NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has clarified its new rules to allow umpires to delay the start of the pitch clock after big swings in which a hitter loses footing or when a pitcher covers first base, third or home, in addition to other clarifications announced Wednesday.

The commissioner’s office said in its memo that if a catcher ends an inning on base, at bat or on deck, an umpire may determine the catcher needs additional time and allow the pitcher another warmup throw and the catcher to throw to second base.

The MLB also said whether a defensive team violated the new shift restrictions will be subject to a video review only involving the first player to touch a ball after a pitch.

The league also said that after a batter uses his one allowed timeout during a plate appearance, the clock shall start when the hitter indicates he is ready in addition to the previous specification when he returned to the batter’s box.

The new batter restrictions should be called “the Hargrove rule”

By all means, let's make baseball as complicated as humanly possible. And then wonder why kids don't flock to the sport.

For the last many years I could only watch maybe an inning of MLB and maybe being an operative term.

Now I am back watching as much of my home team games as possible and while not necessarily watching an entire game I’m watching usually 6 or 7 innings or so.

It is all about the pitch clock. Now the game runs like the other 3 and I love it.
Finally constant action without distraction.
It is a great game again.

On the shift - I don’t know the answer to this but was the shift used on most batters.
All of the sports have certain rules to allow players on offense and defense to be able to excel. All 4 sports have those rules. The 3 second rule for example.

So far I am a huge fan of the changes

It's interesting to see in action. I mean in actual attendance.

My company works at baseball venues, so for work I have already attended several games this season at both the MLB and MiLB level. I'm not opposed to a pitch clock, although, I personally would prefer it be only a batter clock with limited timeouts as that's where I see the biggest issues in delays. Most pitchers prefer to work in a rythym. The pick-off attempt rule feels kinda off, but I get it. We are dealing with an ADHD population and baseball is generally not a sport designed for those folks. For people with low attention spans, and for those watching at home, I'm sure the changes are the bee knees. And that's fine.

If I could bend Manfred's ear, I'd suggest keeping it, but putting a little more time on the clock. It's pretty unfortunate watching the kids do the community/fan events between innings at small MiLB venues, and they can't complete them because of the timer. They literally get dragged off the field half-way through the crawl race and a winner gets "declared." It really kills the family fun vibe at MiLB events. MLB, it doesn't really matter much, other than the game feels artificially rushed.

But again, from the couch potato's perspective, I'm sure it feels better.

Not in our lifetime, but someday, you’ll see the batter get just one pitch…If it’s a strike, he’s out-a ball he goes to first…Then you’ll see all sorts of new complete game records…New ways of shattering old records, like the Billboard charts do in their new chart computations…

Another positive development from the new rules.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/36166936/some-mlb-teams-extend-beer-sales-reaction-shorter-games

I have a short attention span and I am easily distracted but the time between pitches was boring and a waste of time. It made the announcers too important because they had to be interesting enough to keep people from changing channels and they weren’t.
If I am going to listen to talking heads then I will listen to The Talking Heads.

Posted by Lennybruce26 on 4/13/2023 4:52:00 PM (view original):
I have a short attention span and I am easily distracted but the time between pitches was boring and a waste of time. It made the announcers too important because they had to be interesting enough to keep people from changing channels and they weren’t.
If I am going to listen to talking heads then I will listen to The Talking Heads.

Upvote. Always a good call to listen to Talking Heads (technically, there's no "The", kinda like the band Eagles)