NEW YORK — It’s hard getting those who make their living covering baseball to agree on anything. Still, with a small sample size to work with, they are nearly unanimous in their praise of MLB’s new rules and how they already have accelerated the pace of the game.
Nonetheless, the rapid consensus over a pitch clock being baseball’s salvation, cannot quantify if a quicker pace will bring more eyeballs to MLB telecasts, including Mets games on SNY and Yankees broadcasts on YES.
MLB wants Time of Game to average around 2 hours, 30 minutes. Under that number, which is going to be fluid, a 7 p.m. start will end around 9:30 p.m. Television prime time, the hours when the universe of viewers is at its highest, extends from 8 p.m.-11 p.m.
That means an accelerated nine-inning game would be played in front of a prime-time universe for 90 minutes. In some cases, with the pitch clock, viewers (both hardcore and casual fans), after arriving home from work and eating dinner, would not sit down to watch a game until sometime between 7:30 p.m.-8 p.m. or later. By the time the viewer tunes in under the new rules, the game might be almost half over.
“If you combined the new rules [faster pace] with 8 o’clock starts, MLB could have a shot at generating maximum viewership,” a Manhattan-based TV station manager said. “But that’s not going to happen.”
Nonetheless, if enough casual fans are curious about the new rules and their impact on the game, will they be in front of their screens for first pitch? There were more than a few professional Seam Heads who speculated it was curiosity that led to ESPN’s Feb. 27 Mets-Cardinals afternoon telecast averaging 423,000 viewers, ESPN’s most-watched exhibition tilt in seven years.
Those who subscribe to this theory cannot prove it. Neither can it be disproven. It just hangs out in the ozone as a form of MLB propaganda until regular-season viewership numbers start rolling in.
Another set of numbers will affect the voices in the broadcast booths. Play-by-play people and analysts are used to working at their own pace with few constraints (except producers who they often ignore).
Now with pitchers working on a time limit, and batters not allowed to exit the box on uniform-adjusting expeditions, voices won’t have the normal space to leisurely tell stories. Or offer multiple replays and extended analysis of a play viewers just witnessed. On the radio side, the announcers will have to hustle to get the heavy load of in-game commercials into the broadcast.
There will be some voices (those who think they ARE the game) who will treat the clock as a necessary evil, a tool of ignorance designed to mess with their brilliance. A conspiracy by MLB to have their constant chatter end before the next pitch.
These voices should not fret. They could be part of the solution. For now, everyone in baseball is on the clock.
