Ever since Rob Manfred took over as MLB commissioner he has been looking for ways to shorten the length of games. So far this season’s average game length has been 3 hours and four minutes, up four minutes from last season. And one solution might be to limit the amount of times a manager can make pitching changes in a game. “I am in favor of something like that,” Manfred said. “We’ve spent a ton of time on this issue in the last few months,” he added.
“You know the problem with relief pitchers is that they’re so good. I’ve got nothing against relief pitchers, but they do two things to the game: The pitching changes themselves slow the game down, and out relief pitchers have become so dominant at the back end that they actually rob action out of the end of the game, the last few innings of the game,” said Manfred. So it seems as if Manfred is actually saying relief pitchers being too good is hurting the game. That seems very odd because I would think you would want players in your league to be really good. But I guess not Manfred.
Limiting the amount of times a manager can make pitching changes in a game is like in basketball limiting the amount of times you can sub people in and out. It doesn’t make much sense at all. Every game is different, and every game and the way it plays out determines how many pitching changes a manager uses. If anything, a rule like this could lead to injury. What if a reliever is in the game and it ends up going into extra innings but the manager is out of pitching changes so you’re forced to stay in? Or if a starting pitching gets hurt early in the game and you need the bullpen for nearly an entire game but you can only use a few of your relievers? It just seems ridiculous. Hey Manfred here’s an idea, if you want games to not be as long then how about you don’t have instant replays that take four, five minutes long.
