{"id":21976,"date":"2024-03-25T13:46:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T17:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/?p=21976"},"modified":"2024-03-28T13:42:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T17:42:29","slug":"baseball-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/news\/baseball-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna Swings for the Fences, Scores Baseball Job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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After years of supporting her home state Atlanta Braves, Samantha Moss \u201923 is aligning herself this Opening Day with a different team that often wears navy blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m Team Umpire, 100%,\u201d Moss said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might seem unusual for a fan to say that, but the Kalamazoo College alumna has a new job working for Major League Baseball<\/a>: Moss, a timing operations administrator, is at MLB headquarters in New York, where she\u2019s ready to assist on-the-field officials who need help interpreting the league\u2019s new rules, especially those related to pitch clocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting last year, pitchers had 15 seconds to throw a pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. If a pitcher hadn\u2019t started his delivery toward home plate before the pitch clock expired, he was charged with a ball. Plus, hitters needed to be in the batter’s box with eight seconds left on a pitch clock. If a batter delayed entering the box, he was charged with a strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those rules were among several that helped drastically reduce the time it took to play a game from slightly more than three hours in 2022 to less than two and a half hours in 2023. This year, MLB has tweaked those rules in an effort to further speed up games. For example, a pitcher will have 18 seconds instead of 20 with runners on base to deliver his pitch this year. The league also is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n