MLB tells Umpires to speed up play.

[metirish]

Interesting what happened here.

Video of the play.

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200806152939011


Article.

] How Fast Is Too Fast? By Fred Bierman Tags: twins On Sunday the Twins were trailing the Brewers by 3-2 with Brendan Harris leading off the eighth inning. After falling behind 0-2, Harris asked home plate umpire Brian Runge for time and seemed to think that he got it as he casually began to stride into the batter�s box and slowly began to set his feet. Runge, however, had not given him time and Milwaukee reliever Guillermo Mota threw a quick breaking ball for strike three before Harris knew what happened. Major League Baseball has instructed umpires to speed up the pace of play by, among other things, keeping batters from stepping out of the box too often. But the Twins play the shortest games in the American League and this was a pivotal point late in the game. Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire went bananas (it took him a couple of seconds to realize what had happened) and was ejected from the game, which of course slowed things down even more than Harris stepping out of the box. �The speed-up stuff, that�s all good and fine, but if he gets hit in the head there with a pitch, not looking at it, what are we going to do then?� Gardenhire told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. �It�s gonna lead to bad things. It�s gonna lead to somebody getting hurt.� This game wrap-up on Mlb.com has a video of the play and quotes Harris as saying, �It was in the back of my mind that they are really trying to speed the game up, but in that situation, we�re in the eighth in a 3-2 game after an hour and 50 minutes, and I�m not thinking they would try to speed us up like that.� Should Major League Baseball be trying to speed up games? Was Runge wrong? Is there really a danger of players getting beaned in situations like this?

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/how-fast-is-too-fast/

[Centerfield]

Maybe I have too little going on in the rest of my life, but the length of baseball games has never been an issue for me.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

If they dared, they could slice away 30 seconds or a minute of between-inning commercial time and save 15 or 20 minutes a night right there.

[Willets Point]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: If they dared, they could slice away 30 seconds or a minute of between-inning commercial time and save 15 or 20 minutes a night right there.

Hahahaha, that's a good one.

[bmfc1]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: If they dared, they could slice away 30 seconds or a minute of between-inning commercial time and save 15 or 20 minutes a night right there.

JCL nails the hypocrisy of MLBs stance. If I remember correctly, there are 2 minutes between half-innings unless it's a nationally televised game when it's 2 and a half. Cut 30 seconds off of that and you save 9 minutes without effecting the game. Of course, I wouldn't mind them telling Jeter or Nomar to "hurry it up" but they'll save that for the Brendan Harris' of the game.

[metirish]

Fucking perfect , bucket.

[Guest Vince Coleman Firecracker]

Lost in this: a head's up play by Guillermo Mota?

[Guest attgig]

seems like harris was taking forever to get into the box to begin with. i side with the ump on the call.

but if the guy asks for time, i think the umpire is oblidged to say, no i'm not giving it to you or something so that the guy knows if he got it or not. the ump shouldn't be allowed to stay silent.

[nymr83]

the commercials are the main culprit.
we play 9 innings at the school yard in under 2 hours every time... AND we're busy kicking the ball around and playing games where the combined score is 15+ runs.

[Frayed Knot]

The commercials are obviously the main culprit but they're not the only one.
And while there may be nothing wrong with a 3-hour (or longer) baseball game that shouldn't be the average time.
(Met games are averaging over 3 hours this season - so, no, it's not just your imagination).

There's a bunch of little time savers they could do to make up a few minutes here and there. Problem is, they've been threatening to have umps enforce this stuff for years and it never takes effect for very long.