Finally made it to my first game this season, my annual visit to see the PCL Memphis Redbirds, and saw the use of the pitch clock for the first time. The pitcher has 20 seconds to start his windup from the time he steps on the mound and the teams have 2 minutes and 25 seconds between innings. It did speed up the game but it did not feel right to me and I think the clock takes away some of the beauty of the game. It was also hard to get used to seeing the clock behind the plate and in center field. Being older and resistant to change, I was wondering how others feel about the use of a clock in the game of baseball.
Tags:
Mark -
The clocks are not a distraction to me (visually).
At a recent AAA game it was weird/different to see a ball called (pitcher took more than the allotted time) and a strike called (batter took too much time). It wasn't bad; just different.
I agree that sometimes there's a really good batter/pitcher duel going on. At the few minor league games I've attended this year, the clocks have been shut off in those cases.
Interesting, I had seen the 2:25 between-innings clock at several MLB games this year but hadn't seen the 20 second pitch clock until I went to my first minor league game of the season. This was in Albuquerque on July 31. It definitely threw me off at first. I think I like the between-innings clock but I'm not sure they should introduce the pitch clock into MLB. As annoying as it is to watch a batter pout for a minute b/c he disagrees with a strike call or to see a pitcher spend a minute staring down the batter (Jonathan Papelbon comes to mind), it would be terrible to see a key at-bat in a huge game changed by a pitch clock violation.