Commissioner Rob Manfred continues on his mission to improve the pace of play in baseball. Having already added a new intentional walk rule, Manfred now has his sights set on pitching changes.
Per Bill Madden of the New York Daily News, Manfred feels like relievers “slow the game down” and “rob action out of the end of the game.” He suggested a potential rule change that would limit the amount of pitchers a manager can use in one inning.
There’s no doubt that the plethora of pitching changes late in games causes the pace of the game to slow to a crawl, not unlike the end of a basketball game where the trailing team fouls the leading team repeatedly, causing 30 regulation seconds to stretch into 15 minutes in real time. The problem, though, is limiting strategy to make the game to a little quicker. Is that a trade-off most people -- players, managers, fans -- would be willing to make?
