MLB to tweak pitch-clock process but not the rules during the playoffs

The pitch clock is not going away in the postseason, that much we know. But who operates the clock will be handled differently by MLB during the playoffs, the first since the league’s sweeping rule changes.

Multiple sources briefed on the matter tell The Athletic that only the top-performing Field Timing Coordinators, as the clock-runners are called, will be used in October, and they will not work any series involving a team from their market. There will also be only one FTC crew per series and they will travel throughout (if necessary); they won’t be stationed at only one ballpark, as they have been throughout the regular season.

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This mirrors the way baseball tries to use only the best umpires in the postseason in hopes of delivering the best product and fair outcomes. However, the process by which baseball evaluates their FTCs has not been made public.

According to a source with knowledge of the process, the FTC can talk with the umpiring crew during games and often meets with them ahead of time to have a good understanding of the nuances of the ballpark and the umpire’s timing. Having specific clock handlers be assigned to an entire series (instead of one park) should ideally lead to consistent enforcement and good lines of communication between the umpiring crew and the FTC.

A clock violation in a big moment would be an unfortunate outcome for the sport after the rule changes were largely well-received this season. Almost two-thirds of the games this season had no pitch-clock violations, and violations dropped with every month, bottoming out at just over one every four games in September (all numbers through last Thursday’s games).

MLB’s pitch-clock plan for the postseason seems reasonable, but these changes raise a few questions: For one, who are the best-performing clock handlers in baseball?

Back in June, members of the Phillies thought that their clock wasn’t enforced the same as it was in other parks.

“I think the pitch clock was a little too fast,” said starter Aaron Nola.

“Our clock?” veteran utilityman Josh Harrison said. “The fastest.” (Harrison is now a free agent.)

It turned out they were probably right, as Philadelphia’s clock produced the most violations per game in the sport to that point. Is that still the case? Here’s a look at violations per game in each park through last Thursday’s games, according to STATS Perform.

But this doesn’t quite capture all potential bias. And it doesn’t just reflect the tendencies of the person operating the clock. For example, what if the Diamondbacks pitchers are just especially slow? Or rather, since there have been more violations by visiting pitchers at Chase Field, maybe just the visiting pitchers there have been slow. At the Mets’ Citi Field, it’s been the reverse, but for a large portion of the season New York also had a veteran rotation that was pretty vocal about not liking the clock.

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“Why do we have to be so anal about this to have a clock shoved in everybody’s face to snuff out every single second that’s going through the game?” said Max Scherzer in June.

Maybe a better way to find the best-performing FTCs would be to look at splits for home and away pitchers and batters. Theoretically, a big split could point to some measure of bias. Here are the parks with the biggest home/away splits this year, per STATS Perform. Like the previous chars, these include batter violations.

Looking at the chart, the Mariners’ clock had the biggest discrepancy between home and away violations in favor of the home team. The FTC at Tropicana Field and Citi Field penalized the home team more often.

Citizens Bank Park appears 10th on this list and seventh on the other, and the Trop’s violations are top 10 in both categories as well. Perhaps they won’t be in the running for postseason work if the number of violations given out and the discrepancy between home and away violations seem like outliers. On the other hand, Target Field, Comerica Park and Busch Stadium appear in the bottom 10 for both of those lists. Maybe those FTCs will be getting postseason work.

There is a relationship, though, between the raw number of violations and the home-and-away discrepancy — if you have more violations, you can have a larger split between home and away. A better way to look at these numbers might be to match pitchers home and away to look for trends, but then you encounter tiny samples since even the leaders in pitch-clock violations — Craig Kimbrel (13), Chris Bassitt (11), and Johan Oviedo (11) — have barely more than 10 total violations. If you split that by park, you’ll have a bunch of zeroes.

There’s also the question of timeframe. Since the entire league was acclimating to the clock at the beginning of the season, would it make a difference to look at only second-half numbers to judge FTCs? Processes can improve over time. Only Chase Field’s group cut their clock violations per game more than Philadelphia after July 1. Citizens Bank Park was 22nd in violations per game in the second half, with the 18th-biggest difference between home and away violations. If the emphasis was more on second-half results, it seems like this would actually be a good place to look for an FTC.

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In the second half, Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, and Fenway Park are the FTCs that are top-third in both violations per game and the discrepancy between home and away, while Target Field, Dodger Stadium and Wrigley Field are on the bottom for both.

But baseball determines the best clock handlers, and even with improvement in clock management and enforcement over the course of the season, all of the sport’s stakeholders have to be rooting for a clean October.

“Any type of situation that would affect the game is a big deal,” said Clayton Kershaw, when asked about the clock in the playoffs. “At the same time, we knew this was coming. There are ways around it, between you and your catcher, there are mound visits, you can step off — we’ve kind of learned how to navigate it. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t be fun to be dinged in a big moment.”

GO DEEPER

The pitch clock meets the postseason: MLB's new rules face October pressure

(Photo of the pitch clock at an Orioles-Rockies game in Baltimore: Terrance Williams / Associated Press)

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