Aaron Judge, Max Scherzer Give Positive Reviews Of MLB’s New Pitch Clock

It is less than a week into a new era for spring training, the initial rehearsal for six months of playing meaningful games with a pitch clock.

It is baseball’s version of the 24-second shot clock in the NBA or the 40-second play clock in the NFL. And there will be violations such as teams get credited with turnovers in the NBA for violations or get flagged for five yard delay of game penalties.

Baseball is the last sport with a clock and back in the 1960s and 1970s it did not necessarily need any timing mechanism as games routinely went two and a half hours and only really long if playing beyond nine innings was required. In the last two decades, the average time of game has routinely been three hours or more despite offense decreasing.

Case in point is the Yankees, who played 98 games lasting at least three hours, including a game when Nestor Cortes was within five outs of a no-hitter taking three hours, seven minutes. As you would expect 13 of those games were against the Red Sox, although there was the shocking two hour, 15 minute game in Boston on Aug. 14 that may have prompted some wire service preview writers to finish their advance story on the phone during towards the end of the concert.

So far, the Yankees have played four exhibition games with the following times: 2:34, 2:16, 3:05, 2:23. The Mets have played their four games in 2:33, 2:35, 2:28 and 2:59 with the fourth one taking “so long” because it was a 12-7 game where the Mets hit two homers in the ninth and manager Buck Showalter made three pitching changes in an innings

Based on the early returns it offers an intriguing layer of spring training games when many people often follow in the background while doing other things such as working remotely. The exhibition season began Friday with Manny Machado getting flagged for a violation by getting a called strike against him for taking too long although it did it not impact his ability to re-work his contract on Sunday.

“I like it,” Yankees star Aaron Judge told reporters before a game with the Atlanta Braves. “I think you can kind of play around with it a little bit. I think it definitely speeds up the game. Anything that kind of keeps the pitcher moving and on the go, and hopefully keep him out of breath, I’m looking forward to it.”

In baseball the equal of holding the ball like North Carolina’s four corners offense was constantly stepping out of the plate the adjust your batting gloves or take a few practice swings or pitchers coming off the mound and occasionally circling the mound before the next pitch. Now those things are disallowed causing everyone to think quicker about what may be coming next in their at-bats or with their pitches.

Think of it like a cat-and-mouse game of devising strategy for pitchers and perhaps even more advantage for star pitchers like Max Scherzer, who espoused the benefits of a quicker pace.

“Really, the power the pitcher has now – I can totally dictate pace,” Scherzer told reporters. “The rule change of the hitter having only one timeout changes the complete dynamic of the hitter-and-pitcher dynamic. Yeah, I love it.”

Scherzer’s comments occurred after one sequence featured the three-time Cy Young Award winner holding the ball for more than 10 seconds. During that sequence, Washington’s Michael Chavis was required to remain in the batter’s box and locked eyes with Scherzer waiting for the pitch that led to a single.

“I can work extremely quick. And I can work extremely slow,” Scherzer said after an outing when it took him only 27 seconds to get a strikeout. “There’s another layer here to be able to mess with the hitter’s timing.

“I can come set even before the hitter’s in the box. I can’t pitch until eight (seconds left on the clock). But as soon as his eyes are up, I can go. If his eyes are up with 12 seconds to go, I can fire.”

And this year, the lengthy wait before the pitchers fire their next offering becomes a thing of the past with the hope of boxscores showing way more twos than threes in the time of game section especially for contests that do not reach extra innings or overtime in year four of the “ghost runner”.