Baseball. Intentional walks. Forget those extra pitches. Just have the batter go to 1st base. Speed up the game. In the sixties games used to last only a little over 2 hours.

hate that. to speed up the game make pitchers pitch in a reasonable amount of time and dont let batters just chill outside the box for as long as they want

I've got a better idea to speed up the game - just make the baseball scalding hot.

I'm a diehard baseball fan but playoff baseball can be excrutiating. Limit the visits to the mound for the catcher, put a clock on the pitchers, put a clock on the hitters getting the signs. It's that bad.

There already are a minimum of 2 visits to the mound per inning (pitching coach once per team), as well as multiple pitching changes with these clowns trying to outcoach eachother but you can't really change that.

There's no reason at all a regulation baseball game with <15 runs scored needs to take longer than 3.5 hours. You've got like 4 pitches to throw and 4 corners to hit. Just ****ing pick one and throw it and let BABIP take care of the rest.

I truly think baseball's popularity would rebound a great deal if these games got back down to the 2.5-3 hour range. Those old NYY-BOS playoff games took over 4 hours and one took 5:14 iirc. Unreal. One of the neat things about baseball is that there is no clock. The outs are the clock. But FFS they are ruining this.

I'm sure a lot has to do with commercial time that networks have paid for.

why are the mlb playoffs so short btw? 162 game RS and 8 teams in the POs seems silly. Just a time issue?

There used to just be an East and West division in the NL and AL. 4 teams made the playoffs. Winner of 7 game series went to World Series.

I don't think the playoffs are short at all. I think people just compare them to the regular season which is long because it's profitable for the season to be 6 months long because baseball rules.

Baseball wants the regular season to matter more than other sports, given the 162 games and other historical reasons when it was just 2 teams who won the pennant duking it out in the WS.

Well I compared it to NHL and NBA which have one more round. As a loleuro I'm obviously always in favour of the regular season mattering more, although I can't say I have seen the Angels lauded much for "winning the league".

Mentioned all the time but... 1st round needs to be 7-game series

Hire hookers for kids after a come from behind victory so they don't resort to sexually assualting the student body.

yeah as a non-baseball fan generally the 1-game playoff and best-of-5 1st round seem bizarre given the 162 game season. i recall years ago reading people argue that the series should be longer not shorter, maybe make the WS a best-of-9. of course making the season longer would create other problems, and turn some off.

are actual fans happy with the playoffs being such a ridiculous variancefest as it is now?

true pretenders like the tigers lose every year so cant be too much variance

http://www.csnbayarea.com/blog/andre...hers-duel-ever

2 July 1963
Warren Spahn vs. Juan Marichal

16 inning game
4 hours and 10 minutes.

Spahn 201 pitches
Marichal 227 pitches

They played faster those days.

Proof that the playoffs are a "ridiculous variancefest"?

And if so, compared to what? NFL? LOL

They do need to make the LDS 7 games though. Never liked the 5 game series.

Just go back to the AL and NL winners meeting in the World Series. After 162 games you don't need more playoffs. Would mean the reg season actually mattered.

PEOPLE LIKE THE PLAYOFFS

Let's also do away with nude celebrity selfies while we're at it.

That was also in the peak pitcher's era.

I'm sure doing away with throwing the intentional walk pitches will save a pretty cool one minute per game though, solid suggestion

Can't remember if this was posted here or not, but recent and relevant:

http://deadspin.com/independent-base...d-u-1610959650

Cliffs:

An independent league has adopted several rules designed to speed up the game including automatic issuance of IBB, pitchers clock, and pinch running for catchers so they are suited up and ready to go at the end of a. Inning and not stuck on the base path.

Interesting. Too much overkill and too many new rules to remember but it's good to see somebody doing this.

They can keep all the MLB rules intact and still speed up the games tremendously by limiting catcher-pitcher mound conferences, eliminating infield-mound conferences, and clocking the pitchers and hitters. No need to invent things like timeouts or have an auto pinch runner for the catcher. That part is ****ing stupid. Catcher needs to run. Though we had that rule in our adult league that catchers got a pinch runner if requested. Not to speed up the game - I think just b/c they didn't want to run. Was always last player to make a batted out. So we couldn't have Usain Bolt on the bench as a dedicated P.R.

yeah limiting the catcher / team mound meetings is the next thing that needs to happen

oh yeah, how come?

You have to win 3 games and the team with HFA gets 2 games to start.

But I guess you are waiting for me to say "Because it makes the ENTIRE PLAYOFFS a RIDICULOUS VARIANCEFEST!"

There, you win.

Baseball is such a variancefest that a few of the best clubs in the last 10 years haven't won multiple rings each.

Since 2004:
Red Sox 3 Rangs 3 total appearances
Cardinals 2 Rangs 4 total appearances
Phillies 1 Rang 2 total apperances
Giants 2 Rangs 2 total apperances

Tigers 2 appearances
Rangers 2 appearances

Only 5 other teams whatsoever have even made 1 WS appearance in this time. The Yankees (1 win), White Sox (1 win), Rockies, Astros, Rays.

VARIANCEFESTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I mean, my team got swept in 2005 by a total of 6 runs and I don't think it's a variancefest.

yeah i dunno, i could be talking out of my ass here, but it just seems like each year these days you could literally rand the 8-10 teams to pick a WS winner and have as good a chance as if you had any kind of educated opinion on it. seems like more variance than you'd want in a sport, especially one that has a 162 game regular season (possibly in part to eliminate exactly that kind of variance).

no i obviously wasn't comparing it to football which also has a lot due to best-of-1 playoff matchups. but if your variance levels are similar to that, then yeah maybe you have a problem (no idea if they are or not, guessing not).

I will grant you that the winner of the All-Star game deciding which league gets HFA is severely ******ed and only adds to whatever variance already exists.

I'm not going to correct you where you've gone wrong b/c this is already a huge, dumb derail.

There will always be variance, and eventually there are diminishing returns on attempts and lengths gone to reduce it.

variance in sports is a good thing. people like entertainment. otherwise you get the nba where you can eliminate 25 teams before the season starts