The 2018 Season Will Not Have a Pitch Clock

Rob Manfred wants the game to move faster. Funny thing is, he’s not alone. The players also want the game to move faster. Who would ever want to spend more time at work? Everyone’s aware that baseball games now are taking longer than ever. Everyone knows that’s far from ideal. As possible fixes go, there have simply been differences of opinion. The conversation about the slow free-agent market bled into the conversation about making the game speed up, so for some time it seemed like Manfred might unilaterally introduce his own pace-of-game directives. But now we have news that the league and the union have gotten along. There will be new rules for 2018.

A pitch clock isn’t among them. For months, it felt like a 2018 inevitability, because Manfred is so clearly in favor. It’s no coincidence the pitch clock has been implemented at various other levels of competition — Major League Baseball is slowly getting surrounded. The idea of the big-league pitch clock isn’t going to go away. But it has been set aside for now, as players collectively didn’t like it. They didn’t want to agree to such a fundamental change to the game. What we’re going to have are limits on mound visits, as well as shorter breaks between innings and pitcher substitutions. For the most part, for now, baseball is leaving the pace to the players. And the players get to celebrate a victory.

Before moving on, I want to make it absolutely clear that the pitch clock isn’t dead. It’s just sleeping. Maybe it’ll come back up in eight or nine months. What this is is a reprieve. The players know where the league stands, but the league is granting another chance to speed the game up with no pitch clock included. It worked, after all, only three seasons ago. It’s just that that improvement was temporary.

And while the players are happy to avoid a clock, there is that concession. Mound visits generally do serve a purpose. They’re not just pointless conversations; often, catchers are going over new signals. Teams now are more paranoid than ever about sign-stealing, to the point where, in last year’s playoffs, I saw catchers going through full sets of signs even with no one on base. The new limit is set to six visits per nine innings. That is, visits that don’t result in a pitching change. The old rule also still applies, about coach visits per inning. If someone now attempts a seventh visit, the umpire has the authority to stop it. Catchers and pitchers are going to have to make adjustments, spending more time on their pregame preparation.

There’s a difference between game length and game pace. We’ve all watched great games that lasted four hours, and we’ve all watched dreadful games that lasted two and a half. Typically, though, the former works as a proxy of the latter. So there’s no questioning why so many parties want the games to move faster. It’s because the games have gradually slowed.

This is nothing you haven’t seen before. Last year set a new league record of 185 minutes per nine-inning game. So many players and fans have resisted any changes, saying that baseball doesn’t have a problem, that it’s always worked the same way. But baseball has undeniably gotten slower, and even if you don’t think there’s a problem with the 2017 numbers, the trend suggests it was all only going to get worse. There need to be adjustments. Adjustments, to cut the trend off.

The argument in favor of a pitch clock is pretty simple. We have only ten years of pace data at the major-league level, but it’s revealing.

Even over just one decade, average pace has slowed by 2.6 seconds, or 12%. That doesn’t seem like very much time until you remember how many pitches are actually thrown in the average game. You see that drop in 2015, when baseball more strongly enforced a batter’s-box rule. The rule is still on the books, but the pace improvement has disappeared, and then some. Consensus is that this is a consequence of lax enforcement. In one way, that strengthens the argument for a pitch clock — you can’t trust humans to be in charge of these things. But in another way, this is also proof of change that can be accomplished without a clock at all. Pace did get better in 2015. Everyone just needs to do that, and stay vigilant.

I think just looking at pace can also be misleading. For example, plate appearances are lasting longer than they have in 30 years.

As you know, strikeouts are up, and velocity is up, and so there are just more deep counts. Pitchers, overall, slow down as counts get deeper and deeper. I don’t know if it’s about the increasing stakes; deep-count pitches have broader swings in potential value than early-count pitches. It might also just be building fatigue. For pitchers, and for hitters. Both pitching and swinging can tire you out. It can also be mentally taxing to be involved in a seven-pitch showdown. The time between hitters offers something of a break. We probably can’t expect pitchers to work that much faster. Some of them could absolutely stand to speed up, and the same goes for many hitters, but there’s only so much that can reasonably be accomplished.

In the past, I’ve been more strongly pro-pitch clock. And even now, I think I’d be okay with it. I suspect that players could adjust very quickly, and few would ever be affected. I also think it’s less of a solution than I used to. Firstly, it is a fundamental change to the sport, a timer where no timer has existed. And games and at-bats don’t drag because of time between ordinary pitches. Many longer delays happen because of pick-off attempts, or foul balls. Or, there are those times when the pitcher needs the catcher to go back over the signals, to get on the same page. I don’t think the problem is a second here or there. Trimming pace with a clock would be helpful, but so would eliminating more of the dead time. The strings of several seconds in a row.

Innings are now going to start more promptly, with less standing around. And fans almost never love to watch a mound meeting. Now, again, many of those meetings are strategic in purpose, so getting to have fewer of them will be an obstacle, from the player perspective. But more thorough preparation can help to get over that. Different sequences of signals can help to get over that. And it would be helpful to reduce league-wide sign-stealing paranoia. That’s addressed in part within the new rules. It’s possible that having fewer meetings will reduce the worry on its own. And there’s also that lingering idea of catchers and pitchers wearing earpieces or wristbands. Dave Cameron wrote about that in September. And Buster Posey happened to just lend the idea further support, in conversation with Andrew Baggarly.

I’m definitely not opposed to an earpiece, one in my helmet, and in the pitcher’s ear. That solves it. A guy’s on second, a guy fouls a ball off and steps out of the box and it’s as simple as saying, `All right, let’s go to this sequence of signs.’ Or you don’t even put a sign down. You just say, ‘OK, we’re throwing this pitch right here.’ Who knows if that’ll happen. I think it’s a great idea.

Of course there would be problems, predictable and unpredictable, but if the catcher and pitcher could be put in direct contact, then at least in theory, the sign-stealing problems go away. The miscommunication goes away. The need for most meetings goes away. I’m not saying this is a necessity, but if a pitch clock or automated strike zone is considered an inevitability, why isn’t this? Why shouldn’t baseball get what football has had for years? Some fans and players would miss the old-fashioned stealing-signs-from-second aspect, but the game would be cleaner and faster. It’s out there, and it has support.

Anyway, that’s kind of veering into a different area. For now, we have new rules, which are less dramatic than was threatened. For 2018, baseball’s going to try to work on its pace, but without the aid of the long-rumored pitch clock. There are going to be fewer mound meetings. There are going to be quicker inning breaks. Next offseason, depending on the game-pace results, the pitch clock could come up again. But the players have succeeded in putting that off. And the players have collectively worked to play more quickly before, in 2015, so it can be done. The question is: Can it be sustained? The players insisted on the right to find out, in a clock-less environment. I don’t know if baseball’s pace can ever be what Manfred wants it to be in this era of high velocity and strikeouts, but we’ll see how 2018 shakes out. Baseball will take another shot on smaller changes, before folding in a big one.