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Spring has sprung in the lower half of the continental 48.  That means the sound of the crack of a baseball off of a Major League wooden bat will soon be heard in 30 parks around the US and Canada, and not just in spring training sites in Arizona and Florida.  All together now, “and its one, two, three strikes and you’re out at the old ball game.”

Well that one, two, or three strikes “thing” will be good for MLB pitchers through 2019 anyway.   But, when late Spring of 2020 rolls around a new rule will mandate that a pitcher, whenever brought into the game, must face a minimum of three batters.  Or, he must end the half inning unless he cannot due to an “incapacitating illness.”  If your job was a situational relief specialist, brought in to get one or two batters out (say lefty on lefty), the commissioner has some nice parting gifts for you.

So why the change?  MLB is on a mission to speed the games up by reducing the down times.  Down times occur basically anytime the ball isn’t in live play. A pitching change for one batter and then another change for another batter creates a lot of down time.   For 2019, for example, they are further reducing the TV timeout time between innings.  It’s only a whopping five seconds from 2:05 to 2:00, but two years ago there was no such stopwatch.  Mound visits by managers and/or catchers now max out at 5 per game down from 6 as well.

We applaud MLB for joining the 21st century, all be it, 19 years later than that frightening 2000 countdown.  But, why wait till 2020 for the three batter minimum rule?  MLB says that they want to give managers a year to adjust to the new strategy.  Maybe they should have thought about the new rule in 2018 then, and put it into play in 2019?  Or, in 2017, or 2016.  You get where we are going.

When Al Gore invented the internet 30ish years ago, after somebody invented computers, the world sped up.  Video games are action packed and high scoring.  Anything that you want you can “Google” it in milliseconds.  Amazon can deliver packages faster than Fed Ex can.  Baseball is isn’t playing catch.  It’s playing catch up.  In other words, its past time that The National Pastime look at itself to recapture a generation and a half of its youth that might be at the lost and not found.

Before you know it they might even address that silly DH in the American League, but not in the National League rule.  Can you imagine if the NBA had the three-point line in the Western Conference and not the Eastern?  Come on man!

The good old boys that ran baseball lost the good new boys (and girls) attention.  It’s all about the consumer if you are trying to build a brand to build market share, ratings, and sustainability.

We have mixed feelings about the three batter rule. And, if you are going to do it, do it now.   But we are glad baseball is trying to get off of the back pages of the three newspapers that still print daily.  Heck, soon they might even be trending on Twitter.