Pitch Clock Has MLB’s Pitching Coaches Working Overtime

For the past 150 years, baseball has sold the timeless nature of the sport. How long will today’s game take? However long it takes. But recently, the caretakers of the sport at its highest level — Major League Baseball — have seemed to fret that their game might need saving.

To that end, baseball, a game marketed largely on tradition and tension, is suddenly joining the other major sports in pivoting from its century-old rhythms to a future that was once unthinkable: Starting this year, the sport will let a clock dictate the pace of its action.

In September, when addressing the creation of a pitch clock, along with a series of other new rules, Commissioner Rob Manfred said the goal was to “bring back the best form of baseball.”

For baseball fans, many of them nostalgic for the days of shorter games, higher batting averages and more stolen bases, the changes might feel like a throwback. But to the pitching coaches who work to get their players ready, the changes to the game represent some of the biggest in M.L.B. history — and a giant leap into an unknown future.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/sports/baseball/pitch-clock-coaches.html