Intentional walks

I love baseball, too, but as my attention span shortens I...um, what was I saying?

Oh, right, so as my attention span shortens, I have trouble watching a whole game.

I don't know how much time it would save, but I wouldn't let the batter out of the batters box once he enters, unless he hits the ball (or is hit by it). To leave the batters box otherwise should be an automatic out.

I'm not sure if I'd make the pitcher throw within X seconds or something. Possibly. But there are at least some pitchers who like to get the ball back from the catcher and pretty much start their next windup. If I had at least the first rule (no leaving the batters box), I could watch the games of my favorite pitchers, and the games would probably take 2:15. Would be nice!

valen wrote:

If you have to go back 40 or 50 years to find reasons this is interesting .........

Here are some recent examples:

https://youtu.be/-euNcCMy0CA

More examples!

https://youtu.be/IJBMm70kRgo

All Rob Manfred cares about is getting the next big TV deal for MLB. So he wants to be able to tell the networks that they took specific action on speeding up games. Yeah, right. Terrible commissioner, does not care about the game, only marketing and money. The biggest way to speed up games would be to reduce the 2 and a half minutes of commercials between innings.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/1/29/7921283/baseball-game-length-visual-analysis

You can see the game length really took off around 1980 with the advent of sabermetrics and situational stats, therefore righty/lefty batters pitchers etc. To me rule change would be as if the NFL stated that from now on a team would not have to snap the ball if enough time remained in the game to just take a knee and so we save a couple minutes. Baseball has a serious problem with younger fans, but I don’t think this does much.

well, in my case I can't remember what happened a year ago or even last month, but can recall in detail things 30 or more years old.

Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean.

I think the real concern as someone noted is the 3 hour cutoff. Most games have 3 hour time slots for scheduling so when it goes over it cuts in to another show. That means networks have to schedule something relatively unimportant that can be easily pre-empted or bumped. That may be the real problem and not what fans think. Bottom line on the fans is there are more attending and watching than ever in history. So this is in many ways to me an engineered problem.

I looked at the article and one of the graphs compared game times beginning with 1915 which I think is not comparing apples to oranges. You cannot compare game times today where there has to be built in commercial time. And it is not just the time between innings. There is a commercial break between most pitching changes. I have heard talk about reducing the number of pitches a new reliever gets on the mound but that time is not only needed so the guy can throw 8 pitches off the mound it is needed to complete that commercial.

To be honest watching on TV game times are not that burdensome because I fast forward through the commercial breaks. I rip through that 3 hour game in about an hour and a half, assuming I have control of the remote. Fortunately in my house I always do.

If you want to speed up the game, how about restricting the number of pitchers to 10. I was just looking at the Giants roster and they have 13 pitchers, and 12 position players. I think most teams carry 12 now. Something is backwards here. Limit the number of pitchers! Thirteen pitchers and Bochy's constant pitching changes combined with his slow shuffle to the mound like he needs to take a constipated dump make for a loooooong game.