When it comes to Major League Baseball, I tend to be skeptical of, and generally dislike changes that affect the gameplay. Most recently the introduction of the designated hitter and its expansion to the National League last season. This year MLB put in a bunch of changes that seem to have been more controversial than most, such as banning the shift (I hate the shift, but oppose the rule), bigger bases (fine - it actually works for the fielders as well, making it easier to hit for a force out) and most prominently, a timer imposed on the pitcher, reducing the time between pitches. They've been doing it all during spring training, but you never know how things like that are going to work out in the regular season.

And with an admittedly small sample size of a single game, I am 100% on board. There is no real discernable effect on the way the game is played, you just have to wait less time between plays. The season opener between the LA Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks took roughly two and a half hours. Ten runs were scored in the game, and Arizona kept changing pitchers in the later innings, both of which increases the run time, as a pitching change requires a warmup and invariably, a commercial break for the TV audience. In recent years, games have averaged well over three hours, and a game with 21 baserunners, 10 runs, pitching changes in each of the last four innings should have gone closer to four hours.

For an East Coast fan of a West Coast team, whose games start after 10 PM, it is impossible to oversell the significance of this change.