Teddy Cahill of Baseball America tells us about a new innovation in the never-ending struggle to speed up games: catcher headsets.
Just as quarterbacks never call their own plays anymore and, instead, have them radioed in to them from the sidelines, catchers rarely call their own pitches anymore and have signs relayed to them from the dugout. While it doesn’t seem to take a ton of time to get the signs, it does require the catcher to take his attention off the field and everyone to momentarily stand down. Over the course of 300 pitches in a game a catcher being able to simply set up and listen, rather than look over, is not a trivial amount of time.
Cahill explains how the technology is being tested in the college ranks. If it works, don’t be surprised if you hear about it being tested by the pros soon.
