Let’s Hope We Never See Anything Like Game Two Again
There are few people I know that like baseball as much as Jeff Sullivan. I’m continually jealous of the way he can see things that I can’t see in the game, spotting little details that make for fantastic stories, and engaging with aspects of the sport that most people gloss over. While some may like the history of the game, or the ability to parse all the information it provides, Jeff is one of those who you can say truly enjoys the game on the field.
With that said, here’s Jeff’s take on last night’s game, as he was live-blogging as it went down.
Jeff wasn’t just being grumpy. August Fagerstrom, who was at the game in person, said this in our postgame chat about who was covering what.
If Game Two of the 2016 World Series was a movie, it would have 0% on Rotten Tomatoes this morning. Even with Jake Arrieta carrying a no-hitter into the sixth inning, that was not a display of baseball at its best. This was a four hour and four minute contest that featured a grand total of six runs over nine innings, and Major League Baseball needs to spend some serious time trying to make sure that they don’t offer up many more games like that to the general public.
As Jeff sarcastically noted, a good amount of last night’s slog can be blamed on Trevor Bauer, who struggled with his control and ran deep counts on nearly every batter he faced. Bauer threw 87 pitches to just 18 batters, averaging 4.8 pitches per batter faced. And to make matters worse, Bauer spent a lot of time standing around not throwing, even though he’s not normally a slow worker; he averaged 26.7 seconds between pitches last night, up from his 20.7 second regular season average. Bauer worked slowly, missed the zone, and when he tried to put Cubs hitters away, they fouled him off constantly. It was not a lot of fun to watch.
But Bauer wasn’t the only issue last night. He only threw 87 of the 357 pitches delivered, and no one else was exactly fun to watch either. Even Arrieta managed to suck the drama out of a postseason no-hitter attempt by walking the bases loaded in the first inning, running up his pitch count to the point where it was obvious he wasn’t going to get anywhere near the ninth inning whether Cleveland got a hit off him or not.
Even the vaunted Indians bullpen was tough to watch. Bryan Shaw made even the one big inning boring, issuing back to back walks in the fifth inning, first to load then bases, then to score the Cubs fifth run of the game. Danny Salazar followed with an inning of work that saw him throw 19 pitches, but only eight strikes. Jeff Manship threw 15 pitches and got one out. The Indians might have held the Cubs to five runs, but it was a pretty ugly night of pitching from the Cleveland side, and made for one of the least enjoyable games to watch as a spectator you could imagine.
Including the postseason, MLB has now had 18 different nine inning games that lasted at least four hours this year. As you’d guess, most of these affairs are high scoring contests, slugfests that involve a bunch of action plays, at least. 15 of the 18 four-hour, nine-inning games saw double digit run totals, and the average for the 18 games was 16 runs scored between the two teams. With only six runs scored, last night’s game was the lowest scoring four-hour, nine-inning game of the season. To put the lack of action in context, here are some “fun” metrics from those 18 games this year.
| Date | Pitches | Batters | Minutes | Runs | Minutes/Run | Pitches/Run | Pitches/Batter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4/16 | 362 | 89 | 251 | 15 | 17 | 24 | 4.1 |
| 4/19/16 | 365 | 83 | 241 | 9 | 27 | 41 | 4.4 |
| 4/21/16 | 374 | 98 | 256 | 20 | 13 | 19 | 3.8 |
| 4/23/16 | 387 | 87 | 240 | 16 | 15 | 24 | 4.4 |
| 4/24/16 | 342 | 95 | 242 | 22 | 11 | 16 | 3.6 |
| 5/16/16 | 333 | 82 | 240 | 13 | 18 | 26 | 4.1 |
| 6/24/16 | 381 | 101 | 270 | 19 | 14 | 20 | 3.8 |
| 7/23/16 | 389 | 96 | 251 | 20 | 13 | 19 | 4.1 |
| 7/24/16 | 353 | 83 | 248 | 11 | 23 | 32 | 4.3 |
| 8/6/16 | 338 | 97 | 240 | 21 | 11 | 16 | 3.5 |
| 8/10/16 | 355 | 86 | 255 | 13 | 20 | 27 | 4.1 |
| 8/11/16 | 402 | 94 | 243 | 21 | 12 | 19 | 4.3 |
| 8/22/16 | 379 | 102 | 242 | 27 | 9 | 14 | 3.7 |
| 9/25/16 | 354 | 84 | 241 | 17 | 14 | 21 | 4.2 |
| 10/10/16 | 352 | 79 | 252 | 11 | 23 | 32 | 4.5 |
| 10/13/16 | 323 | 80 | 272 | 7 | 39 | 46 | 4.0 |
| 10/20/16 | 327 | 83 | 256 | 12 | 21 | 27 | 3.9 |
| 10/26/16 | 357 | 81 | 244 | 6 | 41 | 60 | 4.4 |
Even among the games that took forever, this one stands out from the crowd. In the other 17 games, a run was scored, on average, every 17.6 minutes; last night, a run was scored every 41 minutes. Viewers had to sit through 60 pitches for every run scored last night, versus an average of 25 pitches per run in the previous four-hour, nine-inning contests. Forget comparing this to even a regular game; this was painful even by slow-game standards. That this happened in the World Series, when MLB is trying to put its best foot forward, is not a good look for Major League Baseball.
And it’s a reminder that a lot of the gains made with the pace of play initiatives in 2015 were wiped out in 2016. In the 2014 postseason, teams averaged 25.4 seconds between pitches, but after MLB told the players to work faster, that dropped to 23.1 seconds last postseason; this year, they’ve split the difference, at 24.3 seconds between pitches. It’s still faster than it was in 2014, but it looks like the league’s attempts to speed up the game took two steps forward, but have now taken one step back.
Some of last night’s slowness can’t be legislated away. You can’t make Trevor Bauer throw strikes, or tell Ben Zobrist to stop fouling off pitches. There’s not much the league can do about each batter seeing 4.4 pitches in an at-bat; that’s just a combination of patient hitters and pitchers struggling with their command. That’s going to happen sometimes.
And despite Bauer’s early exit, we can’t really blame last night’s pace on too many pitching changes. The Cubs only used three pitchers the whole game, so even with the Indians leaning on their bullpen, we only saw 10 pitchers used last night. Expanded bullpens are an issue for MLB’s desire to move the game along in general, but they weren’t a specific issue last night.
Really, the targetable issue here remains time between pitches. The league showed they could make a tangible difference in game pace in 2015 when the rules were emphasized, and the next logical step might be implementing the pitch clock that is already in use in the minor leagues. Reducing the time between pitches at least makes the game feel like it’s moving along, and improves the product even when the pitchers are struggling to throw strikes.
Game One of the World Series was great, and displayed some of the best things about the sport. Game Two was a lot less great, and when the World Series is being described as boring by those who love it most, the league has a problem to address. Hopefully that one ends up as the dud of the series, and we get some better baseball over the weekend. And maybe, if we’re lucky, Game Two of the World Series will be the reminder that everyone needs to take the pace of play initiatives more seriously than they did this year.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
So how is the pitch clock working out down in the minors? Have your prospect guys (who watch more of such games, I sure hope) had anything to say about it? What reactions from the minor leaguers themselves?
I work for a MiLB team. The clock works fine.
Please bring it to the majors ASAP.
Do we have a stat of commercial minutes per total game time for playoff baseball vs regular season? I bet the ratio is significantly higher for postseason baseball.
I suppose we could roughly figure this out by taking each pitcher’s pace from yesterday’s game multiplied by pitches thrown and then subtracting that from game time: the difference would be dead time due to mound visits, pitching changes, and commercial breaks….am I missing anything there?
It is higher. Or at least my casual but somewhat quantified observation says so. On my DVR I can hop 30 seconds at a time, pressing the button 5 times quickly jumps 2:30 in a flash. I did that for regular season games this year and I’d usually have maybe 10 seconds until the first pitch of the next inning. If I do that for the post season games, it seems I’m often still watching commercials or there is some prolonged story the announcers are telling and I sit through another 30+ seconds of time before first pitch.
Nationally televised games always have an extra 30 seconds of commercial time.
They add about 30 seconds extra per half-inning break. Another thing I did notice is that the umps are not nearly as strict in the playoffs as they are in the regular season. During the season they have the clock, and players would basically be ready when the clock hits zero. During the playoffs (at least the games in Toronto), when the clock hit 0 players were still getting ready, and it would take another 10-20 seconds before they would actually get going.
Commercial breaks in the post-season are supposedly 2m55sec. Some go up over 3 min, however. That’s 30 sec longer than regular season national telecast and 1+ min longer than regional. Over 9 innings thats anywhere from 9 minutes to 18 minutes longer for just between innings. Add in pitching changes, that could be another 5-10 minutes. Pretty easy to see a major culprit here. But that’s the money maker for the networks who spend big money to get the rights, so that’s not going away.
This is the target that should be addressed, I was stunned by how the broadcast would come back from commercial to their in park studio set and have time to say a few things before going to Buck for a pitch to start an inning. Other sports have come up with methods to keep advertisers happy and limit cutting away from the game. If you trim back the commercial break (enforce an inning change clock on the field same as regular season) then do more in game advertising to compensate revenue, it should work. Advertises would be pretty friendly to more in game stuff in this DVR era.
Imagine if that stinker had started at 8:15 as scheduled and went past midnight, ugh.
It’s the same as the ratio of leprechauns to unicorns
If I remember correctly, they add about a full minute to each half inning. So we’re looking at this extending the game about 20 minutes. I was timing them in game one and they were coming back from commercial at about 2:50. It’s ridiculous.
The best part are the multi-minute commercial breaks, and listening to people banned from baseball (or should be) for 4+ hours.
Pete Rose should never be allowed to have anything more to do with baseball.
One change I’d like to see is to eliminate the ability of batters to request time once they’re in the box.
They only do that if the pitcher is taking their sweat time. Make pitchers throw the d–ned ball and this probably isn’t much of an issue anymore.
Yeah sweat time is for the sauna’s!
Vin Scully has said many times that the umps will always grant batters time because you never know when a player might have something in his eye, and with pitchers throwing so hard near people’s heads it’s simply too dangerous to not grant time.
Yeah. I’m all for finding a way to encourage pitchers to work faster, but the idea of clocks in baseball is also kinda repugnant. It’s probably the only way, though! I don’t think fines could ever be used as a deterrent.
Part of the reason that the time between pitches was so great last night is that batters called time extraordinarily often. Or so it seemed, anyway. I don’t have a count on how many times it happened, but it seemed unusually high. But insofar as pitch clocks govern the pitcher, and not the batter, pitch clocks wouldn’t have helped with this particular game-slowing problem. Of course, the problems are related, since my impression is that a batter is more likely to call time if he feels that the pitcher is taking an exceptionally long time to deliver the ball. But to ultimately address the pace of play in a game like last night’s, the umpires would have to be much more reluctant to allow batters to call time, or else somehow figure out a way to make the pitch clock govern both batters and pitchers (though it’s hard to see how that would work in practice).
Batters calling time is usually the result of the pitcher getting ready to pitch before the batter is ready (or the pitcher just standing there forever). Pitchers can tell when the hitter is ready, but they gain an advantage by trying to jump the gun a bit, and “quick pitches” are simply never called. This creates almost a cat-and-mouse game where the hitter has to strategerize how to just be ready when a pitch is coming.
Amazing what being a fan does. I’m a huge Cubs homer and last night was riveting. I think the luster of them being in the World Series is enough to carry me through. I was genuinely shocked when Jeff said that in the chat. Looking back now I can certainly see what you are all saying though.
I am a Cubs fan and I found the first 5 innings or so great. Then the game seemed to bog down and I started to lose interest. It was a pretty bad game.
Yeah, If my team were playing I wouldn’t care, but I’m a huge baseball fan, and I turned the game off after the 8th inning with a bad taste in my mouth. Honestly, I think I can watch a close game, and game with my team, or a fast-paced game, but when the game has none of that, I’m just not going to deal with it.
I can’t speak for last night (sorry, first Timberwolves game of the season) but during the regular season, it was clear that batters were stepping out of the box after pitches when they weren’t allowed to in 2015. Basically you were allowed to step out after a swing or if a pitch forced you out of the box, but this season I recall seeing plenty of pitches away taken for balls/strikes and then the hitter would step out, adjust his batting gloves, etc. that MLB tried to stop in 2015.
tl;dr I think MLB stopped enforcing their pace-of-play rules from last year.
I don’t know if anybody else noticed, and I can’t remember exactly when, but during the NLCS Puig took a pitch, stepped out of the box, and then in what could have only been instinct, jumped like he was surprised and stuck his foot back in the box.
Made me realize that that rule came and went without much discussion.
Cubs homer but I wasn’t bored. Last night was not atypical 2015 / 2016 Cubs baseball–pretty high team BB%, lots of fouls, etc., etc. Clearly non-Cubs fans were bored; Passan also noted how boring the game was.
It’s pretty minuscule, but can we do away with the batter timeout? You still get your couple seconds to regroup between pitches, but no need for the hard reset any time you get an itch or just want to try to get the pitcher out of rhythm.
An 8 second attention span means it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for time, if a pitcher shakes off 3 times and then holds the ball.
I’m sure any Cubs fan would want to see three more of them.
Personally, I think we should just accept that not every game can be great. Even on the biggest stage. The first game of the series was fantastic despite a lopsided score. The second one was a clunker. It happens.
Pitch clocks are the answer to a very unimportant question. In exchange for a negligible benefit, they remove a feature of the game that can just as easily be governed by soft rules.
If you increase the pace of that game, it just ends faster. It’s still a really boring game to watch because almost nothing happened outside of Kyle Schwarber making some contact. This is true of most boring games. It’s the lack of events that cause the boredom. The length just happens to be a noticeable byproduct.
God bless you, Brad Johnson. My sentiments exactly.
Dave Cameron, you’ve become part of the problem, suggesting an intrusive and unnecessarily NFL-like rule change based on what you yourself described as an outlier of a boring game. That it happened in the WS was just bad luck.
Bottom line, it’s a non-issue that only gets talked about after outlier games (there were less than 20 such games all year out of thousands played in both leagues!) and it’s much less important than, for example, enforcement of the correct strike zone size/shape, which can affect every game.
My first thought after reading the article was: “At least the roughly once per hour Kyle Schwarber at bats were entertaining.”
My first thought after reading this was: “I agree completely.”
Thank you.
Perhaps a new rule that allows any team to substitute Mark Buehrle in for their otherwise scheduled starting pitcher?
I’m not sure what MLB can realistically do to get that game down to even 3 hours 30 minutes.
Cutting off 2 seconds per pitch saves the game about 12 minutes.
But this game featured a couple things that can significantly slow down a game that I wouldn’t want MLB to even consider changing. 5 mid-inning pitching changes turns the game into a slog. 13 walks doesn’t help either.
I suppose the Cubs didn’t do enough of the things to score bunches of runs given that they had 19 base runners but only 2 XBH. If they had scored 8 or 9 runs then this article might not have been written.
Sometimes games like this are unavoidable.
After the Cubs scored three runs in the fifth, the score for the rest of the game was in that zone where (a) no objective fan looking for entertainment is on the edge of his/her seat wondering when a comeback might happen; (b) both managers still have to deploy their bullpens under the assumption the game is still up for grabs. I’m a Cub fan, so I personally was hanging on every pitch once the tying run was in the on-deck circle in the bottom of the seventh, but if that’s what passes for “high drama” in the late innings it’s not going to do much for the average fan. It just happened to be a worst-case-scenario as far as how the game was going to be managed (like it was close) vs. how entertaining it was (not particularly).
Personally I don’t mind the idea of pitch clocks, and I also think it would be a good idea to shorten commercial breaks/time between innings (though it’s hard to imagine the latter ever happening). Just doing those things easily gets this game under 4 hours, and the only impact on actual game-play would be enforcing a rule that’s already technically on the books.
There’s a bit of irony in that being patient, working counts, and walking all are considered good things, but it can be down right boring to watch if you’re not heavily invested in either team playing.
The game was pretty brutal, I found myself watching the 76ers(!) (of all teams) more than I ever thought I would last night. The game was kind of like watching a mid-00s Yankees/Red Sox game… even had me hoping for a much expanded strike zone, or softball style rules, or 5 ball walks.
I’m a huge baseball fan, and last night’s type of games don’t bother me that much, but I was also watching the Sixers, because, well, Joel Embiid!!!
One of my favorite questions to ask baseball fans is your ideal score for a baseball game (I waver between 3-2 and 4-3). I like this chart for thinking about more data to construct the ideal game. Mine would be:
304 pitches, 76 batters, 170 minutes, 7 runs, 24.3 mins/run, 43.4 pitches/run, 4 pitches/batter
I HATE the half-assed throw to first. If a P throws to first and the runner gets back to the bag feet first, it is a ball to the batter. This would discourage throws to first and likely increase SBs, which are fun.
You should always use your full ass.
I think the commenter did when coming up with this idea.
I don’t think a ball is appropriate, especially for right handers who can’t actually see where the runner is till they turn to throw. If there were a pitch clock that applied even with runners on base then I might feel that not resetting the clock for such throws was reasonable (and that would come fairly close to being an automatic ball).
But given the present rules and the lack of enforcement of existing pace rules, I don’t think this suggestion is currently reasonable.
I’ve said for years that postseason baseball is basically unwatchable because of the pace. It is mostly relief pitchers to blame, but hittters are not without fault given how often they regather during an at bat.
I also think the way Fox presents the game makes the game feel longer. They cut away to a player in the dugout, coach, fan or graphic after almost every pitch. I realize nothing is going on on the field, but it just takes you out of it and makes it feel like time has been called or something. Last night felt like five hundred short timeouts.
Also, Contreras and Montgomery really slowed the game down with their numerous conferences.
I’m a huge Cubs fan. Very happy with the result, but I thought it was pretty boring.
I never really thought of this before, but along the same lines, the broadcast for the playoffs isn’t like a regular season game where the guys in the booth might be talking about their golf game, the plane ride the night before, Yaz/Ted Williams, TWTW, etc, for a few innings. In the playoffs, each pitch might be THE pitch and it gets a little redundant at some levels; there isn’t really a conversation between (in the case of the World Series Buck and Smotz who I enjoy fwiw) as much as two guys just sort of rambling off facts/stats while waiting for something to happen that they can discuss for a few pitches.
I doubt that is the culprit. That is what makes football seem so much more exciting than it actually is. The constant replays, graphics and whatnot make the down time seem like it is actually action. Cutting away to something moving is actually a good thing. Cutting to the pitching coaches face for an interview while action going on and he is just chilling in the dugout is a bad thing. If they cut back to watch position players reposition themselves on the field, baserunners taking leads and flinching back, and whatever other movements they could focus on between pitches it would make it seem like more action.
I noticed Contreras seemed to go out to the mound more often than usual. The last few innings it seemed like he went out almost every batter. As a Cubs homer I enjoyed the game itself and the outcome but totally understand why others wouldn’t.
I heard that the Cubs were having trouble with signs and indicators. That may or may not be true.
Mark Buehrle had a career average pace of 16.7 seconds. Lets set the pitch clock to that exact number as an homage to the man.
Can we have an annual Buehrle Award for lowest pitch time? And write bonuses into everybody’s contract?
Hah! You should have seen how fast Bob Gibson pitched!
Seems like the easiest thing would be to tell the umpires to slightly expand their zone. The amount of walks in the long but boring games are what make them either long or boring, or both.
It’s always exceptional when we agree Dave. I “watched” most of the game last night (flipped between that and basketball which is much more exciting). But let’s not forget how cold it was. I have a feeling the lack of control on the part of the pitchers could be blamed mostly on that. Is there any one on the coaching staff that could hold the pitchers’ hands when they’re in the dugout so they stay warm between innings?
By December I will be begging to watch a four hour nine inning game
Yup.
Mike Montgomery perfectly showed what has become an increasing problem in baseball. Pitchers have found that there are two ways to gain advantages over hitters. Pitching really quickly or really slowly. Montgomery seemed incredibly disinterested in pitching to hitters that were actually ready to be pitched to. This led to a ton of called times and when hitters took measures to keep him from quick pitching, he was stepping off or otherwise avoiding throwing the ball. It was excruciating.
Pitchers should simply wait until a hitter is ready, and then throw the ball. There is no reason at that point to wait (with runners on base, you do need to change it up a little). There needs to be some punishment for attempting a quick pitch that is enforced. There is no way it is just an accident that pitchers do this all the time.
There are probably some issues with hitters, too, but I really think it is mostly the pitchers.
I don’t know what it is nowadays but people will find a way of complaining of every little issue.
I am a Dodger fan but a baseball fan first. Yesterday’s game was one sided and you know what, that is going to happen. Not every game will have situations where the leverage index is over four.
Give me what I saw yesterday over the silence during the off-season.
An interesting note: the second-lowest scoring one of these, on 10/13, was game 5 of the Dodgers-Nats NLDS, a game that we can all agree was in many ways extremely compelling. Amazing that it made the list with only 7 runs scored, and without Pedro Baez throwing a pitch!
At least this was a 6:08 start. Those Red Sox-Yankees Sunday night games, starting after 8, were/are unbearable.
Minutes/Run might be the most abhorrent thing I’ve ever seen here on Fangraphs. It brings to mind images of marketing execs discussing “watchability” and “q ratings”, and leads one to believe that more runs = better baseball is just good sense.
Last night was just bad baseball. For lots of reasons.
But no minutes/game. Please. Never again.
I live in a AAA city and the idea that the pitch clock is “in use in the minor leagues” is a gross over-statement. It’s basically there, and that’s about it. It doesn’t start until the pitcher is over the rubber, whereas the sensationalist pitch clocks that you sometimes see posted by TV networks tend to start the second the pitcher catches the ball from the catcher. Also, if the minor league pitch clock starts to wind down, at least in my home park, they just turn it off around 3 seconds and that’s that.
Managers, coaches and teammates at all levels like their pitchers to work quickly and most do, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions are not worthy of introducing an obnoxious pitch clock. Would it really have been better to force Bauer to work faster last night and remove all possibility that he might eventually find his command? What if he ran over the clock and an automatic ball was called? How does that help anything? Now he’s even more frustrated and maybe Francona has to pull him an inning or more sooner than if he just had a little time to find his command. And that affects how he’s able to use his bullpen the rest of the game and even the rest of the series. And I’m not a fan of either the Indians or Cubs (although, full disclosure, I can’t stand Genius Joe Maddon).
It’s a complete over-reaction to an outlier game and a disaster of an idea.
Shame on you, Dave Cameron. No clocks in baseball!
I don’t agree with pretty much anything in this article. While I agree with the premise that 4+ hour games are too long, I’m not at all in agreement with the statement that Game 2 was boring. First of all, 10-pitch at bats are not bad for the game. Foul balls are not bad. The chess match between hitter and pitcher is an essential quality of baseball. Watching a pitcher try to get someone out with a variety of pitches and locations while a batter adjusts, especially if this battle is occurring while runners are on base, is one of the things I love about this game. Sure, this particular game didn’t end with as many runs as previous 4+ hour games but is that really our standard? Are we saying the NBA All-Star game is the most exciting thing in sports because there is constant scoring?
The numerous pitching changes, very long commercial breaks, and time between pitches are all factors in making this game longer than usual, but when there was action – I thought it was entertaining.
The issue of length-of-game is stretching my patience with this beautiful sport to the limit.
As a US sports fan (Basketball, Baseball and Football) but not in the US, I am accustomed to a completely different viewing dynamic. Rugby was my sport of choice growing up, and I probably took 40min halves uninterrupted by commercials for granted. As soon as I started following US sports – football in particular, my first thought was “how the hell do people put up with this crap? Every 90 seconds there’s more commercials being shoved down our throat!”.
In an attempt to maximize revenues, the MLB has overlooked just how damaging this dollar chasing will be to viewers – casuals in particular. If I’m someone trying to get interested in the sport now, there’s no way in hell I’d put up with watching 4 hours of this. Plus, it’s hard to build tension and suspense when I’m being told to check out my insurance or go and get three burgers and a four gallon jug of coke all the time.
And I haven’t even started on the pitchers taking half a minute to throw a single pitch.
Commercial breaks are already lengthened during the playoffs, if you try to speed up the actual baseball, the networks will just fill it with more commercials. I think the complaint needs to be with the presentation, not the game itself. FS1’s presentation of baseball is hilariously bad. It looks like something produced by a local news station, not a World Series game on a major network in primetime.
Zoomed in shots of random fans or players all the way up until the ball is being released, wide angle shots from the upper deck again all the way up until the ball is released. I’m not sure we’ve seen a pitcher’s complete windup from start to finish in any of these games because of how often Fox is switching cameras. Add in the awkward mid-game interviews, audio problems, the constant plugs for FS1’s other shows and incredibly stale, cliche filled commentary and you get a boring broadcast.
As someone who watches the FS1 International feed via MLBtv side by side with the domestic cable broadcast, I’m amazed by just how different the two are. The feed itself is the same, but with no commercials it seems like an entirely different broadcast. It also show just how delayed the domestic feed is. At times it is 15+ seconds behind the International feed (which itself is few seconds delayed from game action). Beat reporters on twitter are reporting the play by play events, 10-15 seconds before it airs on FS1. I assume this is to have an audio dump, as the swearing is aired loud and clear on the international feed while it is dumped on the domestic one.
I won’t argue that the game itself was dull, but I think the dullness played up because of the horrendous production by FS1.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it is time to change the World Series to a warm weather site. Pitchers performed as they did last night because they could not grip the ball in the cold.
I can’t believe you wrote that either. I’m sure the Cubs fans in Chicago would LOVE that idea.
People in Miami don’t even watch Miami games. The WS is not like a Super Bowl event that every joe schmo with a television tunes in. Only people that care about the World Series watch it. Moving the site would be a huge mistake and I can’t even believe I wrote this much about it.
I feel like a ton of people didn’t even really register that Arrieta had a no-no going, between the walks and having their attention drawn elsewhere. Alright, it was me! But I read it elsewhere too. Like you said, there’s been long games this postseason that have been riveting, but I constantly felt myself zoning out of this one.
It seems like Fox wants your attention anywhere except the actual game. Fans in the stands, random players in the dugout, dugout interviews, Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe, Pete Rose, random bars in Wrigleyville or Cleveland. These are all things that get more air time than the actual game.
It is really hard to get into the flow of the game when you’re constantly being taken out of it. Like being at a movie and someone’s cell phone keeps going off, except this is every other pitch for four hours.
Here’s a theory: the long layoff is at least a contributing factor to the long game. Many pitchers who are accustomed to having no more than 5 days off between starts struggle with their command when they have usually long layoffs. Both teams sitting and waiting for the series to begin are at risk of having a starter struggle as Bauer did to throw strikes and put away hitters.
Don’t feed the troll articles.