MLB notebook: Manfred talks about speed-up rules - STLtoday.com
I think they appreciate the fact we’ve taken kind of a measured approach to the problem to make sure we don’t unintentionally change the game in a way that may not be positive. The average time of a nine-inning game was 3 hours, 2 minutes last year, up from 2:33 in 1981. “Spring training games are obviously different,” he said. “We do like the early returns on it, but I think that the very nature of those spring games make it difficult to make any conclusion as to exactly how it’s going to work during the regular season. Manfred said MLB is monitoring the drop in offense but says it also is too early to make any decisions. The average runs per team per game has dropped from 5. 14 in 2000 to 4. 07 last year. “We’re at the point in time where we’re trying to decide: Do we have a trend that’s going to be persistent in terms of less offense or do we have a development where there’s a little less offense and hitters are going to adjust and its going to go... We’re really trying to make a determination as to whether we have a persistent issue that needs to be addressed. The ideal resolution on that issue would be that hitters make adjustments to what’s going on in the game and the development doesn’t turn out to a be a trend. Source: www.stltoday.com
