Many fans and baseball people already consider the pitch clock a hit, but during spring training Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler identified a lingering issue that remains unresolved.
“I always kind of go back to Bryce hitting that home run in the playoffs last year,” Wheeler said, referring to Bryce Harper’s dramatic go-ahead homer in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. “That wouldn’t have happened if we had these rules in place. Sometimes, guys need a moment, especially in high leverage.”
When Wheeler said, “that wouldn’t have happened,” he wasn’t talking specifically about Harper’s two-run shot off Padres right-hander Robert Suarez. No, he was talking about the rhythm of the plate appearance, the tension that built through seven pitches, culminating in what Fox broadcaster Joe Davis called a “swing for the ages.”
Fifty seconds elapsed between J.T. Realmuto’s single and Suarez’s first pitch to Harper, 20 more than is now permitted. The time between each pitch averaged approximately 25 seconds, five more than is now allowed when a runner is on base. Both Harper and Suarez had more time to think, to breathe, adding to the drama.
Would the sequence have been as memorable under the new rules? Well, it certainly would have been condensed. And while the pitch clock is serving its intended purpose, dramatically improving the pace of play while reducing times of games, a broader question remains: Would adding time to the clock or even eliminating it during close-and-late situations, particularly in the postseason, better serve the sport?
My gut tells me that while the answer might be yes, there’s no turning back. It’s sort of like when the sport introduced instant replay in 2008. The change was mostly for the better, helping correct egregious mistakes. But certain unintended consequences resulted, notably the out call on a runner who is tagged while an inch or two off the base.
The pitch clock, too, serves the greater good. Some late-inning and postseason drama might be sacrificed, but more likely it will just take on a different form. Great postseason moments will still be great postseason moments, just as they are in other sports with a clock. Some just might develop a little quicker, that’s all.
For now, commissioner Rob Manfred is keeping his options open, reserving judgment.
“Our feet are not in stone with respect to the pitch clock,” Manfred said on the Rich Eisen Show. “We saw it in the minor leagues. We’ve seen it in spring training. We want to see it in regular-season games, particularly in situations that are high leverage. We will talk about what should happen in those situations. And we certainly have the capacity to make adjustments on the fly during the course of the season.”
Manfred’s answer was in response to a question from Eisen about the thrilling six-pitch Mike Trout-Shohei Ohtani showdown that concluded the World Baseball Classic, which was played without a clock. With no one on base Ohtani averaged approximately 26 seconds between pitches, 11 seconds more than the new limit. But consider the whole context.
Ohtani effectively was performing in a new role, pitching as a closer for the first time since 2016, when he was still in Japan. And if the clock had been used in the tournament, he almost certainly could have adhered to the 15-second limit. Ohtani pitched 2 1/3 innings in spring training and six innings in his first regular-season start without committing a violation.
The Trout-Ohtani at-bat was compelling not because of the time between pitches. What made it special was the spectacle of two of the game’s best players, Angels teammates no less, competing against one another with the tournament on the line. Ohtani’s strikeout of Trout, with two outs in the ninth inning and his team leading by one run, clinched the title for Japan.
OK, so maybe that at-bat is not the best example of a moment the clock might have compromised. In search of a better gauge, I went back through history, to two of the most unforgettable postseason conclusions of the late 1980s.
When I asked Yankees manager Aaron Boone about his own postseason heroics, his walk-off home run against the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, he reminded me that it came on the first pitch off Tim Wakefield. The clock obviously would not have been a factor there, but Boone advised me to check out the Mets’ comeback in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, pointing out it was played at a rapid pace.
So, I went to YouTube to examine the decisive at-bat between the Mets’ Mookie Wilson and Red Sox’s Bob Stanley. Two outs, runners on first and third in the 10th, Red Sox leading 5-4. Stanley did not appear to take 20 seconds on any of his pitches. On most, he did not even get to 15. The only potential violation occurred after Stanley’s wild pitch on 2-2 allowed Ray Knight to advance to second and Kevin Mitchell to score the tying run from third. The game appeared to be delayed slightly, for reasons that on the video are not entirely clear.
Stanley was in no way rushing. He was pitching at what was a pace back then, the kind of pace the league wants to revive with the clock. The electricity of the game’s climactic moment, as described by the late Vin Scully — “A little roller up along first … behind the bag! … it gets through Buckner! … here comes Knight and the Mets win it!” — was not in any way diminished by the relatively accelerated rate at which the at-bat unfolded.
OK, but what about perhaps the all-time greatest drawn-out postseason confrontation, Kirk Gibson’s epic pinch-hit appearance against future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series? That sucker lasted approximately 5 minutes and 25 seconds — not including the 1:19 it took Gibson, dealing with a bad left hamstring and swollen right knee, to emerge from the dugout and find his way to the batter’s box.
The scene played out like a movie, before the at-bat even commenced. Gibson applied pine tar to his bat in the on-deck circle, took some practice swings, then began his slow walk to the plate. Upon reaching the box, he pawed repeatedly at the dirt with his left foot, then stepped out for more practice swings. The 30-second limit between batters would have sucked the drama out of the moment. Heck, Gibby might not have been physically capable of getting to the plate in 30.
The at-bat itself would have been problematic not only because of the clock, but also because of the new two disengagements rule. With Mike Davis on first, Eckersley threw over four times. He need not have worried, of course, about being called for a balk after failing to pick off Davis on his third attempt. As it turned out, Davis eventually stole second on 3-2.
Gibson, too, would have been flagged under the new rules. At least twice, judging from the video, he was not ready to hit with eight seconds remaining on the clock. Thirty-five years later, the penalty for such a delay is an automatic strike. But as the at-bat progressed, he obviously had no such concerns.
Catcher Ron Hassey paid Eckersley a mound visit. Gibson, after everyone was again set, called timeout, reminding himself of what the late Dodgers scout, Mel Didier, had predicted from Eckersley: “Pohd-ner, as sure as I’m standing here, you’re going to see a 3-2, back-door slider.” Sure enough, Eckersley threw the pitch. He later called it stupid, saying he should have kept throwing Gibson fastballs.
“High flyball into right field … she is gone!” Scully cried. And then, after remaining silent for more than a minute as Gibson circled the bases, the legendary play-by-play man added his famous coda: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.”
There is no way that at-bat, one of the greatest in the game’s history, would have evolved the same way under the new rules. No way it would have created the same memories. No way it would have resonated the way it still does today.
“That’s one of the first things I thought of,” Gibson said in a telephone conversation Monday. “Drama is built through various means. (The at-bat) would have been a lot shorter.
“There are a ton of moments in general where you need to give each team the opportunity to think things out and plot through rough seas. Baseball has always been that way. It should be allowed to be that way. Whether it’s in the ninth inning, extra innings, I don’t know what the balance would be. But I think that it’s part of the game. You don’t want to lose that ability.
“Everybody likes where the game is moving, but at what expense? They did a really good job of trying to make a change without really knowing how it would come out. But you’re definitely going to lose some moments … You want those moments. You want everybody to have that moment. The big moments, they come from almost unpredictable, unfathomable, unthinkable (places).”
Eckersley, reached by telephone Sunday night, expressed similar sentiments.
“I have no problem with (the clock). I like it so far,” Eckersley said. “But to go back to that, thinking about late in the game, it did occur to me that if they’re going to be lenient, it should be on moments like that. You just don’t want to make a mistake either way.
“I was always in a hurry personally. I was a little anxious to begin with. But if there’s a time to be more lenient, wouldn’t you think ninth inning?”
If MLB altered the clock in the late innings, two different sets of rules would apply in the same game. If the league made an adjustment in the playoffs, two different sets would apply in the regular season and postseason.
Well, guess what?
The league, with its extra-inning rule, already allows for such discrepancies. In the regular season, an automatic runner is placed on second base starting in the 10th inning of tie games. But in the postseason, the ghost runner goes poof, and that little wrinkle goes away.
If the league is inconsistent with one rule, it can be inconsistent with another. But with the pitch clock, things would get complicated.
First off, what would be the right point of the game to add time to the clock or eliminate it? Just in tie games or save opportunities in the ninth? Or in all close-and-late situations, which occur when the batting team is leading by one run, tied or has the potential tying run on base, at base or on deck? Either way, relievers would be pitching under different circumstances than starters, as is the case with the extra-inning rule.
A change in the postseason would raise different questions. The league says it adopted the clock in part because its surveys indicated fans wanted more action and less time between plays. The postseason, when the greatest number of fans are watching, would seem an odd time to go back to the old ways, and stretch times of games back to the 3-to-4 hour range. Shorter games in October also would provide another advantage, allowing more younger fans to watch games to their conclusion.
There is no easy answer, at least not yet. The league has shown a willingness to tweak the new rules in response to player concerns, allowing, for example, umpires to delay the start of the clock after a pitcher covers first, third or home. But Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, echoing Manfred, said he will not have a better feel for whether the league should pull back on the clock in certain circumstances until more of the season is played.
Cole, whose 5-0 victory over the Giants on Opening Day was completed in 2:33, neatly summed up the pros and cons when asked if something will be lost if big at-bats in October are less prolonged than in the past. His seeming preference, as I suspect the league’s will be, is to break with the past, and fully embrace baseball’s new age.
“I love the drama of those moments, that’s for sure,” Cole said. “But I like two hours and 33 minutes on Opening Day.”
(Top photo of Julio Urias: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
