While watching a New York Yankees game a few years ago, Ryan Clements was struck by how long reliever Dellin Betances was taking between pitches. To be fair, Betances habitually takes only a little longer than most big league pitchers, for whom a deliberate work rate has become an endemic issue affecting Major League Baseball’s pace of play.
“We realized there could be something to help speed up the game, speed up the pace of play, without changing the game,” Clements, a general contractor in Troy, N.Y., who played a year of college ball at SUNY-Oswego, where he majored in technology education.