After a Decade of Tepid Efforts, Baseball Games a Whole Six Minutes Shorter

One of the methods Major League Baseball devised to counter the dip in attendance that followed the 1994 strike was finding ways to slash the length of games, which casual fans had derided as too long for their go-go modern sensibilities. The main culprit most often cited is the extensive wait time between pitches. Of course, the official on-the-books-but-rarely-enforced rule isn’t anywhere close to the league average.↵↵⇥The official rule -- 8.04 for those keeping score at home -- says pitchers have 12 seconds when there are no runners on base, according to MLB spokesman Pat Courtney. Last year’s average was 27 seconds, according to Stats LLC.↵⇥When pitchers break the rule, they can be assessed a ball on the ball-strike count. It happened 15 to 20 times last season and baseball intends to aggressively enforce the rule this season.↵↵↵In 2000, Frank Robinson was hired to help correct the problem, but he left the position in 2002 to manage the Expos. Bob Watson was then brought on as his replacement. Watson has groused about the enormity of the task before him, while at the same time touting the incremental progress the game has made. ↵

↵

↵↵Watson said a 14-member special commission met for the first time in January to come up with further methods to shorten games. Among those discussed were stricter enforcement of rules, curbing mound conferences and not allowing batters to step out of the box during an at-bat. At this point it all sounds very tentative, so it’s unlikely to affect the 2010 season. And unless Watson gets heretofore unseen authority in his position, it’s only going to be seen as token efforts to appease the game’s harshest critics.↵

↵↵(H/T to Walkoff Walk)↵

↵