Veteran Cardinals starter offers tweak to pitch clock

Adam Wainwright believes the implementation of a pitch clock has overall been a positive change for baseball, but there is something he thinks should be considered.

Wainwright joined FOX’s announcers for an interview while his St. Louis Cardinals were batting in the bottom of the fifth inning Saturday against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Wainwright was asked by announcer Joe Davis for his thoughts on the pitch clock.

“I still think we could use about five more seconds, honestly,” Wainwright said. “I do think that the speedier game is good as a whole.”

The one thing he would like MLB to consider is a timeout for the pitcher.

“I think there’s gotta be some kind of a, maybe a pitcher timeout every now and then. Those big moments, when you just need to, you can just negate the clock completely until you step back onto the rubber. That would be good,” Wainwright said.

Wainwright believes an average game time of 2:45 would be optimal, rather than one closer to 2:30. He says he occasionally feels pinched for time during his starts, but not too often.

Players have been used to taking as much time as they’ve wanted between pitches. That’s a big part of the reason why average game lengths were over three hours, which resulted in a bad product.

MLB’s introduction of the pitch clock has been almost unanimously applauded. The last thing the league should be doing is thinking of ways to start extending games despite the complaints of veteran players like Wainwright and some others.