Baseball’s attempt to speed up the game has some Phillies feeling rushed: ‘It’s advantage pitchers’

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Alec Bohm took a 95 mph sinker on the outside corner for a called strike in the second inning Tuesday, hardly the first time in his career that a tough pitch went against him. He shuffled his feet in the batter’s box, almost stepping out, just as he always does.

But then, perhaps with the pitch clock in his peripheral vision, the Phillies third baseman caught himself.

All his life, from high school in Nebraska to college at Wichita State, through the minor leagues and certainly over the last three seasons in the majors, Bohm would have asked the umpire for time, maybe taken a walk around home plate, collected his thoughts, and regrouped for what might be coming next from Blue Jays right-hander José Berríos. Those days are over. Now, under MLB’s new rules, Bohm must be ready to hit with 8 seconds left on a 15-second pitch clock (20 seconds with runners on base).

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A brave new world?

You bet.

“It’s fast,” Bohm said after playing in his third exhibition game in four days. “When it’s 15 seconds, it’s only 7 seconds for the hitter. I don’t know why they’re calling it 15 seconds. With nobody on, guys are feeling very rushed.”

MLB’s collectively-bargained message to players: Get used to it. The commissioner’s office has issued a no-tolerance policy in spring training, instructing umpires to enforce the pace-of-play rules to the letter of the law.

The result has been markedly shorter games. Entering play Tuesday, the average spring training game lasted 2 hours, 39 minutes, 22 minutes faster than last year’s 3:01. A total of only six games ran longer than 3 hours, none longer than 3:06. The Phillies’ 7-2 victory Tuesday over the Blue Jays featured 17 hits and eight walks but was played in 2:28, faster than all but four nine-inning regular-season Phillies games last season.

By and large, the players have fallen in line. There have been hiccups. A Red Sox-Braves game over the weekend ended in a tie when the batter, Atlanta’s Cal Conley, was called out on strikes with the bases loaded because he wasn’t set in the box with 8 seconds on the clock. But in 35 games through Sunday, MLB reported only 69 clock violations.

It doesn’t mean all the players like it. There has been plenty of grousing, mostly amongst themselves, with a few going public with their grumbling. Take, for instance, Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, after mowing down six Blue Jays batters on 19 pitches in a spring-training debut that would’ve been a blink-and-you-missed-it affair even without the clock ticking behind home plate at BayCare Ballpark.

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“Just messes with the game too much,” Wheeler said. “There maybe can be a pitch clock, but maybe not so quick. It can stop the long guys that kind of drag the game, but when you’re rushing guys that normally aren’t slow, it messes with the game too much. It’s people making decisions that ...”

Wheeler smiled, realizing the good sense of not finishing the thought.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to get much into it.”

Wheeler conceded that he will get used to the new pace before the games count, even if he has a hard time imagining that a clock will dictate when he delivers high-pressure pitches in a postseason situation.

Some pitchers are using the clock to their advantage. Because hitters are allowed only one timeout, pitchers can release the ball as soon as the batter is ready. Mets ace Max Scherzer, who has won three Cy Young Awards by disrupting hitters’ timing, struck out a batter in a total of 27 seconds over the weekend.

“He’s that type of pitcher,” Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “If he’s standing there holding the ball at 10 seconds and you get in the box, he can go. Or even at 12 seconds. You’re going to feel rushed every pitch. He could also do the thing where he can make you get in at 12 seconds [remaining] and he holds off for 11 seconds and you already used your timeout. I think 100% it’s advantage pitchers. We’re going to be at the pitcher’s mercy even more so than usual.”

Realmuto said he understands and even agrees with MLB’s desire to speed up the game. In a world of shrinking attention spans and more entertainment options, baseball has fallen behind, especially with a younger generation of fans, because it’s perceived as too slow, with not enough action.

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Over the weekend, a TikTok video circulated in which one pitch from Dodgers reliever Pedro Báez in the 2016 playoffs was superimposed over a loop of José Altuve hitting an inside-the-park home run. Altuve rounds the bases more than seven times — seven times! — between Báez’s pitches.

Something had to change.

“I’m definitely on board with making the game a little faster,” Realmuto said. “But I also think there’s some ways that we can tweak it to where it’s not, you feel so rushed all the time. But I like the idea of it. I think guys are making adjustments. With more time, we’ll get more and more used to it.”

Bohm’s suggestion: Give hitters until the 5-second mark to get ready. Realmuto believes a better balance can be struck between speeding up the game and preserving “the fun cat-and-mouse” between the pitcher and batter.

“I don’t know if I took a long time before, but I feel like I’d kind of step out, take a breath, and get back,” Bohm said. “You don’t have time for that. For me, it’s kind of a thing where you get in the box and compete. That’s kind of where I’m at with it.”

One thing is clear: Like it or loathe it, the clock is here to stay. And it’s going to change how the game is played and consumed.

“Obviously, we’ll get used to it, I guess. You kind of have to,” Wheeler said. “But it’s not my cup of tea.”

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