MLB’s Pace Enforcement Squad Resorts to Sternly Written Letters

Last month, we detailed the meager results that have come from Major League Baseball’s efforts to shorten the length of their games. For as long as the league has endeavored to do something about it, most observers have laughed off such attempts as just paying lip service to critics of the game.↵↵Except now, the league looks as though it’s getting somewhat more aggressive in its emphasis. Dodgers reliever George Sherrill recently received a letter from the league (albeit without a fine) demanding that he hurry up his warm-up routine and that he took too much time to ready himself in his April 14 appearance against Arizona. It seems he exceeded his allotted warm-up time by 45 seconds.↵

↵↵Sherrill isn’t contesting the infraction, so much as the spirit of the rule, which you might say he considers misguided.↵

↵↵⇥“First time I got something like that,” Sherrill said. “It’s my seventh year in the big leagues, and I’ve never gotten one before. The thing is, you sit there and watch a game, and guys are throwing strikes on top of strikes, and [the umpires] are not calling them. That’s why games are taking so long, not because a guy has a little extra time to warm up.”↵↵ ↵↵Sherrill has taken to attach the letter to his locker, but not until he wrote “with more strikes called, the game is faster” on top of the typed letter. It’s a sentiment any pitcher would agree with, though anyone even loosely familiar with the league knows it wouldn’t go so far as to jeopardize offensive output as it would streamline pitcher’s duels.↵

↵↵(H/T to Can’t Stop the Bleeding)↵

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