Did pace-of-play rules work? Well, maybe

The Frontier League made much noise last spring about its new pace-of-play rules, which included the much-criticized International Tiebreaker rule.

Prior to the season, the league issued a three-page release detailing new rules that were designed to speed-up play and generate shorter game times. The release included sections on the time limit between innings, when the catcher should throw the baseball to second base during the between-innings warmup pitches, how many seconds a pitcher has to deliver a pitch, walkup music, defensive conferences, limiting granting timeouts to batters, making the batter keep one foot in the batter's box and the ITB.

Did these new rules really speed-up games?

Maybe.

The league tracked the average time of all 9-inning games played at each of its ballparks from 2012 through 2014. At Consol Energy Park, the average times were 2:44 in 2014, 2:39 in 2013 and 2:43 back in 2012. The league average for Washington during the three-year period was 2:50.

The average time for all nine-inning games played in Washington this year was just under 2:39. We'll round up to 2:39. That's the same as in 2013 and three seconds under the average for games played at CEP from 2012 to 2014.

Washington did play a game on the road, at Traverse City, late in the season that lasted only 1:54. It was the third-quickest game in Wild Things history.

I will have to see the numbers for the entire league before saying the speed-up rules worked. What I did notice is the base umpire, who was supposed to carry a stopwatch and time the inning breaks, rarely did so during the second half of the season. That's probably because the players and on-field promotions people adjusted quickly to the new rules.

One more note: the Frontier League had a time limit of 2 minutes, 5 seconds for its inning breaks. Because of television, the Major League Baseball playoff games have innings breaks of 3 minutes, 15 seconds. That works out to more than 18 minutes of extra dead time built into a major league playoff game.

And it's the Frontier League that needs to hurry up?

Sergey on move, again

You might recall that after Matt Sergey was traded in August by the Wild Things to Laredo of the American Association, the pitcher had an amazing impact on the Lemurs. Sergey did not give up a run in 20 regular-season innings and tossed six shutout frames in his only postseason start for Laredo, which won the league championship.

Those numbers didn't keep Sergey in Laredo. He was traded as a player to be named to complete a deal with the Gary SouthShore RailCats, who are managed by Greg Tagert, who spent many years in the Frontier League.

Laredo is supposed to send two players to Washington to complete the Sergey trade. The Lemurs currently have 14 players on their roster who are Frontier League-eligible.