I watched parts of two games on Saturday, the Yankees at the Phillies and the Diamondbacks at the Athletics. The new pitch clock limited the time batters and pitchers could take to get ready for an interaction. I’ve seen minor league games with a pitch clock, and what I noticed about both those games and the two games on Saturday is that after an inning I forgot about the clock. The game simply moved at what to me is a natural pace. The Athletics game took over three hours, but there were runners on base constantly as the final score came in at 12-7 in favor of the home team. The Yankees-Phillies game early on featured a lot of base runners, so they were working on the 20 second timer rather than the 15. That 7-4 game still ended in 2:34 minutes.

These were spring training game, with lots of minor league players already used to the clock. On top of that, this is not real competition. I want to see what happens when to great teams are locked in a close game in the late innings when they really want to think about each pitch, both from the batter and pitcher perspective. The batter wants to step out. The pitcher wants to hold the ball as long as possible. When there is less time to think in dramatic situations, how will the players handle that?

Update: