Pirates adjusting to love-hate relationship with baseball's new pitch clock in spring training

In his first at-bat of spring training, Bryan Reynolds took an Aaron Nola four-seam fastball for a ball to work a 3-0 count against the Philadelphia Phillies in a Grapefruit League game Monday at LECOM Park.

Typically, the Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star outfielder would step out of the batter’s box to adjust his batting gloves and lock in for the next pitch.

Now, there was no time for that.

With MLB’s implementation of new rules to improve the pace of play, Reynolds had no time for a reset. A pitch clock forces pitchers to deliver a pitch within 15 seconds (20 seconds with runners on base) and batters to engage with the pitcher for a minimum of eight seconds, with the penalty being a ball or a strike.

Reynolds glanced at the pitch clock, realized he had only a second to spare and stayed in the box. On the next pitch, he grounded out to first base. So much for working the count in his favor.

“I don’t like it,” Reynolds said of the pitch clock. “It’s too quick. You take a pitch and, before you know it, you look up and it’s at 10 and you’ve got to get right back in the box. The first time was a little rushed.”

That’s what Pirates manager Derek Shelton called “the biggest challenge” of spring training, as major-league players adjust to the reality of new rules that have been active in the minors.

Not only is there a pitch clock, but the bases are bigger, engagement rules limit the number of pickoff throws a pitcher can make per batter and ban shifts that put three defenders on one side of the infield. They are all designed to improve offense and speed up games that averaged 2 hours, 57 minutes last spring and 3:03 in the regular season.

At first glance, hitters like Reynolds are feeling hurried.

“I think that’s where we’re going to feel it the most,” Shelton said. “We’re going to feel it the most with hitters being rushed, especially guys that are established major-league hitters. They have a routine they go through to get ready, and they’re going to have to adjust that routine. I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge early in spring training, when guys are so cognizant of it, that they’re rushing back in and realizing that they have more time. … Right now, hitters feel rushed because they don’t know. The more they realize they have time, the more they’ll be able to slow it down.”

Let's talk Stolen Bases!

We are now 5 games per team into spring training. So far, teams are averaging 1.16 SB Attempts Per Game and .94 SB game. Success rate is sitting at 80.6%

In 2022 spring training, it was .77 SB attempts per game. .55 SB per game and a 72.9% success rate.

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) March 2, 2023

It’s not just affecting hitters. Shelton was wearing a watch with a red band on his left wrist and a black whoop band, designed to digitally track heart rate variability, as he talked about the new rules. Shelton revealed he was stressed out during the Grapefruit League opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, a 9-7 loss that lasted 2:47.

“It’s amazing that the first game my strain level went up because of the rules,” Shelton said. “It’s a spring training game, but you know how you get (a report) at the end of the day. Not the other days, but that day and specifically within the first three innings because it was going so fast.”

Where scores are going up, game times are going down. The Pirates and their opponents averaged 10.6 runs through the first seven games this spring, and games have lasted 2:31. As players adapt, games are speeding up. The first three games averaged 2:43; the next four 2:25.

Pirates catcher Austin Hedges noticed the drastic difference when he was removed from Monday’s game against the Phillies after the fifth inning and saw it was only 2:05 p.m., an hour after the first pitch. That got Hedges thinking about how the improved pace can be helpful, especially after a night game followed by a matinee, and the extra rest he can get after catching a nine-inning game.

“As far as I can tell so far I think it’s only going to help the game,” Hedges said. “I like the pace a lot. The challenge right now is to not think too much about it. Right now, we’re obsessing over it so much that I think whether you’re hitting or pitching, it seems like it’s at the front of your focus.

“Ideally, the point of the rule is to just speed things up and not necessarily to think about it so much. It’s making guys move really quickly right now, when they have more time to focus on executing pitches or on executing their plan in the box. It seems like it’s a little rushed right now, but I think that’ll change when we get reps.”

Where Pirates games were high-scoring at the start, they have accounted for four runs in their past three and needed a ninth-inning infield single by Matt Fraizer to avoid being no-hit by the New York Yankees and a solo homer by Drew Maggi to prevent a shutout in the 9-1 loss. The Pirates played Toronto (2-2) and Baltimore (1-1) to low-scoring ties.

Pirates reliever Wil Crowe found in his first outing that the improved pace can be taxing on a pitcher, comparing it to doing cardio on an elliptical machine. Crowe is learning, however, he can work the pitch clock in his favor with some gamesmanship.

“It takes some of the unnecessary time away,” Crowe said. “For me, I use it. I got on the mound, guy got in the box and I waited until one a couple times. I went early, went quick. I dictated the pace. I enjoy it. … We get to manipulate it. We can go quick or hold it for a long time. As pitchers, we can do what we want with it.”

Yankees relief pitcher Wandy Peralta struck out a hitter in 20 seconds pic.twitter.com/VwEBzyXH99

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) March 2, 2023

That was emphasized Thursday, when Yankees lefty Wandy Peralta used the quick-pitch method to strike out Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano on three pitches in 20 seconds.

Crowe expects hitters to react in kind, waiting until the pitch clock reaches 10 seconds to step into the batter’s box or to use their one allotted timeout per at-bat. That’s an idea to which Reynolds is receptive.

“If the point of it is to speed everything up, we’re just going to have take a timeout every at-bat, when they get two strikes or something,” Reynolds said. “It’s smart. It’ll just take a little getting used to.”

Someone really made a video seeing how many inside the park HR’s Jose Altuve could hit in the time it took Pedro Baez to throw a pitch to David Ross in the 2016 NLCS ????????
pic.twitter.com/w7CwJTczUN

— The Game Day MLB (@TheGameDayMLB) February 27, 2023

On Twitter, a video has gone viral comparing the time it took for Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Pedro Baez to throw one pitch to Chicago Cubs catcher David Ross in the 2016 World Series against how many times Jose Altuve hit an inside-the-park home run, blaming that moment for the need for a pitch clock.

“It’s funny because, yes, that did happen and there’s a laugh to it … but it’s the World Series,” Crowe said. “One run might be the reason you win or lose the World Series, something not everybody gets to perform in. … It’s something you laugh at but when every pitch means something, that’s baseball.”