Baseball at the major league level is going to be played a little bit differently starting this season, and ESPN’s Karl Ravech knows that even the broadcasters will have to get used to some of the changes just like the players.
Ravech, talking to Buster Olney on the Baseball Tonight podcast, said he hopes the audience will bear with him in these first national broadcasts of the 2023 season.
“Please don’t kill the messenger because the messenger is going to be pointing out the pitch clock quite often,” Ravech said. “And we’re gonna see, like we do with NFL games where the quarterback snaps the ball and you look at the clock and it says zero, and this guy’s gonna start his delivery at zero. Or did he start it? There’s so much gray to this whole thing it’s going to present all sorts of challenges.”
The pitch clock is one of the new regulations in MLB this season, as is the elimination of the defensive shift as we once knew it. Ravech said when it comes to the pitch clock, he knows it’s not going to win everyone over.
“We’ve all been doing this for a long time, and you know that there’s going to be a part of the audience who are into it, and there’s going to be a part of the audience that’s gonna say, ‘You guys stop talking about it. It’s overkill,'” he said. “We’re all gonna go through an adjustment period.”
Ravech said ultimately with these new rules, how they’re interpreted is going to be an important factor.
“What are they adhering to is going to be a bit of a question,” he said.
