Neutral Pitch Clock Monitor?

This recent article notes that MLB will be employing neutral pitch clock monitors for the upcoming playoffs.  Yes that’s right, neutral pitch clock monitors are actually a thing.  The money quote from this article is that, “The league apparently evaluated clock operators from all 30 teams throughout the season and will choose up to the best dozen to work postseason games which are set to begin Oct. 3”.

This begs the question; which teams had the worst clock operators and how much of an assist were they providing to their home teams.  A quick review by BP did not reveal any online evidence of who are the worst clock operators nor the metrics used by MLB to determine who were the best and worst of those operators.

Therefore, this means that clock operators could be providing an advantage to their home team over the visitors.  Prior to this article, MLB seems to have kept quiet the variations in clock operator performance throughout the regular season, but they will though be assigning only their best operators to man or perhaps woman them for the upcoming playoffs.  Furthermore, in order to protect itself from even further potential bias, MLB also stated that, “It’s important to note that a postseason operator won’t be allowed to work a game involving the team they operated for during the regular season”.

It would be great if MLB shared with the rest of us the performance of their clock operators, especially the ones that did not make the grade for the post season.  How bad do you have to be at clock operations before they give you the boot?  Was there evidence that the poor clock operators could have altered the outcome of games due to their sub grade performance and their potential home team bias?  We will likely never know the answers to these questions anytime soon, but it is another example of the pandora’s box you open up when you try to artificially speed up the game.  The biasness in the mainstream sport’s media seems to willfully ignore any downsides with the pitch clock, but clearly based on the recent proclamation by MLB for the playoffs, these rules and the technology are not immune to potential bias and human error.  Pardon us for ruining the pristine picture that many have tried to sell us on with regard to the pitch clock and its supposed infallibility.  That is though just another utter lie on the part of MLB.