In the past few seasons, you’ve been able to read “War and Peace” or watch “The Godfather” trilogy during your average baseball game. So the masters of baseball did something about the pace and length of the game and limited mound visits to six per team.
In the first game of the season Thursday at Citi Field, despite Cardinal pitching that would have slowed down a runaway train, the gain was four minutes. Even with the Mets not needing to bat in the home ninth of their 9-4 victory over the Cards, the game lasted 3:01, although some innings by themselves seemed longer than that. Last season, the average major league game was 3 hours and 5 minutes.
So with the electronic mound-visits-countdown sign atop the out-of-town scoreboard above the third deck in left keeping everyone aware, the Cards used four visits, along with two pitching changes (which don’t count). The Mets used one.
“No effect on us and I don’t think it affected them at all,” Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki said of the new rules, while noting the wristbands with signals designed to help in case mound visits are used up never came into play either. “They still had two left. We had five. I went out to [Jeurys] Familia in the ninth after the Yadier Molina walk. I could see he wanted to talk, so I went to make sure he was good.”
From Triple Crown stats to WAR to mound visits. And Thursday, it wasn’t gatherings on the mound that often provided the pace-of-winter molasses.
It was Met starter Noah Syndergaard striking out 10 in his 12th career double-digit strikeout game. It was Cards starter Carlos Martinez issuing six of the nine walks handed out by St. Louis pitchers and hitting another batter. And it was the Cardinals bullpen generally holding a meeting of Arsonists Anonymous, allowing four earned runs, eight hits, three walks and two wild pitches in 3 ²/₃ innings. That stuff doesn’t happen in a jiff, you know?
The Cards started their mound visit countdown on the electronic scoreboard sign in the first inning. By game’s end, Molina ended up going twice, same as pitching coach Mike Maddux — and there were the two pitching-change visits by manager Mike Matheny. And they did it all in 3:01.
