Irish,
When a pitcher decides to take a pause of 5 sec.'s, I think (read: know) a lot of the batters will ask for a time-out! The pitcher will drive the batter crazy...
I can't say anything about the US-national pitchers, never saw them in action (yet?). However I did work the several european national teams. In my experience, the batter won't wait until those 5 very long seconds are over and call/ask the time-out before that.
KNK and you've said it right; too short (i.e. less than 2 sec.'s) is (too) common.
