As Oregon State’s Drew Rasmussen stepped off the rubber for the third time in the at bat, fans started to get a bit restless.
“This is ridiculous,” one fan said as she stood up to collect her belongings. “It’s way too cold out here.”
Rasmussen was pitching well, but Oregon’s batters were pushing the freshman’s pitch count to the limit. Almost two hours into the 7:30 p.m. start time, Rasmussen was rapidly approaching 100 pitches, but was still stuck in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Baseball is a deliberate sport, and for many fans the game’s pace is meditative and methodical. But on Saturday night, the Beavers and Ducks slowed to a snail’s pace to resolve game two of the Civil War series at P.K. Park.
The game, which was televised on the Pac-12 Networks, took 3 hours, 42 minutes to complete.
That’s a long time, particularly when compared to other college sports.
College basketball games are wrapped up in 2 hours, 15 minutes on average, while college football games inundated with media stoppages average 3 hours, 23 minutes.
Major League Baseball has already made efforts to speed games up with a “pitch clock” and new batter behavior rules. Pitchers have 2 minutes, 25 seconds to finish their warm-up period each inning, while batters are required to keep a foot in the batter’s box during each at bat.
Through 35 games, MLB has cut its nine-inning game times to 2 hours, 52 minutes on average, 10 minutes less than 2014’s 3:02 average in the same block of games to open the season.
While the NCAA won’t be able to fine batters if they step out of the batter’s box, something has to be done about the unnecessary pauses between each pitch and at bat.
Under the current rule set, time between pitches cannot exceed 20 seconds. However, the limit is removed when runners are on base, where most of the extra time piles up. Still, the 20 second clock is rarely kept by umpires and pitchers routinely pass through the 20 second limit.
Maybe college baseball could look to the minor leagues for answers. Triple-A and Double-A baseball leagues are testing a physical 20-second pitch clock to continue to press the tempo of games, which would ensure that the rules are followed.
It’s only a matter of time before more pace-of-play rules infiltrate college baseball, but until then, fans better get used to BBCOR snooze-fests.
Follow Josh Schlichter on Twitter @joshschlichter