The Major League Baseball will reportedly stick to regular-season pitch clock rules in the 2023 postseason. The news comes after players made a plea to modify the rules for the upcoming playoffs.
The MLB started using pitch-clock this season in an attempt to increase the pace of the games and make them shorter. According to the rules, the pitcher has 15 seconds to throw the ball after receiving it when the bases are empty. They get 20 seconds with runners on base and 30 seconds between batters. The violation of the pitch clock results in an automatic ball awarded to the batter.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, players around the league wanted to get more time added to the pitch clock in the postseason, but MLB’s executive council opted against making any changes.
The introduction of the pitch clock proved to be quite a success for MLB. The duration of games in 2023 dropped to 2 hours, 39 minutes, down from 3 hours and six minutes average last year.
While pitchers had a tough time adjusting to the pitch clock at first, the pitch clock violations have gone significantly down as the season progressed. There is currently one violation happening every four games.
