Rob Manfred Finally Did Something Great For Baseball After This Latest Change
Updated: Jun 14, 2023
Rob Manfred has been the Major League Baseball Commissioner since 2015 and has made some questionable decisions.
The MLB made some rule changes for the 2023 season, and a few of them were making the bases bigger for safety reasons and to produce more base stealing. The shift has been banned for obvious reasons like 75% of hitters not being able to put the ball in play since they have no idea how to hit the other way.
Manfred’s New Rule Changes
The one rule that will change the sport forever is the pitch clock. The pitch clock made the opening day amazing. Baseball is one of the best sports on the planet, but it doesn’t have a clock like football, basketball, and hockey. Games would last hours and hours, and there was a lot of dead time between pitches.
How many times do I have to watch a batter step out of the batter box in between pitches to adjust himself for 15 minutes? I mean it got to a point where the sport was becoming unwatchable.
The sport is slow and their limited action and that is fine if you love the sport like me and many others, but there is a huge number of casual fans, and it was driving them away.
Hopefully, now those fans are coming back since the game seems to be getting shorter.
Thursday was opening day, and the average game time lasted two hours and 45 minutes, almost half an hour quicker than last year’s opening day.
The average time for Opening Day games this year was 26 minutes less than last year’s average. What are your thoughts on the new pitch clock? (h/t @TheAthletic) pic.twitter.com/6oRs35NC8p — FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) March 31, 2023
The move to put the pitch clock in was maybe the most needed move in baseball, and it looks like it will work moving forward.
Manfred finally did something great for the sport of baseball and now maybe he will learn how to market his stars better and get people into the ballparks.