All you need to do is look at the speed of specific pitchers vs game times. I guarantee Mark Buehrle's starts will correlate pretty closely with games played in about 2.5 hours.

This link is from 2013. There is over a minute/PA between Buehrle and Joel Peralta. You don't think that will add some significant time to a ballgame?

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-much-time-the-pitchers-took/

Relievers seem to be the biggest culprits in slowing games down.

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/1/2017 12:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by redsfive on 3/1/2017 7:17:00 AM (view original):
Look at 27 years ago, that graph shows 15 minute difference, not the hour and a half exaggeration typed earlier. Maybe most of that 15 minutes is sponsorship time, maybe sponsorship time has caused these games to hit the 3 hour mark. The commish won't address that issue because it's revenue. It's the commercials that cause me to change channels on anything I'm watching and sometimes I come back to a previous channel.

MLB has also been talking about an associated inning-change clock, which would absolutely cap commercial time. And 15 minutes is still quite substantial. I remember hearing that Minor League games were shortened by typically 9-15 minutes by the pitch clock, so that should work out pretty nicely...

As an Umpire I would never call a ball on a pitcher that took over 20 seconds to pitch a ball or initiate a pickoff move. Nor would I ever call a strike on a hitter that took more than 20 seconds to be set in the batter's box. As soon as you start doing that you will have so many issues with people yelling 21 seconds. And when would the countdown clock start. It's all ridiculousness. The new commissioner needs to leave this great game alone.

If a time clock was the rule, and as an umpire you chose to disregard the rule, then you would be a poor umpire.

Posted by tecwrg on 3/5/2017 7:24:00 PM (view original):
If a time clock was the rule, and as an umpire you chose to disregard the rule, then you would be a poor umpire.

Right up until your swift firing.