This Week In Baseball: Pace Of Play Rules Working Early
By Ryan Mayer--
(CBS Local) The first week of the regular season is in the books as spring is finally here throughout most of the country. With the pageantry and tradition of Opening Day, America's pastime is officially back, and the boys of summer will be here to entertain us for the next five months.
As with any of our professional sports, the first action for our team brings hope and excitement, and it can lead to overreaction, both good and bad. As every baseball fan knows, one week doesn't a season make, so there's plenty of time left for the local nine to get on track or figure out what their plan for the season is.
Let's get to some of the bigger storylines in the game after the first live action of the season.
New pace of play rules
The biggest change this offseason came with the institution of the new "pace of play" rules that elicited different reactions from across the sport. As with any change, there were those who were proponents and those who were against it.
One week into the regular season, the average game time sits at 3 hours. That's down from about 3 hours, 8 minutes average last season. The number already includes a Yankees-Red Sox game that took 19 innings and 6 hours and 49 minutes. These are very early returns, but an 8-minute drop in game time is certainly something to keep an eye on throughout the rest of the year.
Small sample size is the most obvious thing to point out, and that is definitely true. I don't expect game times to be 8 minutes shorter on average by the end of the year, but even creeping toward that average 3-hour game time would be the shortest average game time for the league since the 2012 season, when it was exactly 3 hours.
Run production is up
Despite game times being shorter, it hasn't meant a lack of offense or run production so far. This was another complaint about the league, in that offense was down to about 4 runs per game per team last season.
Through the 106 games as of Monday, teams have scored 882 runs, which is an average of 8.3 per game total or about 4.15 per team. It's a good sign that even with increased offense, the pace-of-play rules are keeping games moving more quickly by resuming right after the commercial breaks and cutting down on the number of times a batter can step out of the box.
The early jump in production could be because pitchers are still settling in to their routines again or it could be that the new rules are allowing less time for strategizing, forcing pitchers to work more quickly and leading to more mistake pitches.
Josh Hamilton and the Angels
The Josh Hamilton situation continues to get stranger, as now the Angels are looking into pursuing legal action against Hamilton following his admitted drug binge during the offseason.
MLB lost its case when an arbitrator ruled that Hamilton's use of drugs wasn't a suspendable violation, as is occurred during the offseason, and the Angels organization was upset, with the owner Arte Moreno saying, "I don't know how that doesn't warrant a suspension."
While Moreno insists that it isn't about money, one has to wonder what other possible motivating factor they would have for trying to void Hamilton's contract. Hamilton has clearly needed help his entire life in the battle with substance abuse and was able to get clean enough to have a good start to his MLB career and earn a huge payday.
His incident is his first since making his return to baseball, and it seems dispassionate by the organization to be angry that he isn't suspended and immediately try to void the contract. This is bad public relations practice, to say the least, on the part of the Angels.
Ryan Mayer is an Associate Producer for CBS Local Sports.
