Today was supposed to be the biggest day of the year out there on the pace-of-play battlefields, you know.
It was supposed to be the day baseball got serious. The day the rules got strictly enforced. The day the fines kicked in.
Not to mention the day everybody stopped chuckling about the time Adrian Beltre stepped out of the batter's box, only to lurch back in, and started grumbling about the 500 bucks MLB just took out of their checks.
Yeah, that was the plan anyway.
Except who knew baseball's new pace-of-game measures would wind up working so darned well? Who knew this sport could carve 8 1/2 minutes off the average game time without a single umpire having to yell at anybody, or a single fine being issued?
But that's the deal. The average time of a nine-inning game is down to 2 hours, 53 minutes, 37 seconds. That's 8 1/2 minutes quicker than last season's average, the largest drop in any year since 1963. And even as MLB keeps saying it isn't measuring progress by game time, those game times are an accurate reflection of how much progress it's really made.
So you know all those fines that were supposed to get handed down starting today -- beginning at $100 and escalating to $500 per violation -- for players who ran afoul of the pace-of-game authorities?
Uh, never mind.
As ESPN.com reported Thursday, MLB and the players' union have been discussing the prospect of relaxing or all but eliminating those fines, except for players who repeatedly commit "flagrant violations."
And if that makes no sense to you disciplinarians out there, you need to understand something: This pace-of-play extravaganza was never supposed to turn into a giant discipline-fest in the first place.
The idea always was to change habits and change the culture. It was designed, said MLB senior vice president Chris Marinak, to be "a teaching tool."
And you know what we've learned so far? Memo received. That's clearly happening.
Asked this week if he thought fines were necessary to get the attention of players who keep stepping out of the batter's box and breaking the new rules, Braves third baseman Chris Johnson replied, "No, because I don't think guys are doing it on purpose. When you're in the middle of a big league at-bat, the last thing you're thinking about is, 'Oh no. Don't step out of the box because I might get fined.'"
Johnson admitted he got two warning letters for accidentally leaving the box after the first week of the season -- but hasn't gotten one since. He was remarkably proud of that. But a quick survey of a half-dozen players in his clubhouse led us to this conclusion: It's actually a good thing that baseball isn't going to start fining players for every "violation" they've been flagged for so far by the pace-of-game police -- because some of those violations are so ridiculous, you don't need to be a Supreme Court justice to know they were nobody's idea of a "crime."
The best example we ran across was Braves rookie reliever Cody Martin, whose transgressions were circumstantial at best, but bizarre at worst.
His reward for surviving the first week of his big league career? Two letters from MLB for not being ready to throw his first pitch as the between-innings timer ticked down to its final seconds.
The first infraction, he said, happened "because I go out there and the umpires are getting water, there's no ball on the field, so that's 20 seconds right there while they go get a ball."
The second, he reported, was also not his fault because "the catcher was the hitter at the end of the last inning. So it took time to get a catcher out there."
And Braves officials said they were notified of a third "violation" that was the most absurd of all -- when Martin arrived at the mound following a rainstorm and found the grounds crew out there to greet him.
"It rained that day," Martin said, "so the mound was all dirty. It had lots of Quick Dry on it, so they came out and scraped it off and added more."
Yet somehow, someone in MLB's video room decided that constituted rule-breaking. Really. Then, to cap off the indignity, one of Martin's transgressions was allegedly for not being ready to go in the first game he ever pitched in the major leagues.
"What? It was my big league debut," he said with a laugh. "You're expecting me to rush through that?"
Then there was veteran catcher/controversy magnet A.J. Pierzynski. He was so mystified by the three offenses he got flagged for, he went looking for Braves president John Schuerholz, simply for reassurance that he was being singled out unjustly.
"All three of them were like, I step out of the batter's box for a second, take a breath and step right back in," Pierzynski said. "No practice swing or anything. And every time I get back in, I'm waiting on the pitcher to get ready. So ... I talked to John Schuerholz about it. I showed him the video of what I did. And he said, `Yeah, you shouldn't have gotten one for that.'
"I mean, I've been accused of a lot of things," Pierzynski said. "But being slow in the box isn't one of them."
So just imagine what would have ensued if MLB had taken misdemeanors as innocent as these and tried to issue fines over them. They'd have been looking at about, oh, 7,000 appeals of those fines a week. But we repeat: That was never the idea.
OK, then what was the idea? What aspects of this effort have worked especially well? And where is this all leading? Let's take a deeper look.
The batter's box rule
This rule, from the beginning, was supposed to be the pace-of-game centerpiece. If the goal was a game with better flow and better rhythm, this was where it all had to start, with hitters keeping one foot in the box throughout an at-bat, with only a few logical exceptions.
In the beginning, there sure was a lot of grumbling from hitters. But guess what? This change has worked -- and had a bigger impact than you'd think.
How much time has it saved? Hard to quantify. But MLB's research shows that the average time between pitches is down about one second per pitch. And that "may sound like it's not a big deal," said Marinak. "But when you're talking about 300 pitches a game, it adds up. That alone accounts for four to five minutes of the eight minutes [that have been shaved]."
So are pitchers working faster because hitters aren't wandering halfway to the concession stand between pitches? It seems that way.
"It feels as if they both know that we've encouraged the other to speed things up," Marinak said. "So it provides incentive to play faster. Before, nobody wanted to go first. Now it's the opposite."
The timers
The timers on the stadium walls have also had a major effect on quickening up both the time and feel of games. Before, between-inning breaks often stretched beyond three minutes. Now, when the clock hits zero, pitchers and hitters are almost always ready to go after less than 2 1/2 minutes. So that's also trimming four to five minutes of dead time nearly every game.
Not only have there been very few complaints about it, but pitchers and catchers say it's actually helped them gauge how long to stay in the dugout after an inning ends.
"Before," Tigers catcher Alex Avila said earlier this year, "you'd be trying to figure out how much time there was between innings, in order for the pitcher to time it correctly so he's not standing out there for 30-45 seconds when he's done warming up. So now that we actually have a set time, that makes it a lot easier."
But the timers haven't been totally glitch-free. They also apply to relief pitchers during every pitching change. And as the adventures of Cody Martin so vividly demonstrate, that's where the issues have erupted.
"I think if you're coming into an inning, you shouldn't have a clock," Martin said. "But if you're going back out, if you're in the dugout and going back out there, you should have a clock on you then. With a starter, you have a feel for when an inning is going to end. ... But as a reliever, it's a long run in from the bullpen to get out there. Then the manager says something to you. And then you've got to fire away your seven pitches."
Had MLB started fining every reliever who wasn't ready when the timer said he should be, we can guarantee that would have shattered the pace-of-game peace. Instead, everyone gets an extended chance to work through these inevitable glitches. Exactly as it ought to work.
The new replay system
Baseball didn't change the replay system with pace of game in mind. But by allowing managers to challenge without running out to the scene of the call, it's had at least a slight impact.
The average amount of time spent by managers before they decide to challenge has dropped by "eight to 10 seconds," Marinak said. Plus, the number of times that a manager "physically enters the field" to mull his challenge is down about 75 percent, he said. And does anybody miss that? Really? Not that we've noticed.
The umpires
If enforcement of these changes had been dumped in the umpires' laps, hoo boy. You know where that would have led.
Instead, MLB has encouraged umpires to avoid confrontations. And, amazingly, there hasn't been a single argument over a pace-of-game dispute yet. Not that we know of, anyway.
"The umpires don't say anything," Pierzysnki said, almost incredulously. "In spring training, the umpires said some stuff. But since the season started, I haven't heard one umpire say anything to a hitter about getting in the box."