St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright has a simple solution to speed up baseball games: expand the strike zone.
Baseball faces longer games this season with the introduction of expanded replay and managers' challenges.
"All of the talk for everybody, all the critics, is about the speed of play," Wainwright told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Speed of play this and speed of play that. But really the only way to do that, to speed things up, is to expand the strike zone. ... There are millions of dollars being made on the commercials. Millions. And yet they want to talk about the speed of play. If you want to keep the commercials, open the strike zone up."
And yes, Wainwright is aware that he's biased as a pitcher.
"It would also help me a whole lot," he said.
Wainwright said he wouldn't be bothered by waiting on the mound while umpires examined replays.
"I'm not concerned about it slowing the game if I'm pitching and a call is made that isn't the right call," Wainwright said. "I would rather take the two minutes there to get the right call made."