"The pitch clock will only diminish the product on the field." Traditionalists should just chill Kids might enjoy elements of the game that can be converted into online memes, but "you can't do anything with a countdown clock." Instead, the result of a time limit will probably just be sloppier play. When pitchers and hitters go to work against each other, the contest "is more of a mental battle than it is a physical one." Speeding up the game might put more fatigue on pitchers' arms, and probably won't do much to grow the game anyway. It might look like players are "taking their sweet time," but the wait has a purpose. "There are a lot of things that happen on the mound that few fans understand," David Gasper wrote in 2019 for Reviewing the Brew, a Milwaukee Brewers blog. "We hated the wild card, the expanded playoffs, and anything else new, yet none of those changes hurt the game one iota." The pitch clock is wrong for baseball That could mean "the games will be just as dull, but end more quickly." History says nobody should panic about the new rules. But the league's "heart is in the right place" because the rules are designed to give the fans what they want: Shorter games with "more action, and more athleticism." Will they get that? Experiments at the minor league level suggest that while the pitch clock shortens games, batting averages and runs scored have stayed about the same. Yes, baseball lovers tend to "go nuts" when the game evolves. Why? Because "the guys in the majors have thrived under the status quo," Jon Heyman writes at the New York Post. MLB player representatives voted against the pitch clock and defensive shift changes. How might the new rules change the character of America's pastime? Players don't like the new rules, but fans might These are indeed big changes for a tradition-bound game that is usually slow to adopt new ideas. Putting players on a timer is "the most insidious alteration to the very fabric of baseball's being that has occurred in over a century," Jeffrey May writes for Diario AS. And some fans have appreciated the literally timeless nature of baseball. "I think it's a bunch of crap," Cubs reliever David Robertson said earlier this year. Some major league pitchers, though, vehemently disagree. "It's the fan-friendliest addition to the game of baseball since the introduction of beer," ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote on Twitter. That should significantly shorten games, which now run more than three hours on average.
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