kbo, baseball, korea baseball organization, game times

Which has nothing to do with grabbing food off the floor.

Yu Yeong-gyu, who last year became president of the Korea Baseball Organization, is emphasizing the need to speed up the game.

Yu points out the problem that, compared to US Major League Baseball or Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, games in our country take a long time to play and is taking every opportunity to demand shortening game times.

Last year the average length of a game was 3:22, 30 minutes longers than the 2:52 average in the US and nine minutes longer than the 3:13 average in Japan.

The KBO rules committee will be experimenting with three rules to speed up games during spring training: when a runner is on base, pitchers will be cautioned the first time they attempt to throw off a batter's timing by delaying their pitches, then a stronger warning the second time, and a balk call the third time; when no runner is on base, pitchers will have 12 seconds to throw a pitch and will be warned the first time they fail to do so, and a ball called on the second offense; and pitchers will be warned the first time they make excessive use of the rosin bag and a ball called on the second offense.

Of the new rules, the 12-second rule was used in the past.

In the early days of the KBO pitchers had 20 seconds in which to pitch, which was changed to 15 seconds in 1997 and 12 seconds in 2005.

The problem is that the rule was never properly enforced.

Even if the pitcher does delay the game for competitive reasons, it is not easy for the chief umpire to call him for it.

But beginning with this year's spring training games a secondary umpire will keep time with a stop-watch, allowing much stricter enforcement.

On the 6th, the opening game of spring training, KIA's foreign pitcher Ricardo Rodriguez and Doosan's Goh Chang-seong were both admonished, and on the 7th Samsung's Brandon Knight and SK's Jeong Woo-lam were also warned.

The umpires' efforts managed to get the average time of the eight spring training games played so far down to 2:36.

That is a full 46 minutes below the average time in last year's regular season and 11 minutes briefer than last year's spring training matches.

The abbreviation in game times was largely applauded by baseball people, but there remain concerns that enforcement of the 12-second rule in the regular season may not be maintained.