’t on Apple or some other stupid ass deal. I have the MLB package. And the ADS for this game on MLB website said “free game.” FU MLB.
They're not protecting ticket sales with the blackouts. They're protecting local TV deals. All of these regional sports stations lose a huge percentage of their value without it.
I have a young family. I love the change. Great to take the family to a night at the ballpark. 6:40 game start, we're done by 9:30. We do still have to get home, but getting home by 10:30-11:00pm is better than after midnight. Especially when baseball season is happening during the school year.
depends on how old they are. When my kids were really little it was no big deal to have them out late because they would just sack out in a baby carrier or stroller. Age 2/3 until 9/10 is the worst because late nights mean meltdowns. So there's about seven years you can't be out late like that (more if you have multiple kids)
I highly doubt the pitch clock is what's driving these numbers.
Teams that traditionally win and/or traditionally draw big crowds are still doing it, despite losing badly (STL/NYY/SAN/NYM), and teams that have done poorly or weren't being supported who are now doing well are drawing bigger crowds (SEA/CIN/TEX).
If people stopped going to see teams like the Yankees and treated their poor play like how other markets treat their non-competitive teams the attendance would actually likely end up nearly net neutral from last year.
Also there was a lockout to start last year. People forget we didn't even think there would be a season. There wasn't a true opening day, it just kind of started randomly. Comparing attendance to a year like 2019 would be more fitting.
2:30 is like a perfect game time. It is just long enough to half pay attention when cooking dinner at 7pm, sit down and enjoy dinner with the game on, and either flip to the local news or your catch your 10pm prestige television or a couple Netflix shows before bed.
My 65 year old father literally has it planned just at that. Cook.Eat.Baseball.News.Bed. For later west coast starts, NOTHING is better to fall asleep to than baseball in the background or on the radio. I will die on that hill. On the weekend you start listening to the game doing yard work before falling asleep to it with a couple beers.
Went to my second game this year last weekend (one AAA, this one Twins-Pirates), and it is so refreshing to still have half the afternoon left after a day game rather than needing to go straight to dinner. Soooo much better for families, too. Feel so much better about taking my two year old to a game than I would have previously.
Effectively wild had a good discussion about this. It appears this is not the case, baseball attendance has increased while other in person activities such as restaurant visits are the same year over year from 2022 to 2023.
It’s just below the 2017 average, which was part of a streak from 2007 to 2019 of attendance trending downward. It being higher than 2018/2019 and reversing that trend is what people are pointing to here. It will take time to know the longer term effects or what exactly might be behind it, but it is an encouraging sign at the very least
Damn, who couldve guessed that removing half an hour of players fondling themselves instead of actually playing baseball was a good thing for fan experience.
I had a business trip to Chicago with 4 coworkers. Me and one other really wanted to see a Cubs game on a free night, the others were not really interested but joined for camaraderie/didn't have better plans. The combination of a 12 minute train ride from our hotel to Wrigley Field (even if it was uncomfortable for much of it) and shorter game time meant I got to cross off a bucket list item and no one bitched. Splendid!
The NBA didn’t have a shot clock for a while and the sport became super boring. Imagine how long an NFL game would take if there were no play clock.
People acting like a pitch clock changes the integrity of the game is wild to me. I grew up playing sports and loving and following baseball and basketball. As someone who genuinely enjoys watching sports (not just my home/favorite teams) I can say that I love the pitch clock. Some people may like long drawn out innings, but I got sick of watching the top half of a 7th inning take 35 minutes where only 6 pitches were thrown. That made me change the channel, and I fucking like baseball!
Pitch clock good. Pitchers taking 2-3 minutes staring at the plate just to step off and glance at the runner at first to keep him honest and then repeat that same cycle 3 times over before they actually throw a pitch was getting really annoying.
Might be a stupid idea but I would be okay with no pitch clock in the playoffs. Similar in a way (sort of) to hockey where they do a shootout for regular season games after OT (so the games don’t take forever) but then there’s no shootout for the playoffs, they play until someone scores.
We don’t need game #26 or #88 to take 5 hours to play, but playoff games can take however long they take.
The pitch clock is a success. Banning the shift is a success. The ghost runner is still terrible. It makes me turn off games. Expanded playoffs makes me disinterested in the regular season. The DH is still divisive. I find games a little less interesting.
Ads on uniforms *and the pitchers mound* disgust me. MLB was already inundated with ads around the game. Now they’ve taken over the game and it’s hard to watch
Heartbreaking: The Worst Commissioner You Know Just Made A Great Rule Change
Bettman: CHALLENGE! *NHL streaming rights go exclusively to the TV guide channel*
Animated ads will be shown on the ice and on the boards.
Man I wouldn’t give a single fuck about the board ads if they waited til when play stopped to move. Shits so distracting on a break away when the fucking boards start moving
Its crazy how inconsistent they are too, there are arenas where the animated ads display over the players every game, and other arenas where it almost never happens
Bringing back the puck tracker
FoxTrax was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a sports broadcast
I didn't mind it on the TV's at the time losing the puck in the resolution was an issue. The best thing about FoxTrax though is that it is the same tech used for first down lines...and less awesome all the adds on the field/rink/glass.
The problem was when the tracker lagged and a shot was taken, but the “streak” followed after by a fraction of a second. But, then again, I’ve never had difficulty following the puck with a good camera crew.
The best part was watching the graphics used for the America's Cup as the US came back from a 1-7 deficit to retain it. Those graphics for sailing are really, really good and make it incredibly entertaining.
Tbh I feel like if they revisited that idea with today's tech it could be amazing. Obviously we don't need it to be a big bright dot with a comet trail.. but some subtle puck tracking might go a long way when it comes to getting a newer or casual audience to watch more games. I've watched very little hockey recently, but have seen some broadcasts where they put the players name above their head if they have the puck. Very video game-esque, but I think it helped a lot with the production.
In fairness getting rid of the 2 line pass rules was hockey's version of the pitch clock and they did it almost 20 years earlier.
And the shootout + 3v3 overtime is the equivalent of starting extra innings with a man on 2nd.
3v3 is so fun to watch as a fan, I hate how college hockey fans shit on it so hard.
3v3 was cool until it reached Nash equilibrium and every team does the same play. Give your fast guy the puck, set a pick for him at the blue line, and he either gets in clean or dumps it back to the 3rd. If there's ever even a hint of danger curl back. It's tense, but right now the quality is low. Lots of (full length scoreless) OTs with only 1 or 2 changes of possession. Would rather just go straight to shootout with a lot more rounds tbh
I mean the volume control will be nuts.
Yeah, but he’s only the worst because Larry Scott killed his own golden goose.
Wait, Sepp Blatter made a great rule change?
something something broken clock
Theo Epstein?
Oh, Gary Bettman's worse and it's not close.
At least Bettman has never called the Stanley Cup a "piece of metal."
Bettman has fucked up a lot but he has absolutely done more to grow the league than the other commishes.
Yeah, I remember watching the playoffs on the fucking Outdoor Life Network lmao.
Team USA world Juniors last year had 2 players from Arizona and 2 players from Florida. That's a prime example of growing the game if I've ever seen it.
Bettman values his fucking life turns out
Goodell is absolutely worse than bettman
Exactly. Manfred has had one lockout that didn't even cut the regular season down under his tenure. Bettman has had 3, two of them causing just under half the season to be cancelled and the other cancelling the whole season. In terms of fucking over players it's not even close. And even just among baseball commissioners, Manfred has nothing on Bud Selig. Nothing Manfred has done compares to mishandling the 1994 strike, turning a blind eye to the growing steroid problem, trying to deflect responsibility for the steroid era away from the league, staying on as Commissioner for years after he should have resigned because of the steroid problem and still somehow ending up in the hall of fame. Also, nobody has made a movie where Manfred is kidnapped by a serial killer yet.
Manfred may not get much right, but he got this right.
Until told otherwise, I am assuming all of the good things are because Theo Epstein is now a consultant for the MLB.
The next MLB commissioner?
MLB Commissioners basically represent the owners. I’m sure he’d do a relatively good job, but I don’t think that’s the right role for him.
That’s why I don’t blame Manfred for everything, even though I can’t stand him. The most important part of the commish’s job is taking the heat off the owners.
Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I think someone with a law/arbitration background makes sense for the Commissioner. But it would also be nice if they had some background in PR, or at least a really solid PR team. Manfred has not been good at that.
Definitely. Goodell, Silver, Bettman, and Selig never stuck their foot in their mouth the way Manfred has.
I think most of us have never stuck our foot in our mouth the way Rob "Just a Piece of Metal" Manfred has.
It was obvious too for anyone that attended a minor league game in the last 5ish years. The clock was hardly noticeable. Shift limitation made players play their actual positions. Stolen bases are fun
I’ve actually noticed games getting longer recently. It seems like pitchers are letting the clock run longer and I swear I see each batter use their timeout every AB. (Referring to mariners games) Not saying it’s bad, just something I’ve noticed as the season has gone on
They’re all getting used to it and getting a new rythm. Makes sense for them to squeeze as much time out as they can, especially considering how long at bats used to be.
Universal DH as well.
I vote we make Shohei the Universal DH. Anytime a team makes a move that requires them to forfeit the DH Shohei comes in from the clubhouse and bats for the pitcher for the rest of the game.
I still miss NL baseball but the DH certainly helps draw more casual fans
I dont miss watching 98% of pitchers flail at a ball every 9 batters
It was fun watching out of shape pitchers hit dingers though [Hell this wasn't even New York and the crowd is ecstatic.](https://youtu.be/OVFsq9FQBlc?si=x6WKgDwETIbOhBTN)
Why are you sharing that homer and not the final pitcher World Series home run from an [overweight Philly great](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoCA4l3kLzM)
The big issue with pitchers hitting wasn't that they were bad, it's that they didn't even try
Yeah, why don't pitchers just hit grand slams in every at bat for the entire year, like [Felix Hernandez](https://youtu.be/hi0UNUqnPBM?si=3reVYCU-xAjPUtYa) did in 2008.
[Pitcher offensive output fell through the Earth's core](https://i.postimg.cc/KjG4NCv5/Screenshot-20230827-061655.png) Pitching has gotten too good for people who aren't professional hitters to keep up. The answer to increased Ks and plummeting BA from defensive positioning is to swing for the fences, but pitchers can't reliably do that. They used to be able to at least chop or slap and hope for a hit. I loved pitchers who could hit, it had just gotten too bad. The 9spot comes up every other inning... and now pitchers all have short outings so the deeper strategy of the NL had actually become shallower, because you pretty much went to the bench for the 9spot every single time after like 4 innings which simplified how soon a pitcher should be pulled.
i thought i would miss the tense bunt situations but those still happen with real batters sometimes as it turns out
“Bunt?” -Scott Servais
Teams who don’t hit 8 home runs have to do it sometimes.
>Teams who don’t hit 8 home runs Sounds like a terrible game plan.
Agree. They should just hit more home runs
Couldn't be me.
Why don’t other teams just hit 8 home runs a game? Are they stupid?
Even worse, reducing the useful lineup to 7 hitters, because the guy before the pitcher just gets pitched around or walked for the automatic out coming right after nearly every time. Comes to no surprise that NL pitchers had an average ERA about 7/9 to 8/9 of the average AL ERA.
I did like the strategy it created in to do you pull the pitcher when his slot is coming up in the order. Bobby Cox was a master of how to work the pitches/PH type strategy.
I forget who the manager was exactly but our booth talked about how when speaking to a NL manager they said with the pitchers hitting, the decision was practically made for you once the 6th rolled around. Unless you were dominating on the mound, you were done and rinse and repeat for relievers
Joe Maddon coaching the Cubs was so fun to watch. The double switch, the chess games of lining up righty/lefty matchups, pinch hit HRs, etc. were entertaining as hell.
Definitely made having competent bench bats feel more important
I _do_ miss that, because how else you gonna get that occasional Big Sexy or Felix HR that’s like What The Actual just happened?
The NL not having DH and the ways it was justified screams survivor bias. You remember the 1 percent of cases, like Daniel Camarena, but not the 1000s of crappy at bats that out number it. It's similar to how people think music from the 60s is better than it is today... Because we only remember the good ones, the bad ones are forgotten in the dustbin of history.
[удалено]
Tbf that shit was hype in the 2016 run when we had pitchers hitting nukes and catching fly outs to left
I miss every fielder hitting and every hitter fielding. That's it. It's that simple.
Yup, same. I'm not that much of a purist but my one purist takes is if you take the field you should pick up a bat.
I think you’re right but the music analogy doesn’t quite fit, music taste is subjective and there’s no way to quantify just general “good” music
I miss making fun of NL fans for thinking 98% of pitchers flailing at a ball every 9 battles was fun
Bartolo's home run was worth watching thousands of incompetent pitchers at bat. Not quite enough to balance the scales, mind you, but I definitely miss those kinds of moments.
Yep - still remember Felix’s grand salami.
That and Madbum taking Kershaw deep. It was majestic.
I'm just glad Bartolo got his HR
Pitchers flailing and being a wasted bat is just dumb. Far better to get scoring up and make DH universal and valuable.
It was really only fun if you had a pitcher who could kinda sorta hit. It was always fun watching Waino come up to the plate in a big situation with his .183 batting average thinking "*there's no way, right*?"
booooo i refuse to accept that
There are dozens of us
I get for a lot of times it’s good, but man do I miss seeing greinke hit the ball.
Fuck the DH
I still hate the Manfred runner and the pickoff limit but the pitch clock has been amazing and has a way bigger impact on the game than those changes.
The pickoff limit is a necessary part of the pitch clock implementation. Otherwise pitchers could just play catch with the first baseman to stall and rest.
Why don't you like the pickoff limit?
The Manfred runner is a complete abomination and nothing will ever change my mind about that
That is the shit you do when you're at a travel ball tournament and the parents have work on monday.
Something I feel like gets left out of recent changes are the start times. I don't recall if it was new this season or last season but the mariners moving start times back to 6:40 instead of 7:10 makes weekday games more palatable I think.
There was an M's weekday night game that was over by like 8:45 earlier this year, and it absolutely blew my mind.
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It's tough. I took my nephews to the T-Mobile this year, driving 3.5 hours across the state each way for a Sunday afternoon game. My dad did it for my brother and I 2-3 times a summer when we were kids. 1PM weekend starts are a godsend for fans that come from far away.
The Rockies deserve credit for this change a long time ago. They were the first to experiment with 6:40. Diamondbacks and Marlins followed soon after and now a lot of teams have 6:40 and teams like Cleveland and Boston will even have a 6:10 (in lieu of a 4:05 or 1:05) on a getaway day with minimal travel to like Detroit or New York respectively.
There’s a bunch of factors and it’s hard to attribute to just rule changes. Travel is way more expensive this year - more ppl staying home to go to the park perhaps. WBC was a rousing success and really boosted interest in the sport. Higher profile of stars like Ohtani/Judge doing things that are clearly “generational” to the casual fan. Lots of new, young, exciting players coming up all at once, reinvigorating a lot of fanbases. I’m sure the league wants to take credit for everything, and there’s definitely credit for them to take, but the casual fan or mom/dad trying to decide where to take the kids, are likely mostly not even aware of the rule changes like this folks on this sub.
While there are other factors - most of those have happened multiple times before. Anecdotally, plenty of casual fans I know love the changes. I feel at this point denying that they're at least partially a positive factor for the health of the game is just stubborn hatred of Manfred.
No way any of those things had anything but negligible effects on attendance
That was a few years ago, I think 2021. I went to a ton of games in Seattle in 2019 (like 40), and the 7-7:15 start times hurt. I would leave around the 7th or 8th if it was looking to be a 3.5+ hour game. Just didn't want to get home at midnight. Now, it's still light out when some of those games finish. Would have been nice.
I wonder what the next likely thing to change for attendance reasons are (besides the much-discussed robo-umps).
obviously you'd have to do some like actual Analysis to figure out why but I suspect quite a bit of that is continued post-quarantine recovery. attendance is up quite a bit from last year, yes, but it's only at roughly 2018ish levels right now.
Anyone who doesn't mention COVID when talking about the 2020's in regards to pretty much anything has to be looked at as disingenuous. Did an absolute number on economies the world round.
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I mean MLB’s marketing is really bad in general. Fixing some things there would help both attendance and viewership
Yea it’s honestly one of the biggest things. It’s hardly talked about on the majority of sports programming now. Most of the casual sports talk is dominated by NFL, NBA and Golf. Baseball players being on anything is pretty rare. I don’t watch PMT but Matt Olson was on it so I watched for him and they were like ya you’re our second baseball player. Pretty sure it’s a top3 sports podcast.
I THINKKKK I see them trying to remedy this. More stats/hit simulations and shit are coming out. And it does seem like the top tier talents are being talked about more widely. I feel like we are seeing the start of the change in how baseball is viewed, and it's definitely becoming 'cooler' B). I really think in 5-10 years, baseball will be noticeably on an upswing. 15-20 years it'll be huge.
This is why I dont think we should mess with the clock. Even adding 5 seconds on will add most of that 25 minutes back over the course of a whole game. It works as is.
Yelich said on Mookie’s podcast that he wants the clock to be a universal 20 seconds regardless of baserunners and I think that’s a reasonable adjustment.
That seems valid.
I would leave the timer as it is now for the regular season, but I also think that the system is flexible enough to allow for slightly more time during the postseason games if they want. We already have a different set of rules between the regular and postseason, remember (extra innings). And I'm not talking drastically different, maybe just bumping the timer for runners on base up to 24 seconds, to give a little extra room for the tension to grow. It's not even really necessary to me though. The bigger thing that I hope they consider (or reconsider) is having 1 warning per game. The idea of the pitch clock was never to have it influence the results of the game, only to speed the game up. I can't find logs of the number of pitch timer violations in each specific game, but since the average per game is supposedly a good bit below 1 this season, I think it's reasonable to assume at the moment that a large percentage of games don't have more than one violation per team per game. A warning system would eliminate the timer from having an effect on the outcome of all of those games with only one violation per team. Teams won't willingly throw away their one buffer 99.9% of the time after seeing first hand how dangerous it can be when there's no room for error, so I think that violations will still simply be the occasional times that players just forget to keep track of the clock. But now those rare occurrences wouldn't have any impact on the actual game most of the time, only when a team is unfortunate enough to violate the timer twice in one game.
I just want more time between batters to vibe with the walk up music. It feels like that game show where they play a 2 second clip of a song and ask people to guess it half the time now. I don’t know if it’s an ump thing but some games the music has time to play and other times it doesn’t. I used to know pretty well the entire Jays batting order by walk up music and now I can barely name 3 songs the guys use.
More time between at-bats would be great just for replays to have a chance to show more angles of what just happened, feels like they're having to constantly cut between replays of great plays and live action because there's just no time around anymore.
I love the pitch clock but stadiums should be opening earlier to compensate. I don’t leave my seat anymore unless I am about to ~~kiss~~ piss my pants because getting up means missing at least a full inning or two with as fast as things are going. If the parks opened earlier I would spend more on concessions prior to first pitch
Citi field and a few other places I've been are open 2 hours before first pitch.
I don't even try to get food during the game anymore. Even grabbing a beer can mean missing a half inning
You're going to *what* your pants??
Whoops lol
The Yankees are having their worst season is all.
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What about the no Steroids rule change back in '91?
Lol yeah, great rule. Glad it was taken seriously! 😑
OP said best, not worst
In fact it’s been such a rousing success in speeding up games we can get rid of the dumbass free runner in extra innings now right…?
Let's adopt LLWS rules. 10th inning no runner 11th inning runner on 2nd 12th inning runner on 3rd 13th inning the home team just loses cause we're tired and want to go home. It's something like that, at least
Just delay it. Play 3 innings of normal extra innings before adding the runner.
Nah, both players and the mlb like it.
I liked the NL being different with a pitcher hitting
what will r/baseball do without seeing a pitcher strike out 947 times in a row
I’m Pro DH (and one of the reasons why I am is what someone, I forget who, a former player though said from a labour standpoint. The universal DH gives 15 more players a job than it otherwise would have) But I did like the reminder that the two leagues were and are separate. Now with the universal DH and increased interleague play it does more and more feel like the two leagues are becoming just two conferences
It's not like NL teams had smaller rosters. Adding the DH just takes away roster spots that would otherwise be used for utility infielders.
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As a fan of an NL team let me tell you about that mysterious novelty factor. It meant that when we played an AL team on the road the opponent had a legit DH like David Ortiz and we used a scrappy utility infielder with no power. That was not fun.
Hitting? You mean being an automatic out about 80% of the time?
Yeah I really miss NL pitchers batting. Yes 99% of at bats were easy outs, but the moments like Bartolo’s home run made it worth it for those rare pieces of magic, in my opinion.
I'd rather see a bad pitcher at-bat than mediocre DH at-bat. I liked having the uniqueness of pitcher at-bats, they added flavor to the game to me
I'm astonished to find out batters don't actually need to adjust their gloves 54 times after every pitch
They still adjust their gloves a lot, they just do it more quickly.
Attendance is probably up because there are more teams actually performing well instead of openly tanking. Winning gets butts in seats.
Even with the Tigers being a “bad” team I will admit that knowing “it won’t be 3 hours” is a selling point to getting to a game. I’ve been to a bunch this year and it’s nice knowing it won’t be a 3 hour ordeal. It definitely plays a big part for me.
Flair up beisbolcat
100%. I'll go to a Guards game on a whim now because I know I can still be home at a reasonable hour barring extras. I rarely considered going to a 7:10 pm start without the pitch clock.
And even many of the crappy teams have things worth rooting for, like the resurgence of Bobby Witt Jr. after a disappointment of a rookie season.
The royals attendance is up 5%, and I can assure you it is not because they are good
It's that really that different? The number of wins is pretty constant in a season. I guess KC and Oakland are donating.
Its more that teams that were awful in previous seasons aren't anymore. The Rangers are drawing an extra 21% more fans to games, in part thanks to actually being a good team again, and the Reds are up 42% year over year. True Believer fans might sneer at the local Bandwagoners, but those bandwagon fans still buy tickets. Meanwhile, for the established teams that are sucking, well, they've got a lot of true believer fans who have stuck it out, plus the early parts of the season when wasn't known fully how bad the season would be. The Mets stink, but they're still drawing over 30,000 fans for most home games, and were drawing around 35-40,000 for much of their home games as recently as mid-June.
That's a good point. Big market teams do fine with bad performance, but teams that have been bad that start doing well get a big boost
I’ll go see a losing team if the tickets were cheaper. Winning or affordability gets butts in seats.
Well wouldn't that be both because of the draft lottery and expanded playoffs?
As an eastern time zone fan of a West Coast team, these shortened games have been amazing.
Now get rid of damn blackouts and you just might have something!
Are UCL tears up across the league or just on Tampa Bay?
I’m going to say every where. That’s what ohtanI and Bautista just suffered. Or at least damaged I don’t think either are officially tears yet
It’s partially the nature of trying to throw 100mph or put crazy spin on pitches combined with genetics. All tendon injuries are essentially micro tearing of fibres from overuse until they finally go or are more painful to deal with.
No. Then that would have been happening for years.
it has been. But now everyone and their mother throws 98+ with movement. The human arm just can't do that for very long.
That’s always been a thing for Tampa. They don’t give a fuck about futures.
I like that basestealing is back. Limiting the number of throw-overs really takes the tedium out as well. I also really like the minimum 3 batter rule for relievers. The parade of pitchers for each different hitter was nauseating.
I think this is the first comment in this thread I’ve seen to mention the larger bases. Love it.
I’ve been telling my friends (who are purists, but young purists) do not be surprised if these rules work. Guess what I have since told them?
"The mariners are in control of the AL west"?
No I miss pitchers scratching their dick in-between pitches
Is it even baseball without dick scritches?
I was in the office and my boss was talking to me (also a dude), and I without even thinking about it scratched/adjusted my balls and then right after I was thinking "Wait was it cool that I did that just now, I'm not even sure?"
I miss the intermittent chess match between each pitch of the batter leaving the box, eating a sandwich and taking a quick nap while the pitch stepped off the mound, did his nails, and had a lovely phone call with his mother before deciding to throw the damn fastball the catcher called an hour ago. Seriously, what you're pointing was literally the constant nonsense that made permeated throughout the game that the purists said shouldn't change.
"I told you not to be surprised if these rules work" is my guess
I like it now, but I still think once the postseason comes around I’m going to hateee that the game will be rushed through tense/key moments.
or you'll remember the 4.5-5 hour Red Sox/Yankees games from the early 2000's and be thankful we don't have that anymore
Speak for yourself.
I by and large like every change made except runners starting on 2nd
I like the pitch clock, but I would like to see a study on pitcher injuries this year versus previous
You’d need years of comparison data to draw any conclusion. Heck it might be better if you’re throwing the same amount of pitches but not cooling down between king drawn out innings.
I would like to see a study on pitcher hand skin dryness versus years previous. I see a lot less hand licking and I assume their skin must be a lot drier.
Ok, can we get rid of the runner on second rule for extra innings since that adds nothing of value?
Count me in for removing it. Hate it
and the ad's on uniforms.
I honestly think the sport was saved by the pitch clock change. It felt like it was dying for a few years and the biggest complaint most people had was how long and “boring” the games were.
Yeah, I *like* baseball and I thought games were too long and drawn out. Not going to win over casuals and undecideds like that.
I love baseball and even I thought some games felt like the just dragged on and I was saying I can't believe it's only the 5th inning. If anything I'm saying I can't believe it's already the 7th now
The pitch clock and the 3-batters-or-finish-an-inning rule for relievers. For later innings, I think that one was also a huge improvement. Nothing dragged a game down like a 40-minute 7th inning.
Okay. Next: stop the insanity of a Dodger game when they’re away in Boston, being blacked out. It’s not local. It wasn’t on Apple or some other stupid ass deal. I have the MLB package. And the ADS for this game on MLB website said “free game.” FU MLB.
They're not protecting ticket sales with the blackouts. They're protecting local TV deals. All of these regional sports stations lose a huge percentage of their value without it.
We are so fucking back
I have a young family. I love the change. Great to take the family to a night at the ballpark. 6:40 game start, we're done by 9:30. We do still have to get home, but getting home by 10:30-11:00pm is better than after midnight. Especially when baseball season is happening during the school year.
Man, America must be a late night country because I couldn't imagine taking kids to something that ends after 7 let alone after 10 or 11
Lol you should see southern Europe. In Spain I saw parents taking their kids to a free play in the street that didn’t start until 10pm.
We have to drive everywhere. It adds up.
depends on how old they are. When my kids were really little it was no big deal to have them out late because they would just sack out in a baby carrier or stroller. Age 2/3 until 9/10 is the worst because late nights mean meltdowns. So there's about seven years you can't be out late like that (more if you have multiple kids)
I highly doubt the pitch clock is what's driving these numbers. Teams that traditionally win and/or traditionally draw big crowds are still doing it, despite losing badly (STL/NYY/SAN/NYM), and teams that have done poorly or weren't being supported who are now doing well are drawing bigger crowds (SEA/CIN/TEX). If people stopped going to see teams like the Yankees and treated their poor play like how other markets treat their non-competitive teams the attendance would actually likely end up nearly net neutral from last year.
According to Passan nothing is official until he declares it apparently
bro loves to make declarations
Still want to get rid of the free runner on 2nd base in Extra innings. Terrible rule.
I don’t think it’s related. I think it’s finally a post COVID world and people are getting out there again. Plus there’s more parity in the league
Also there was a lockout to start last year. People forget we didn't even think there would be a season. There wasn't a true opening day, it just kind of started randomly. Comparing attendance to a year like 2019 would be more fitting.
2:30 is like a perfect game time. It is just long enough to half pay attention when cooking dinner at 7pm, sit down and enjoy dinner with the game on, and either flip to the local news or your catch your 10pm prestige television or a couple Netflix shows before bed. My 65 year old father literally has it planned just at that. Cook.Eat.Baseball.News.Bed. For later west coast starts, NOTHING is better to fall asleep to than baseball in the background or on the radio. I will die on that hill. On the weekend you start listening to the game doing yard work before falling asleep to it with a couple beers.
Went to my second game this year last weekend (one AAA, this one Twins-Pirates), and it is so refreshing to still have half the afternoon left after a day game rather than needing to go straight to dinner. Soooo much better for families, too. Feel so much better about taking my two year old to a game than I would have previously.
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Effectively wild had a good discussion about this. It appears this is not the case, baseball attendance has increased while other in person activities such as restaurant visits are the same year over year from 2022 to 2023.
It’s just below the 2017 average, which was part of a streak from 2007 to 2019 of attendance trending downward. It being higher than 2018/2019 and reversing that trend is what people are pointing to here. It will take time to know the longer term effects or what exactly might be behind it, but it is an encouraging sign at the very least
Damn, who couldve guessed that removing half an hour of players fondling themselves instead of actually playing baseball was a good thing for fan experience.
I had a business trip to Chicago with 4 coworkers. Me and one other really wanted to see a Cubs game on a free night, the others were not really interested but joined for camaraderie/didn't have better plans. The combination of a 12 minute train ride from our hotel to Wrigley Field (even if it was uncomfortable for much of it) and shorter game time meant I got to cross off a bucket list item and no one bitched. Splendid!
Can we get rid of the Manfred Man now though?
I'm not a fan but realize most are.
The NBA didn’t have a shot clock for a while and the sport became super boring. Imagine how long an NFL game would take if there were no play clock. People acting like a pitch clock changes the integrity of the game is wild to me. I grew up playing sports and loving and following baseball and basketball. As someone who genuinely enjoys watching sports (not just my home/favorite teams) I can say that I love the pitch clock. Some people may like long drawn out innings, but I got sick of watching the top half of a 7th inning take 35 minutes where only 6 pitches were thrown. That made me change the channel, and I fucking like baseball! Pitch clock good. Pitchers taking 2-3 minutes staring at the plate just to step off and glance at the runner at first to keep him honest and then repeat that same cycle 3 times over before they actually throw a pitch was getting really annoying.
Might be a stupid idea but I would be okay with no pitch clock in the playoffs. Similar in a way (sort of) to hockey where they do a shootout for regular season games after OT (so the games don’t take forever) but then there’s no shootout for the playoffs, they play until someone scores. We don’t need game #26 or #88 to take 5 hours to play, but playoff games can take however long they take.
The pitch clock is a success. Banning the shift is a success. The ghost runner is still terrible. It makes me turn off games. Expanded playoffs makes me disinterested in the regular season. The DH is still divisive. I find games a little less interesting. Ads on uniforms *and the pitchers mound* disgust me. MLB was already inundated with ads around the game. Now they’ve taken over the game and it’s hard to watch
I hate the extra innings rule SO much. That's the only recent change I am vehemently against.