Rob Manfred needs to stop with this madness. There has been a weird obsession about “pace of play” in the game of baseball over the past few years and it needs to stop. On Tuesday Ken Rosenthal wrote a mind-numbing piece in which he defended these proposed changes and points out that the average time a game increased to 4 minutes, 28 seconds last year. Okay. What’s your point, Ken?
First of all – introducing a pitch clock, reducing mound visits, putting a runner on second in extras, or doing away with the 4-pitch intentional walk are not why baseball games have been slower.