For decades, Nippon Professional Baseball has been urging players to pick up the pace in order to counteract the small-ball anal-retentive slow pace that its overlords have come to embrace. So when MLB adopted a pitch timer, Japan became interested.

Despite the promise of faster games, the idea of pitch timers in Japanese baseball would slash a gaping hole in the control-oriented micro-managed baseball Japan espouses. The more NPB looked at what MLB was up to, the stronger its allergic reaction to a pitch timer in Japan became.

But this week, the pitch timer is back in the news from a couple of different angles that tell us a lot about Japanese baseball.

Last year, Japan’s rules committee, which is largely influenced – but not controlled by — Nippon Professional Baseball, declined to adopt a pitch timer, the excuse given was that it was not necessary, because the only thing needed to make games snappily played was adherence to the 30-second rule giving the pitcher and batter that much time between plate appearances.