The 2023 Major League Baseball season began on March 30, and, by all accounts, it was a historic Opening Day. Of course, fans tend to be particularly attentive and hopeful on the first day of the season, but this year, it seems, there was even more interest than usual:
Opening Day was watched for 172 million minutes by MLB.TV viewers, the most watched day in MLB.TV history by 42%. Additionally, online merchandise sales on Opening Day were the highest ever by 10% and social media views were up 83% from Opening Day 2022. MLB Opening Night on ESPN had 20% more viewers than last year’s MLB Opening Night and was the most watched cable program on March 30.
The on-field action generally lived up to the hype. New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge—who won the 2022 American League MVP on the back of an AL-record 62 home runs—crushed a 422 foot homer on his first at-bat of the season.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani dominated the Oakland Athletics over six scoreless innings on the mound and singled and walked in four at-bats at the plate. He is, doubtless, the best two-way player since Babe Ruth (1895-1948). But, alas, not all of the news on Opening Day was great. True to form, my favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies, wasted no time in digging themselves a hole. After jumping out to a 5-0 lead against all-world pitcher Jacob DeGrom, who was making his debut with the Texas Rangers, the Phillies coughed up nine (!) runs in the fourth inning en route to a season-opening loss.
Nevertheless, the most talked-about story of Opening Day was MLB’s introduction of pitch clocks into gameplay. It’s an idea that has been brewing for over a decade, starting with college baseball in 2010, expanding to the lower levels of professional baseball in 2014, and now finally making its way to the world’s oldest major pro sports league. The purpose of pitch clocks is fairly straightforward: to limit the amount of time a pitcher can take before throwing to a hitter. Traditionally, this period of time was governed by a loose combination of courtesy, dignity, and prudence. A pitcher who took too long between pitches would be seen as disrespecting his opponent or even as disrespecting the fans; he might also appear to be in poor physical condition or to lack mental toughness. Still, there were no defined rules regulating this practice. Hence, if fans sensed that a pitcher was taking too long, they might boo or heckle him. If a batter felt that a pitcher was taking too long, he might step out of the batter’s box, effectively restarting the process. If an umpire concluded that a pitcher was taking too long, he might give him a warning and, should the behavior persist, eject him from the game. But these reactions were merely customary, so much so that they almost seemed to proceed from common sense. Even if one couldn’t specify when a pitcher was taking too long, there were plenty of indications. In short, you knew it when you saw it.
Why, then, did Major League Baseball decide to institute pitch clocks? The move was made official during a September 2022 press conference, in which MLB commissioner Rob Manfred suggested that the issue boils down to customer service:
Our guiding star in thinking about changes to the game has always been our fans. 'What do our fans want to see on the field?' We've conducted thorough and ongoing research with our fans, and certain things are really clear. Number 1, fans want games with better pace.
To be sure, MLB games have gotten longer. In a 2018 paper presented to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), David W. Smith sums up the problem nicely. The National League was formed in April 1876, the American League in January 1901. Yet, the first year that MLB games averaged longer than two hours was 1934. By 2000, the average length of a baseball game was more than three hours, finally swelling to 191 minutes in 2021. Even if ancillary factors were at play—say, commercial breaks for radio and television broadcasts or, more recently, replay reviews—it became increasingly clear that something within the game had changed.
Smith’s paper raises a number of potential determinants, ranging from time between innings to increased usage of relief pitchers. Yet, when all is said and done, he arrives at a bottom line. “My major conclusion is that the single biggest factor contributing to the longer games is the number of pitches. The rise in strikeouts and related drop in outs on balls in play accounts for much of the difference over time.” Here, again, these are problems that once were managed by certain unwritten rules. In his 1968 book The Science of Hitting (pictured below), Ted Williams famously wrote that the “first rule of hitting” is “to get a good ball to hit.” Indeed, one of the greatest home run hitters in MLB history, Williams was even more adept at getting on base. His lifetime on-base percentage (OBP) remains an MLB-record .482, meaning that he reached base (usually with a hit or a walk) in nearly half of his at-bats:
Still, relatively few hitters were like Williams in those days. Walks, which require a minimum of four pitches, were seen as undesirable, if not unacceptable. OBP was considered a niche statistic, far less important than batting average or home runs.
Yet, as analytically-inclined front offices began to look for marginal competitive advantages, this attitude changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Realizing that the richest MLB franchises (e.g., the Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers) paid top dollar for players who rack up hits, a handful of small-market teams prioritized players who were particularly good at drawing walks. This shift is dramatized in a well-known scene from the 2011 film Moneyball, in which Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) explains his new organizational philosophy to a number of A’s players:
As mentioned, it was around this time that the length of games crept over three hours. Hitters were tasked with seeing more pitches. Walks multiplied, as did strikeouts. Further, with more hitters running “deeper” (3-2, 2-2) counts, fewer balls were put in play, and batting averages plummeted. The idea of stringing together multiple hits or of playing “small ball” (bunting, stealing bases, etc.) appeared positively antediluvian. It seemed that hitters were simply waiting for pitchers to make a mistake—say, a “middle-middle” fastball or a “hanging” curveball—so that they could hit a home run. Already a deliberate game, baseball now seemed downright ponderous.
Thus the application of scientific-statistical principles (“moneyball”) created a situation that demanded a techno-scientific solution—namely, pitch clocks. Here, in a nutshell, is how the pitch clock works:
The clock is set to 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base
The clock starts when the pitcher catches the ball from the catcher and the clock runs until the pitcher starts his delivery (not when he releases the ball)
The batter must step in the box and be ready to hit with at least eight seconds left on the clock
Violations by the pitcher are an automatic ball and by the hitter are an automatic strike
A hitter gets one timeout per plate appearance
A pitcher gets two "disengagements" per batter. This is either stepping off or a pickoff attempt. A third disengagement would result in a balk. The disengagement count resets if a runner advances, such as with a stolen base, balk, wild pitch or passed ball
To be sure, the new rules have already proven effective. MLB games are roughly 30 minutes shorter than they were last season, and, at this pace, the average MLB game this season will be the shortest since 1984. In fact, the difference is so significant that MLB teams are now scrambling to make up for lost revenue. A number of franchises have relaxed the alcohol cutoff times at their stadiums, thereby confirming the adage that time is money. Shorter games, after all, mean less time to buy beer. Thus MLB clubs have reasoned that the window to buy alcohol should be extended from the seventh to the eighth inning. One might expect beer (and food) prices to also go up—a reality that, in a perverse irony, may have fans wondering if they want shorter games after all.
I myself have some ambivalence on this issue. On the one hand, it’s hard to deny to that MLB games had gotten too long, too dependent on home runs for excitement. For me, this problem became unmistakable during a July 2019 game between the Dodgers and the Phillies. I bought fairly good seats for my sons and me along the right field wall at Citizens Bank Park, and we settled in for the night with the usual accessories—ice cream for them, IPAs for me. It turned out to be a night to remember, but not necessarily for good reasons. Even if I put aside the nearly three-hour rain delay that forced us to miss the game’s ending, it was still an excruciatingly slow night. Of the game’s 54 outs, 23 of them came by way of strikeout—a ridiculous 43% clip. There were also 16 walks issued by the 12 (!) pitchers used by both teams throughout the game. Thankfully, the new rules promise to consign such games to the history books. In forcing pitchers to work more quickly, pitch clocks induce fatigue and diminish pitch quality. More balls will be put in play, and more on-field action will ensue. In fact, when you also factor in bigger bases and the elimination of infield shifts, it is clear that MLB is moving in a direction that favors offense—a precedent already set by the NFL and the NBA.
Nevertheless—and if you’re wondering why I’m writing at length about this topic, I’ve now arrived at my larger philosophical point—I do some have significant reservations about pitch clocks.1 My first reservation has to do with the culture of baseball. At its core, baseball is a leisurely game and, even more to the point, a leisurely season. This observation has found its way into the lingo of the sport. Baseball players are "the boys of summer;” the season is akin to a “marathon.” There are good and bad days, but no single day decides a season. From a fan’s perspective, this means that there is no need to consume every pitch of every inning of every game. That, in fact, is the beauty of it. Yes, there are moments of excitement and sublimity in baseball, but they arrive in due course and cannot be forced.
Baseball, in other words, should serve as an antidote to the idea that tangible value has to be squeezed out of every drop of our lives, that we have to be "plugged in" and "available" at all times—what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) critically referred to as Bestand ("standing reserve"). Who cares how long the game is? You don't have to watch every pitch. Grab a beer, go in the backyard and have a catch with your daughter or son. The game will be on when you're done. You are free to receive, to enjoy.
Ironically, MLB has recently embraced the 1989 film Field of Dreams as an emblem of baseball’s cultural importance, even playing regular season games in the Iowa cornfield where the movie is set. And yet, pitch clocks treat time in a way that is antithetical to one of the most iconic scenes in Field of Dreams:
In this scene, the writer played by James Earl Jones observes that people come to baseball “longing for the past.” They have plenty of money, he explains, but what they really want is “peace.” So they show up at the ballpark, sitting “in their shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon.” While American life “has rolled by like an army of steamrollers,” baseball “has marked the time.” Needless to say, Jones here is not referring to pitch clocks. Rather, he is indicating baseball’s timelessness—that, like an icon of eternity, it has not sped up to match modernity’s obsession with speed and progress. On the contrary, baseball is a constant reminder of “all that once was good…and it could be again.”
If it seems like a self-serious exaggeration to imply that pitch clocks will actually change baseball’s culture, the truth is that they already have. The impact on beer sales has been noted, but, more importantly, there have been consequences on the field as well. Players have complained that they no longer have time to talk to one another during games. As one reporter writes, “The pitch clock hasn’t just made baseball quicker. It’s quieter now, too. There’s no real chance to talk shop on the bases with former teammates, good friends or umpires.” Giants outfield Joe Pederson puts it even more aptly: “It’s all business,” he quipped. Doubtless Pederson wasn’t invoking Heidegger in making this statement, but his point is Heideggerian all the same. The “human element” that makes baseball unique among major sports has been minimized for the sake of more marketable and presumably more lucrative “product.” What baseball represents—”all that once was good”—recedes in the face of technology’s calculative mindset.
But this leads to a second point—one that raises the specter of “technological determinism.” While there are many varieties of technological determinism, articulated by thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx (1818-83), Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), and Jacques Ellul (1912-94), these different approaches are united by the idea that technology creates socio-economic conditions to which human beings are forced to conform. Even if we retain a measure of individual freedom, it is exercised in a “field” (pun intended) ordered by technology. So it is with pitch clocks. As mentioned earlier, the amount of time taken between pitches has long been regulated by custom and prudence. Yet, the expansion of baseball analytics, driven by digital technology, pushed this form of governance to a breaking point. Indeed, in the scene from Moneyball discussed earlier, Billy Beane reminds his players: “There’s no clock on this thing.” This is a delicious irony, since, precisely because of “moneyball,” a clock is now needed. The “soft” rules of custom and tradition have been replaced by the “hard” rules of digital timers and league ordinances. That the MLB felt it had no choice in the matter—that the league had to accommodate its fans, who themselves are increasingly attuned to and determined by the systematic management of time and are thereby desirous of shorter and more efficient games—only corroborates this argument. Pitch clocks are not so much an “innovation” as an “inevitability.”
Hence, if baseball is timeless in principle, pitch clocks reveal that timelessness is increasingly unappealing—not when there is money to be made and things to get done. This is a version of “secularization” already familiar in Western culture. Indeed, the word “secular” derives from the Latin saeculum, meaning “span of time” or “belonging to an age.” To view things in secular terms, then, is to view them solely as material or temporal entities, capable of being optimized for worldly profit. Like putting quotes from Hamlet (ca. 1599-1601) on coffee mugs or writing songs via ChatGPT, pitch clocks promote something good (viz., a faster, more exciting form of baseball) in the wrong fashion. In the process, moreover, they compromise the game’s deepest meaning, which lies not in its calculative efficiency but in its soulful domesticity. As Robert Frost (1874-1963) once wrote: “I never feel more at home in America than at a ball game be it in park or in sandlot. Beyond this I know not. And dare not.”
To be clear, I do like the other new rules, particularly the elimination of the infield shift. The shift was a diabolical strategic scheme—also dictated by statistical analysis—that rendered good hitting ineffectual. When line drives up the middle are caught by third basemen, that’s not progress but demoralization.
I like the time clock and shorter games.
Yes. I especially appreciate this sentence, “Baseball, in other words, should serve as an antidote to the idea that tangible value has to be squeezed out of every drop of our lives, that we have to be "plugged in" and "available" at all times.” The beauty of baseball is that it should force us to slow down, to wait, rest, and even to welcome boredom.