Arizona Fall League Speeds it Up

It seems that the Arizona Fall League won’t simply be a gauge of some of baseball’s top prospects this season. ESPN has reported that Major League Baseball will use the Fall League to test their new rules to speed up the game. This is a huge step to making baseball a bit more fan-friendly again.

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Baseball ratings have been a mixed bag the past few seasons. It seems that during the summer, when most TV shows are on hiatus and other sports are off the grid, baseball fans will watch their teams in their market. The All-Star Game and World Series, however, has seen their ratings slip on an annual basis. Bud Selig feels that this is in part to the slow pace of games. Selig, in one of his last moves as Commissioner of Baseball, established the pace of game committee about a month ago. Their main goal is to cut down the length of games which skyrocketed to over three hours a game this past season.

There are six major rules that will be experimented with when the Arizona Fall League opens October 7th.

1. Teams will only be allowed three trips to the mound per game. This is all inclusive, so catchers, pitching coaches and managers will be strongly limited. This rule will hold even if the game goes 16 innings.

2. No pitch intentional walks. How this rule took so long to come into existence is beyond me. I get it, there is the slight chance that the ball gets away from the catcher. I have been watching baseball for over 30 years and I have seen that happen exactly never.

3. 2:05. That’s the amount of minutes allowed between innings. Also, the batter must be in the batter’s box by the one minute forty-five second mark ready to go.

4. 2:30. That’s the amount of time allowed for a pitching change. These guys better all become like John Rocker and sprint in from the bullpen if they want to warm up!

5. The Salt River shot clock. There will be a 20 second clock in the dugouts at Salt River Fields only. This is the amount of time the pitcher has between pitches. There is actually a rule in place that a pitcher has only 12 seconds to throw or the umpire can issue a ball, however this rule is clearly not enforced.

6. The one-foot rule. All batters must keep one foot in the batter’s box at all times unless driven out by a wild pitch or foul ball. Umpires do not need to grant time out if the pitcher is ready within 20 seconds and the batter has a foot in the box.

It will be interesting to see how these rules are perceived, especially on the younger level. Minor league games in general seem to move faster than those on the major league level, so how strong a gauge this will be is somewhat questionable. It is certainly a step in the right direction to hopefully shorten games as soon as 2015.

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