MIAMI — Hello, and welcome to loanDepot park for the first pitch between — oh, there’s one out! — the Miami Marlins and Minnesota Twins on — that’s two outs! — Wednesday afternoon as we time baseball’s new rule change to … stop the clock!
Three minutes, three outs!
Fast and foremost, the top of the first inning Wednesday still felt like the top of the morning one week into a new baseball era. Who hasn’t fallen in love with the pitch clock?
It’s safe to watch baseball again without packing an overnight bag. The seventh-inning stretch isn’t a wake-up call to various body parts.
Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out to the cro---
Well, OK, there were 8,981 fans at Wednesday’s series-closer for the Marlins. Some things don’t change quickly. The disaster of Derek Jeter (he made people actually miss Jeffrey Loria) and the lack of Marlins payroll (the New York Mets pay more for their luxury tax) this opening, 3-4 homestand looks like a glimpse into the season.
The good news: You won’t suffer for as long, Marlins fans. Once the pitcher gets the ball, he has 15 seconds to start his windup for the next pitch. Or the ump calls a ball. The batter has to be looking at the pitcher, ready to hit, with eight seconds left on the clock. Or the ump calls a strike.
“Who can’t do that?” Marlins second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “There’s some adjustment for some guys. But the only time I was taking that long if I didn’t like a call and wanted to calm down.”
Well, the Marlins’ Avisail Garcia has been called for two strikes for being late to the plate, tardy for the party or whatever analytical phrase baseball uses. But the impact is clear. The average baseball game consisted of three hours and three minutes last year. And it wasn’t so much time. It was that sloths showed more activity in that time span.
Here were times of the first week of Marlins games: 2:42; 2:09, 2:54, 2:40, 2:31, 1:57 and 2:10 in Wednesday’s 5-2 win against Minnesota.
That’s an extra half-hour in your life. Put it over 162 games, that’s more than three days of freed-up hours. That might not mean much to you, but consider a baseball lifer like former Marlins manager Jack McKeon, who spent 62 years around baseball. That’d be an extra six months to spend around baseball.
“I love the rule,” said Marlins manager Skip Schumaker, who at 43 has only spent a couple decades around the game.
Sandy Alcantara’s 1-0 shutout win in that hour and 57 minutes Tuesday night was still the talk of the clubhouse Wednesday morning.
The game was so fast Minnesota starter Kenta Maeda was “gassed in a lot of ways,” according to manager Rocco Baldelli. Alcantara needed just four pitches in the fifth inning, meaning Maeda had just three minutes to rest in the dugout.
Maeda was so tired he didn’t make it out of the sixth inning. This was a big start for him, too, after missing last season with Tommy John surgery. The fear when trainers came out was he re-injured his arm. Baldelli said the arm was fine. Maybe he was just tired?
That’s why Schumaker says , “the conditioning part of pitching,” is something to watch.
“I do wonder what’s going to happen as far as injuries are concerned,” Schumaker said. “Getting it and throwing it, getting it and throwing it — I’m hoping nothing translates as that’s concerned.”
There are other rule changes trying to bring some fun back to the game. Pitchers, too, are allowed to make pick-off throws only twice in an inning. That has not just sped up games but doubled the stolen bases in the first week.
The outlawing of defensive shifts is making an impact, too. Batting averages are up 18 percentage points.
The big change is the pitch clock, though. Baseball, in previous era, bragged about being the only sport without a clock. It took a step toward relevancy again with a clock in this era.
