Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Farrell Likes Between-Innings Countdown Clock

Red Sox manager John Farrell believes there are a lot of things Major League Baseball can do to speed up the game. One of his ideas is a between-innings "countdown" clock. Such a clock could be set at—say 2 minutes and 10 seconds—insuring that each half-inning starts promptly. The start of each inning would no longer be subject to the vagaries of a given pitcher's routine to get in his eight warmups. This feature would not affect the game at all—it would simply make between-innings "dead time" more efficient. In an interview with Mike Ferrin and Jim Duquette on MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM, Farrell also revealed that Boston has tried to speed up the time its own pitchers take between throws. We think the "countdown clock" is a great idea, and could save up to 10 minutes every game by eliminating the silly vamping of pitchers. Bud, just do it!