Detroit Tigers pitcher Al Alburquerque delivers a pitch during the sixth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field.  Pitchers and batters have two minutes and 25 seconds to get ready for play between innings (2:45 for nationally televised games). PICTURE: USA TODAY Sports

By Stefan Stevenson/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

There is no denying the hard data. Major League Baseball games are moving faster. Through the first 1,330 games this season, the average game time is 2 hours, 57 minutes. That’s 10 minutes quicker than the 3:07 average in 2014.
But if you’ve attended a game recently, especially one of the Texas Rangers’ games just before the All-Star break, your eyes roll and exasperation is understood.
While the pace of play improvements are evident in the bottom-line data, there’s no debating that the game can come to a screeching halt when a video replay occurs.
All the good the league has done to speed up the game feels undone when the action stops and suddenly the umpires are huddled with headsets waiting to hear an answer from New York. For fans already twitchy by baseball’s methodical (some would call it charming) pace, it can be like watching paint dry. Or worse yet — like waiting to hear from someone in New York — that the paint is dry. “That’s how it feels,” Rangers catcher Robinson Chirinos said. “Sometimes I feel like it takes forever to make a decision.”
At least as a catcher, Chirinos is in the same ZIP code as the umpires and can sort of glean what the deal is during a lengthy delay. For outfielders such as Delino DeShields, standing alone 300 feet away can make a two-minute delay feel like an eternity. “You’re out there thinking it shouldn’t take that long,” DeShields said. “I know they want to get the play right, but ...”
Getting it right, of course, is the goal. When the league initiated the use of video replay in 2014 it ran smoothly enough. A few kinks needed to be worked out but most observers, including players and managers, seemed pleased with the execution.
But a couple of long replay delays have interrupted the flow during recent Rangers games, including a 4-minute, 16-second delay in the first inning of Saturday’s loss to the San Diego Padres. To add insult to injury, most Rangers fans felt like the call, even after the lengthy delay, wasn’t corrected despite the NASA-level slow-mo camera angles available at MLB’s replay command central.
Padres base runner Yangervis Solarte was called safe at third on a tag play. The Rangers thought Adrian Beltre tagged him out trying to get back to the bag on Matt Kemp’s grounder to Beltre. One camera angle appeared to show that Beltre, indeed, tagged Solarte before his foot hit the bag. Still, the call stood after more than four minutes of what one could only imagine was Zapruder-film-level analysis in New York. Are replays taking too long? Is too much technology making the replay officials in New York too obsessive over details?
“They did last night,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister said with a smile the day after the play. “That can’t be possible, to have too many good angles.”
Banister wasn’t complaining.
“I think any time you disrupt the rhythm of the game it’s a challenge,” he said. “I’m sensitive to the fact that these guys are really trying to get it right, but it does seem like the length of time has been a little longer. Maybe it’s just our games. Some of the ones we’ve had have been extensive.”
Of the Rangers’ 31 replay challenges, 13 have lasted two minutes or longer. Seven have gone at least 2:30 and four have lasted three minutes or longer. Only three lasted less than a minute. Replay time was unavailable for two reviews (at Oakland and at Toronto).
If you’re scoring at home, by the way, Banister is second only to the Tampa Bay Rays’ Kevin Cash in number of challenges. Banister’s success rate (35 percent) is third worst behind Cash (25 percent) and the Dodgers’ Don Mattingly (26 percent).
Chirinos, like most players, are fine with using replay to get calls correct. And they’re also, for the most part, on board with the pace-of-play initiatives the league has instituted in the past two seasons, including adding clocks to keep pitchers and batters ready to start at the beginning of each half inning.
“If they try to speed up the game, they have to find something where they can look quickly and make a quicker decision,” Chirinos said. “I know sometimes they don’t want to make a mistake. They trust what they’re doing and trust all the cameras they put in, so they should make a quick decision.”
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred addressed the issue during the All-Star break. He said he believes replay review times “are actually down.”
But he also acknowledged tweaks are necessary. “It’s going to take time. What we have to do is make sure we use technology, that we train our replay officials, and that we minimize the delay it’s caused,” he said. “It’s two things going in opposite directions _ pace of play and instant replay. No doubt about it. But the trick is good technology with training to keep the replay reviews as short as possible.”
It’s not just a matter of keeping fans happy with fewer stops in the action. A pitcher’s rhythm can be altered by a lengthy delay. During the 4:16 delay on Saturday, the Rangers were lucky that veteran Colby Lewis was on the mound. He wasn’t fazed, got out of the inning without Solarte scoring, and went seven innings.
Still, Banister said, the human element, including incorrect calls, have always been part of the game. How worthy is getting it right during a Saturday evening in July if it’s going to stop a game cold?
“One of the things I love most about our game is exactly that. The human element for everybody. We make an error we don’t get a do-over. It stands,” Banister said. “I would much rather, whatever the right way is, us be consistent. I dream about the word stands. It’s not confirmed, it’s not overturned, it stands.”
When the review was mercifully over and New York had ruled that the safe call “stands,” a freeze-framed picture that appeared to show Solarte was out made the rounds on social media. Presumably, it was an angle viewed in New York. “I saw a picture too,” Banister said, still smiling, but with a touch of agitation. “I probably saw it before you did.”