Report: MLB Targets Pitch Clock as Lockout Negotiations Continue Sunday

While MLB and the MLBPA continue their collective bargaining agreement negotiations on Sunday, one thing MLB wants to include is a pitch clock.

MLB would like to add a 14-second pitch clock when the bases are empty and a 19-second pitch clock when runners are on base, ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reports.

According to Rogers, MLB’s experiments with pitch clocks in lower leagues helped them arrive at this conclusion. MLB first started using a pitch clock in the Arizona Fall League in 2015, but expanded its use to the Low-A last year. As a result, Low-A game times decreased by around 20 minutes.

The reasoning behind the specific time benchmark came from Low-A as well. Rogers explained MLB used 15 and 17 seconds at that level, and the league determined it could decrease time with bases empty but needed to add time with runners on.

In the November GM Meetings, MLB executives shared their thoughts on the pitch clock, and most liked the possibility of adding it to the game, according to Baseball America’s Kyle Glaser.

“Feedback was really good,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “I was just in the Fall League last week and wasn’t sure what to expect. Saw it in Rancho [Cucamonga] and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But there is a pace to things that I appreciated. You forget about the clock but you’re just appreciating the pace of it. I enjoyed watching in my limited time with that and our player feedback has been positive.”

Some players are less receptive. Max Scherzer, who is an MLBPA Association Player Representative, isn’t a fan of a possible pitch clock.

“As players, it just shouldn't be in the game,” Scherzer said in 2019, via Bleacher Report. “Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that's messing with the fabric of the game. There's no clock in baseball, and there's no clock in baseball for a reason."

Former Red Sox player Will Middlebrooks thinks 14 and 19 seconds are too short.

Other players are more open to it. Former MLB outfielder Raul Ibañez, who worked with MLB’s pitch clock experiment in the minors, says there are clear benefits.

“It really is an incredible experience,” Ibañez said last year, via The Athletic’s Jayson Stark. “It feels like the baseball games that I grew up watching in the '80s.”