Baseball games can be long. That is a major issue many fans face. People either lose interest, or lose time. As a solution, the MLB has spoken about incorporating a pitch clock, which would essentially put the game on a time limit. In theory, this would solve so many issues that the MLB and broadcasting companies are facing. Their viewership would be up, and fans would remain more engaged through the entire game.
There are, however, many flaws with the idea of a pitch clock. For example, with the current system, the games rely on innings. Each inning allows equal opportunity for each team to score. Once there are three outs, the teams swap positions.
Adding a pitch clock would take away that equality within the game. If the inning is not over before the time of the pitch clock is up, then the team at bat would lose the opportunity to score. If the team did not get their three outs, then their shot has ended too early, and their potential to score has been stripped away.
Though other sports are timed and work well, baseball is much different because one team is solely defense, while the opposite is solely offense. Other sports have both defense and offense of both teams simultaneously, allowing each team equal opportunity to score throughout the timed period. However, in baseball, the only team that has the opportunity to score in the moment is the one at bat. While a time limit does not limit other sports, it would severely limit baseball.
I feel as though baseball is a great sport, and though the timing can be tough sometimes, it is necessary. The length of a game, when looking at the current rules of the game, cannot be controlled without taking away equality between team opportunities of scoring. Bigger issues would arise if this equality was taken away, and there would be a lot of unnecessary tension created.
Baseball may have some long games, but a pitch clock is not the solution to this. Timing would mess with the game as we know it, and would create such a major change that baseball fans would not necessarily enjoy adjusting to.
