Clock management...what would you have done?

canyonjoe said:

While I don't like a coach that does it, I don't have a huge problem as long as he just owns up to it when he is called on it. It just irritates me when they
act like they are just brilliant tacticians for doing it. I love to win games, but it's so much more enjoyable to score on a walk-off run or make the last
out versus and ump yell time as you are ready to hit.

One thing that I can't believe are how many drop dead games I hear about. We have never played in one outside of a friendly.

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I probably don't do that in pool play. But if I can guarantee my girls another game in bracket play I think I owe it to them to use the tournament rules to their advantage because I'm pretty sure most coaches will do the same to me given the chance. But maybe I'm too much of a cynic.

Sweet Lou said:

I probably don't do that in pool play. But if I can guarantee my girls another game in bracket play I think I owe it to them to use the tournament rules to their advantage because I'm pretty sure most coaches will do the same to me given the chance. But maybe I'm too much of a cynic.

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While I will do things that are part of the game such as taking a pitch or 2, not stealing, to me it's wrong to do a conference that you wouldn't normally do or have your kids untie there shoes to waste time. I don't hold it against coaches that do but do hold it against the ones who try and pretend we all don't know what they did. In the end I can't think of one time where I can say it cost us a game either way. I have seen multiple times where a team on defense tried to stall and it got the pitcher out of rhythm and cost them a win.

A format idea that I've floated for a few years, but have never really seen take off anywhere:

Adjust the time limit to, say, one hour. When the hour expires, you finish the inning. Then, you play one more inning.

This totally eliminates the game-ending clock jockeying, because either speeding things up or stalling would offer absolutely no benefit to a team. No matter what they do before the clock expires, another full will still be played.

That's a good solution except you can really run behind Especially in Bracket play where you also might have an ITB thrown in.

BretMan said:

A format idea that I've floated for a few years, but have never really seen take off anywhere:

Adjust the time limit to, say, one hour. When the hour expires, you finish the inning. Then, you play one more inning.

This totally eliminates the game-ending clock jockeying, because either speeding things up or stalling would offer absolutely no benefit to a team. No matter what they do before the clock expires, another full will still be played.

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I think the best coaches manage the game from the first inning on. If coaches are waiting for the last inning or two to manage the clock, they are not coaching correctly. I hate timed games, but if you are forcing teams to play on a clock, you better take that into consideration when you are only playing 4 or 5 inning games. 7 inning games can and should be managed differently than timed, shortened games.