NEW YORK — Count CC Sabathia as a fan who wants to speed up baseball games. When the six-time All-Star tunes in at home, he quickly changes the channel.
"It's slow. It's boring," the New York Yankees pitcher said. "Man, it's so hard to watch if you have no interest in it."
The average time of a nine-inning game this season is a record 3 hours, 5 minutes — up from an even 3 hours last year and 2:56 in 2015. Management proposed three changes last offseason the union didn't accept, and MLB has the right to start them next year without player approval: restricting catchers to one trip to the mound per pitcher each inning, employing a 20-second pitch clock and raising the bottom of the strike zone from just beneath the kneecap to its pre-1996 level — at the top of the kneecap.