While watching a New York Yankees game a few years ago, Ryan Clements was struck by how long reliever Dellin Betances was taking between pitches. To be fair, Betances habitually takes only a little longer than most big league pitchers, for whom a deliberate work rate has become an endemic issue affecting Major League Baseball’s pace of play.
“We realized there could be something to help speed up the game, speed up the pace of play, without changing the game,” Clements, a general contractor in Troy, N.Y., who played a year of college ball at SUNY-Oswego, where he majored in technology education.
Along with his younger brother, Andrew, and cousin Caleb Gleason, Clements devised a discreet wrist wearable through which coaches can communicate with the catcher and possibly the pitcher and other fielders very quickly.
Dubbed the K-Band — the name of a high-frequency radio wave, though stylized with a backward K in honor of baseball’s scoring shorthand — the device can transmit pitch calls and locations or be customized for other helpful information, such as suggested shifts. The K-Band would be worn on the glove hand with its display on the inner side of the wrist so players could take a quick, subtle glance. Each team would have its own gateway transmitter for frequency, storage and security features.
“Our main thing was to help the game speed up and simplify the system of communicating between coaches and players,” Clements said, adding: “We don’t really want to draw attention to it the same way hand signals do.”
The average nine-inning MLB game lasted a record 3 hours, 5 minutes last season. Pace of play data tracked by FanGraphs indicated a league-wide average of 24.3 seconds per pitch, the longest its 10-year database for that stat and two and a half seconds longer than a decade ago. Rule 8.04 in the MLB rulebook mandates that, once a pitcher receives the ball from the catcher, he has 12 seconds to deliver the next pitch when no runner is on base yet, as Clements said, “It’s never enforced.”
One potential roadblock to the proliferation of the K-Band working as intended is the tight regulation on what a pitcher can or cannot wear on the mound, for fear of doctoring the baseball. Pace of play remains an issue of paramount importance within the commissioner’s office, so perhaps an allowance could be made if such an innovation would make appreciable strides in hastening the action.
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In college baseball, where the majority of pitches are called by coaches, this could have greater application. The SEC, recognizing its own lengthening game time, has adopted an experimental rule for conference play in which a coach in the dugout can speak over a walkie-talkie to the catcher, who would have an earpiece in his helmet. The open line of communication, however, even if it’s only one-way, theoretically could be exploited. Plus, Clements, who once played on a team coached by his father, said with a laugh, “I wouldn’t want my dad talking in my ear as I’m [standing] on the pitcher’s mound or at catcher. It seems kind of distracting.”
Clements said he has demonstrated his prototype to an NCAA official and had early conversations with league and tech company executives about other adaptations, either to other sports such as softball, football for play-calling, or for other purposes. Perhaps the data collected from a bat sensor or other wearable could be displayed on the K-Band for instant feedback. For now, the company — which has contracted with engineering company Tri-Star Design Inc. in Hopkinton, Mass. — is seeking investment to continue development.