As we heard earlier this month, Major League Baseball is using the Arizona Fall League to test a number of new measures to address pace-of-play. One that has understandably garnered the most attention is the pitch clock, which gives pitches 20 seconds to come to the set position to deliver a pitch or throw to a base. If the rule is violated, an automatic ball is called.
You can check out the pitch clock in action below:
[mlbvideo id="36826067" width="400" height="224" /]
The pitch clock has been used in three Arizona Fall League games thus far. There were three violations in the first game and one in the second, but William Boor of MLB.com notes that there weren’t any in last night’s 11-inning game between Salt River Rafters and Peoria Javelinas.
Obviously a larger sample of games is needed to draw significant conclusions, but here’s a look at game times with the pitch clock:
A bit more context:@MLBazFallLeague game times with pitch clock:
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) October 18, 2014
Game 1: 2:14
Game 2: 2:28
Game 3: 3:12 (11 innings)
2013 avg: 2:51