Posted by Joe Gallo
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SEC Baseball Tournament 2010: Time Clock
The SEC baseball tournament 2010 is getting started in Hoover, Alabama. Some familiar teams, Arkansas, Mississippi State along with the hometown kids, Alabama and Auburn will all be there. If you are familiar with how these games work, you know that games often last well into the night because the caliber of play is very equal. Last year’s games ran over three hours for the most part but the coaches and players say that waiting on the television commercials is more time consuming than the actual playing of the game.
However, the SEC Baseball tournament 2010 has a new play clock in place for the tournament this year. With one game running over just a few minutes, other games are thrown off and by the time the evening games are underway, the tournament play could already be a couple of hours behind. For the tournament, pitchers will be allotted 20 seconds between pitches when there aren’t any runners on base and then teams will have one minute and 48 seconds at each half-inning.
The clock will be handled by an umpire that is not on the field at the SEC baseball tournament 2010. Chase Reid a pitcher at Vanderbilt said “It’s going to be like being a quarterback.” If the time clock expires, a ball will be added to the batters count and if the batter steps out of the box with under 5 seconds, the batter will earn an extra strike to his count. If the clock expires at the half-inning, the first batter will head into the box with a ball or strike already on him depending on the offending team. When runners are on base, the play clock becomes null.
