Mlb games how long

MLB games have been getting longer for years. Pitchers stand on the mound staring into home plate. Playoff games are often longer because of more ads between innings and players taking even more time between pitches.

All this fiddling and waiting means that kids often miss part of the most exciting and important baseball games of the season. If a game starts at 8 p. Help may be on the way. Those numbers are also for nine-inning games only.

Beyond that, of the 44 games, only 14 were completed in under three hours. In , the average game length had dropped to just over three hours, supposedly due to the mound visit limits imposed that season. In , the average was , in it was and in it was As you can see, there was a very long period of time, from around through the mids, when games averaged somewhere around two and a half hours.

Time between pitches is the primary villain. These are the pitches where the catcher caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, whose next step was to throw it back to the catcher.

In the game, there were 32 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches. In , there were 87 balls, called strikes, or swinging strikes that took 20 seconds or more between pitches. It was a marked difference in the modern players doing absolutely nothing of note.

The batter taking an extra breath before he steps back in. The pitcher holding the ball for an extra beat.

The difference between the two games, 30 years apart, was that baseball players are lollygagging more. Or, at least, taking their sweet time to collect their thoughts. The good news? You get used to them. Baseball will keep trying different ideas, from limiting pickoff throws to limiting mound visits. Based on one unscientific deep dive into a pair of similar games, though, the biggest problem with the pace of play is, well, the pace of play.

It adds a couple minutes to every half-inning, which adds close to a half-hour. Fix that, and you have a head start on what Major League Baseball believes is its biggest problem. SB Nation Index. Division by division predictions for the season. Why baseball games are so damned long. Relax, rule changes won't mess up the romance of baseball. The future of baseball is international. There is no future of baseball. The past, present, and future of baseball hair. Inning 1. Presented by.

The game from lasted two hours and 31 minutes. If MLB chooses to use it, it appears the league does have a solution, as implementing a second pitch clock in the low minors helped the Low-A West League cut down average game times by 21 minutes.

In addition to cutting down the length of games by reducing the amount of dead time, the introduction of the clock has coincided with more runs being scored and more home runs being hit in addition to a reduction in both walks and strikeouts.

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