View of the minor league pitch clock from Wikipedia. Imagine having to watch that click down. Kershaw says don’t pay attention.

Interesting quote by Kershaw about the test of the pitch clock that MLB is doing this spring training with more than a few takes.

“I’m not going to pay any attention to it. And if I go over it then I go over. I’m not going to change anything I do. I’m not going to pay attention to it one bit, and if it becomes a problem I guess I’ll have to deal with it then. But I think there’s ways to fake it. If it looks like it’s winding down or something you can step off. I’m sure there are ways around it. I’m not too worried about it.”

First, he’s got the right attitude for sure about not thinking about it. I’ve had it happen so many times where the thought of me being too slow made me speed up unnecessarily just to try to not get a penalty or others to judge me as being slow. Not paying attention to a possible time violation should be the thought if you’re not already considered one of the super slow players (I don’t think I am but I guess people could have kept that hidden from me).

Second, he says that if it becomes a problem then he’ll deal with it then. Kershaw isn’t known as a slow pitcher, so he’s not trying to bait the MLB to try and convict him of slowing down play, but is using this as a real reason to not look at the clock. JB Holmes talked about this in his press conference after the win, saying how he was never put on the clock so no reason to speed up.

“Yeah, when I first got out here I was really slow. But I’ve sped up quite a bit. I’ve gotten better. There’s times when I’m probably too slow, but it is what it is. I was never on the clock. Never even got a warning. TV wants everything to be real fast all the time.”

To be fair, in that quote, he admits he’s on the super slow side and claims he’s working to get faster, so I’ll give him credit. Either way, him saying how he was never given a warning made people switch to trashing Manfred about the Tour not enforcing the rules they have written.

Third, Kershaw’s right about being able to fake having reasons to not throw a pitch within the 20 second frame. In the golf world, there wouldn’t be fakes, rather there’d be legit reasons for being able to take more than the 50/40 seconds. Such as, a fly or a bee landing on a ball, or if you’re waiting for the group behind you to hit approaches on 16 green at the Phoenix Open so the noise doesn’t affect your swing on 17 tee, super hard rain where if you don’t wipe down the grip of a club you’re not able to hold on to it, or someone in the crowd how wants to give you a penalty for being slow so they yell something before you take your backswing meaning you’d step off and then be over the 40 second limit.

For the MLB, they tried the pitch clock rule in minor leagues all the way back starting in 2010, and it’s taking its time creeping up to the the majors with spring training. It’ll be interesting to see how the spring training pitch clock test goes, and it’s also good to show how if the PGA Tour has any interest in putting this into play, the Web.com Tour needs to be tested first.