Pitch-clock is making the game better
For a very long time, pitching and hitting in Major League Baseball have been under the same rules.
Starting last year, Major League Baseball changed the rules of the game and implemented a pitch-clock. This stopped batters from taking their time doing their rituals or routines before stepping into the box for an at-bat. It prevented pitchers from playing around on the mound for a long amount of time and to stop trying to pick off the runners on base as much. The pitch-clock was implemented to create more action on the basepaths between runners and to speed the game up for the fans. It tended more to the casual fans of the game because they complained baseball games were too long.
Most fans were wondering, why add pitch-clock? They have not seen such a rule implemented before and they were curious as to how it would work for the sport and if it would be a good or bad addition.
The players have had mixed opinions as some like it while others don’t. According to a player on the Toronto Blue Jays, Chris Bassit: “I think we’re going to quickly realize,” Bassitt said, “that it’s more so going to be, ‘How can we use this against the hitters?” Chris Bassitt is a pitcher and thinks the pitchers have the advantage in this new rule. Pitchers’ opinions are thought of but batters have a side as well. In the same article, Pitchers are adamant, Aaron Judge claims: “I completely forgot about it until about three pitches in, and then I had to kind of check myself because I was getting into the box around eight or nine seconds.”
Batters and pitchers are not together on this new rule. The batters seem to not like the pitch-clock and feel it is a violation of their time. Some pitchers think the rule is good for baseball and are accepting it and adapting to the rule. For years these players were batting and pitching without any time limit to doing it. It was only until the new rules were added that players started to realize just how long they would take in between pitches and how it affected at-bats.
At the same time though, why wouldn’t these players take their time? Baseball is one of the hardest sports to play and even the best players are only able to get a hit one out of every three times. Swinging at a pitch that you know is a ball makes a player think about that action and throwing a strike right down the middle that gets walloped also makes a player think. By taking their time, these players were able to get rid of the thought of the last play or pitch and focus on the next one.
Pitch-clock isn’t preventing a pitcher from pitching well and a batter from batting badly. Pitch-clock is there so the players can get better at their craft in a shorter amount of time. Pitch-clock is for all the players who are able to adapt and overcome challenges, it isn’t for the players that aren’t willing to try something new.
In a normal league, pitch-clock probably wouldn’t exist, but because of the fans and the commissioners wanting to expand the audience of the game, it is implemented and the players have to deal with it and adapt to it.
Unfortunately players have not played with the pitch-clock enough to get the rules changed. It isn’t like they can go up to the plate and tell the umpire how much time they want for a single at-bat. It isn’t like pitchers can tell the batters they need thirty to forty seconds in order to get ready for the next pitch. They all have to be ready at a certain point or else there are consequences. In the article, How are MLB’s pitchers handling the pitch clock?, Alex Vesia claimed: “It was not good,” Vesia recalled to FOX Sports this week. “I felt really, really rushed. My first spring training outing, I was nervous to go out there because I didn’t know how much the clock was going to affect me. But then after the first one, I was like, ‘OK, I can do it.’” Alex Vesia who has been a professional for a few years was nervous because he felt like he wasn’t in control of pitching. This just shows how some players are scared of a change when it hasn’t happened in a long time.
We have never seen pitch-clock in the MLB before but we have still seen it. In 2022, the Triple-A and Double-A minor leagues tested out the pitch-clock and it went great. These players were noticeably better at handling it when called up to the big leagues compared to the big league veterans who have been there for years. It worked exactly how the MLB wanted it to while also providing a few clues on how to make it better and what tweaks are needed when it was implemented the next year in the major leagues. After one year of pitch clock so far it has gone well. Most fans are now on board and most players support the rules.
Pitch-clock was never meant to hurt pitchers or batters, it always was meant to make the game better and make players better at what they do. Pitch-clock was the result of fans and the commissioner complaining the game was too long. Players have now adapted after a year and it will be interesting to see how pitch-clock will affect the 2024 year of baseball. The players seem to be in a better spot now then where they were a year ago when dealing with the new rule. Fear and nervousness, however, always come with change when change is implemented. The rules could possibly change in the future and that is a very big possibility. With any type of rule comes the possibility of change in the future. The simple solution to possibly changing pitch-clock could be for the players to ask the commissioner to change them.
References
FOX Sports. (n.d.). How are MLB’s slowest pitchers handling the pitch clock? FOX Sports. https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/how-are-mlbs-slowest-pitchers-handling-the-pitch-clock
Yahoo! (n.d.). Pitchers are adamant: MLB’s pitch clock will give them an edge over hitters. will spring training games prove it? Yahoo! Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/pitchers-are-adamant-mlbs-pitch-clock-will-give-them-an-edge-over-hitters-will-spring-training-games-prove-it-175136106.html
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
I won’t have time for much feedback on this post tonight, EaglesFan, but I do want to acknowledge I’ve received your request and that I’m grateful for your early post.
Your classmates may be watching these spaces for guidance on how to proceed with their own drafts tonight and tomorrow morning, so I want to say just one thing here.
Your Title is Causal.
There will be a time very soon when you’ll write a 1000-word Causal Argument detailing all the REASONS WHY events have occurred and the CONSEQUENCES of situations and actions. This is not the time and place for those observations.
DO NOT PANIC about that comment, please, but keep in mind that you may have neglected perfectly appropriate DEFINITIONAL and CATEGORICAL material to make we here for explanations of how the pitch clock is CAUSING changes to the game.
It’s a matter of organization that you and I can work out at any time. Meanwhile, I’ll offer the best advice I can about the material you’ve provided and how to proceed from where we are.
Descriptions of WHAT THE GAME LOOKED LIKE before the pitch clock are good def/cat observations. Definitional claims about WHAT TYPES OF PITCHERS have benefited from the clock, or been harmed by it, are good fodder for these 1000 words. The ANALOGY with the pitch clock experiments at Double-A and other levels of play are also good, along with other strategies.
You may find that the very act of trying to limit yourself to just those sorts of material will encourage you to find and use lots of details you didn’t think were worthy of inclusion.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I promise more specific feedback about what you actually HAVE written soon enough.
And thanks again for posting to the Feedback Please category. (I hope you don’t regret it. 🙂 )
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Thanks for requesting Feedback, EaglesFan. I’m eager to get started.
But first, some business:
1. I made some style revisions already, to your Title and the word “References.” Please observe these changes and incorporate them into future essays.
2. MAKE NO CHANGES TO THIS POST YOURSELF.
3. WHY?
4. BECAUSE YOU’LL NEED A CLEAN FIRST DRAFT FOR YOUR PORTFOLIO.
5. INSTEAD . . .
6. Copy and paste the complete contents of this post into a new post you will call Definition Rewrite—EaglesFan.
7. Make all your revisions to the NEW POST.
8. At the end of the semester, you’ll put BOTH the original draft AND the rewrite into your Portfolio to demonstrate that you revised your work in response to feedback.
9. I’ll leave the first round of feedback here.
10. But all the rest of our business will take place on the Rewrite.
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EaglesFan, I’m going to respond to your argument “in real time,” meaning that I haven’t read the whole thing; instead, I’m going to record my reactions as I experience your essay. That way, you’ll get feedback from a VERY interested reader to every nuance of where you take the argument, the better to understand how well you’re holding my attention and convincing me of your thesis.
—Your title told me this story would be about the Pitch-Clock. That’s why I’m here. I’m interested to see what the pitch-clock has to do with rules for hitters, so I’ll give you a sentence or two to keep me from going somewhere else. But, don’t keep me waiting.
—You lost me right away.
—I was teased that you would explain the similarity between rules for pitchers and rules for hitters, but you didn’t deliver.
—Make a Promise; Award a Prize. Those are MY rules for writers. And they’re the same for readers. Writers lose readers when they make them wait too long.
—Writers are on a Pitch-Clock. Once you warm up, you had better deliver.
—You do introduce some simple concepts. Batters waste time. So do pitchers. Casual Fans make different demands than, I guess, Formal Fans?
—Now, I’m not sure which group of fans we’re talking about. Nobody has seen a pitch-clock, so it could be all fans.
—But, what’s the point of the paragraph? It feels like 40 wasted words.
—You have an opportunity here. Don’t squander it with “some do; some don’t.”
—Who does (by category)? Who doesn’t (by category)?
—As soon as you feel the need to express “mixed opinions,” PLEASE name and identify the groups.
—It’s the whole point of a Definition/Categorical argument.
—What group does Chris Bassit belong to?
—Suppose your paragraph began “Advocates for the pitch-clock, like Blue Jay pitcher Chris Bassitt, ask, “How can we use this against the hitters?”
—Meanwhile, Detractors like slugger Aaron Judge realize they’re being “worked.”
—See how quickly we know who’s who, how they feel, and why? They’re either Advocates or Detractors.
—Those first two sentences are already covered in the previous paragraph if you’ve identified the categories carefully.
—Your “without any time limit to doing it” is a vague draft of the sort of RULE I was expecting at the top of your second paragraph, immediately following your Promise to tell me the “same rules for pitchers and hitters.”
—I want to mention here that even Casual Fans (my category) who pay attention know that under the old rules there were at least SOME restrictions on how long either the batter or the pitcher could take. Either one could “disengage” if the other took “too long,” whatever the umpire agreed was excessive.
—That might need to be part of what the “old rules” look like.
—Now, the game has codified what “too long” means.
—OK, this meanders for a lack of categorical organization.
—You’re talking “players” when you clearly mean “hitters” and “pitchers.”
—”Swinging” makes a “batter” think.
—”Throwing” makes a “pitcher” think.
—Are all hitters Detractors? Are all pitchers Advocates?
—This is what we want to know.
—By the way, it’s rarely described this way, but, if Hitters have it tough (even the best of them are successful only 1/3 of the time), doesn’t that obviously mean that Pitchers have it easy (they win 2/3 of the time)? Walks complicate the arithmetic, of course, but you see what I mean.
—So, is the goal of the Pitch-Clock to even the odds, make Pitchers less successful?
—OK, this is Causal, which is fine, but misplaced in your Def/Cat argument.
—But you’ve introduced two interesting new categories. Pay attention to that.
—Oh, wait. They’re not new.
—Those who are “able to adapt” are Advocates.
—Those who “aren’t willing to try” are Detractors.
—I promise you, readers will appreciate you carefully herding your descriptions into these two corrals and calling them what they are.
—Are there Hitter Advocates and Hitter Detractors? Sure. Who are they? What characteristics distinguish them?
—Are there Pitcher Advocates and Pitcher Detractors? Sure. Who are they? What characteristics distinguish them?
—Get some data and examples in here.
—You know how to do it, and the importance of it. You’ve already introduced a Pitcher Advocate (Bassit) and a Hitter Detractor (Judge).
—Now you need a Pitcher Detractor and a Hitter Advocate.
—If we’re interested enough to invest our time reading an article about Pitch-Clock, we want a COMPETITION!
—Pit these characters against each other.
—DO NOT lose my attention with “players can get better at their craft in a shorter amount of time” and “players who are able to adapt and overcome challenges.”
—Take names. Give me numbers. Baseball is all about stats. Who’s benefiting? Who’s losing?
—By the way, I haven’t read all the way to the end of your article. If you get to this in the next few paragraphs, I’ll miss it. I probably wouldn’t last beyond this point.
I’ve been at this for 40 minutes, EaglesFan. That means you owe me at least 40 minutes of revision time before you can ask me for more feedback.
I hope it was helpful. I really want this essay to be good. Make it better, earlier, and I promise you I’ll get farther next time.
Provisionally graded at Canvas. It’s not the grade you want, but, fortunately, this is a rewriting course and your grade will be better following significant improvements.
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Don’t forget. MAKE NO CHANGES TO THIS POST.
See the earlier Reply above. Save your draft into a Rewrite post and make all revisions there.
🙂
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