There is another article in the morning news about the excessive length of modern baseball games. This year the average was 3h10m; in 1980 it was 2h33m. There's something in there about a 17 second pitch clock, similar idea to the shot clock in basketball. I would love to see MLB do this! It's been a problem for a long time. I remember talking about it thirty years ago, during the steroid era (ha!) when 9 inning games were regularly pushing 3 hours, mostly because of prima donnas who couldn't seem to keep their ##### in the batter's box between pitches. That extra half hour is a little big deal on school nights, something I think that matters for what we call "America's favorite pastime." Though the leagues don't seem to be losing any fans or money over it.
The problem isn't the pitchers, per se. The rule is that a pitcher has to throw a pitch within 12 seconds of taking the mound, and the vast majority of pitchers actually do this.
The main issue is the other 30 seconds it takes to get there while the batter steps out of the box and re-adjusts his gloves, applies some more pine tar, and does a witch dance before getting back into the box when he just
took a pitch. It's Nomar Garciaparra's lasting contribution to baseball.
The other issue that makes games
feel slower is the drastic increase in strikeouts, so fewer balls are put into play. Once the umpires starting consistently calling the 'real' strike zone in the mid-late 00s, which made the called zone taller but also the narrower, the league should have moved the bottom of the zone back up to the top of the knees (which is where it was being called in the 90s anyway).
Anyway, I will say that I wish the WS started at 7pm local instead of 8pm. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm not motivated to stay up to 11pm and beyond to watch sports. That's more significant to me than any pace of play issue.
Great article from Sports Illustrated on the change in pitching philosophy trom starter/closer to pitching by committee. Statistically speaking, it is the correct decision even if it is less exciting and slower.
I think that the railing against this is old-man-yells-at-clowd syndrome. The coaches and managers have realized that throwing max effort for 4-6 innings instead of pacing oneself for 8-9 is more effective. I also just don't think there are enough players who have the talent to go 7+ innings in modern baseball to fill every team's rotation.