2 minor league baseball teams to test game with 5-pitch rule

2 minor league baseball teams to test game with 5-pitch rule

Published Apr. 17, 2015 4:18 p.m. ET

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) This isn't your grandparents' baseball game.

Minor league teams from New York and Connecticut will play an experimental game this weekend aimed at finding ways to speed their pace. The Long Island Ducks and Bridgeport Bluefish will play an exhibition game Saturday, limiting every batter to just five pitches.

Some fans have complained baseball games take too long.

The rules in the Atlantic League experimental game call for a batter to be called out if he fouls off a pitch with two strikes. Ordinarily a batter remains at the plate until he gets a hit, makes an out, strikes out on three pitches, is hit by a pitch or walks.

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The rules also give batters a walk after three balls, not four.

Game time is 1 p.m. Don't be late.

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