Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin estimates that 80 percent of pitches in an SEC game are called from the dugout, a ritual that typically entails a catcher dropping to one knee, looking toward his pitching coach, decoding one set of signs and then relaying another to the pitcher on the mound. Wash, rinse and repeat for upwards of 250 times per game.
That laborious practice could be trimmed in conference play this season after the NCAA granted the league permission to experiment with wireless communication during SEC regular season and tournament games. The coach will speak into a walkie-talkie or pinned-on microphone, and the catcher will have an earpiece inside his helmet. Communication will be one-way only, from coach to catcher.
“There’s no magic clock and no magic time, but we just would like to take the dead spots out of the game as much as possible,” Corbin said, adding later: “You want to keep the natural rhythm of the game moving.”
Even a modest savings of three to five seconds per interval between pitches extrapolates to a total reduction of 15 to 20 minutes per game. Baseball America noted last winter that College World Series games had lengthened, on average, 25 minutes in less than five years. Corbin is a member of an NCAA pace of play committee, which discussed this option and then brought it the SEC office.
“When you’re playing in it, the length of the game isn’t so bothersome to the participants, but it is for the consumer,” Corbin said.
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
The SEC has contracted Gubser & Schnakenberg LLC (GSC) — makers of the NFL’s system in which coaches can speak with quarterbacks and defensive captains — for introduction during fall practices. Incidentally, GSC had already worked on a trial product with Coastal Carolina of the Sun Belt Conference. SEC member Georgia toyed with a homemade version using Bluetooth headsets during some of its practices.
“I think there’s enthusiasm about it, but also a ‘let’s see how this works’ thought process before there’s a full committal to the future of wireless catcher communication,” SEC associate commissioner Herb Vincent said.
Unlike the NFL, which terminates wireless transmissions with 15 seconds left on the play clock, the SEC has no mechanism for shutting off its communication. No one expects any nefarious mid-play uses, however.
“I’m not so sure that you have the same dynamics in baseball that you do, say, in football where a coach could be relaying information to a quarterback about a defensive back that could be seen from an overhead coach or something like that,” Vincent said.
Such reductions in game time through pitch calling could also offset any additional uses of instant replay under new conference regulations that roughly double the reviewable calls. Last season, only umpires could initiate replays, and they were limited to six types of plays. This year, each manager will have a challenge (which renews if the first try is successful), and another half-dozen plays — including safe/out calls at bases other than home plate — are eligible for review.
Vincent noted that more than 100 games are televised on the SEC network each season, with many more streamed digitally. The TV broadcasts typically have four or five camera angles while the others might only have two. Still, that ought to be enough to overturn the most egregious errors.
“We’re not at the level, from a TV programming standpoint, where we have tremendous camera angles,” Corbin said, “but what you’ve seen happen at the highest levels with instant replay, you’ve essentially taken out some of the anger in the game.”