SAN DIEGO — Padres radio broadcaster Jesse Agler scrolls through the files on his laptop at Petco Park, and the ridiculous volume of information available is astounding.
It's every team the club has played, every season, since Agler began chronicling things in 2015. It's the ultimate electronic deep dive, with stats, trends, trivia and a treasure-trove of broadcast-filling whatnot.
When Agler read something tantalizing in December about Andrew McCutchen wearing No. 22 again with the Pirates, a morsel that would be unusable until at least late June, it landed in a file.
Even in the recent era of plodding and tortuous pace of play, there was zero chance of getting all that research into a game. Even as the sluggishness of games grew, plenty of baseball brain candy found its way to the cutting-room floor.
Now, in the debut season of the pitch clock, at-bats are faster. Innings are faster. Games are faster. The change has trimmed a full 30 minutes from games to this point, down to 2 hours, 37 minutes, according to Major League Baseball.
"Now, people won't have to listen to my tired stories," Padres TV analyst Mark Grant said.
Though he's joking, Grant hints at a mostly undiscussed ripple of a game sped up from the jump in 2023. Those behind microphones find themselves on the clock, too. The unrushed bat-and-ball yarns of generations — fueled in large part by a game that sometimes moved glacially — might have to show a bit of hustle.
Is it, in some ways, the death of the Vin Scully story?
"I don't think so," Agler said. "On TV, there's going to be more than enough time to tell all your stories because you don't have to interrupt yourself to call every pitch. Radio, is it tighter? Absolutely. Did we have to make an adjustment? Definitely.
"But it might have taken us, what, two spring training game to sort of get the rhythm of it."
Trepidation dug into the batter's box early in spring training, however.
"I remember after the first or second game in spring training I thought to myself, 'I might not be able to do anything but call balls and strikes,' " Agler said. "But after a couple days, we figured out the rhythm. We tripped over ourselves a bit at first, but that happens. It feels very comfortable right now."
Very, very, very comfortable, Padres TV voice Don Orsillo said.
"We were trending so far in the wrong direction," Orsillo said. "Hitters were taking longer. Pitchers were taking longer. It was all taking too long. The amount of dead time in my job when I was left to either be repetitive, or thinking of something to say when nothing is going on, or randomly giving the count, or talking too much because I couldn't stand the silence or non-action was difficult.
"The new rules are wonderful. You've got action all the time. There's always something going on. It's become a pleasure to do baseball again."
Shorter games offer clear benefits to players. They stand around on defense less. There's more time for treatment and family. It already is doing the same for broadcasters.
Orsillo noticed in spring training.
"It's only been a couple of weeks, but I feel 10 times better at this stage," said Orsillo, who recently finished his 23rd MLB spring-training lap. "The wear and tear on my voice the first couple weeks, I generally become hoarse. I have to build up a certain level, voice wise, much like a (pitcher) gearing up for the season.
"There was never a point this spring where I was hurting or straining. I built up much faster, not doing 3 1/2-hour games."
Under the new rules, the batter must be ready and the pitcher must throw in 15 seconds. The timer moves to 20 seconds if a runner is on base.
Ready. Set. Talk.
"Getting into details on things, everything's happening so much faster," Agler's booth-mate, Tony Gwynn Jr., said. "You have to start earlier in the inning with a story. At first, it was kind of choppy as we got used to it. It feels like riding a bike now. You kind of get the cadence and how it's going to roll."
Does the time shaved off games mean Agler can slow his research roll? Try telling him that.
"My brother-in-law asked me a couple weeks ago, 'Are you doing less prep?' " he said. "I said, I don't trust (the faster times) that much. I'm a prep freak. I enjoy the prep almost as much as I enjoy doing the game.
"If I was getting to 80 percent of what I had in before and now it's 65 percent, that's fine. And a lot of it is evergreen enough to use another time."
Grant insisted broadcasters can be creative.
"I think that's totally going away," Grant said of the half-inning Scully story, referencing the legendary Dodgers voice. "Vin was the best at doing that and keeping people engaged. It doesn't look like there's going to be a chance to get into a long, drawn-out story. If it is long, throw in a stay-tuned, more-to-come teaser.
"Pull the Paul Harvey, wait until the next inning for the rest of the story."
That McCutchen nugget? Agler can wait until June. Or longer.
There's plenty of memory left on his laptop's hard drive.
"It happens all the time," Agler said of jettisoning info during a broadcast. "But I'm really good about keeping my notes organized. So if we see a guy the next year, I'm like 'Aaaah, I can get that in.' I have stuff from multiple seasons ago I'll dust off and bring back."
There's no clock on that.
