![]() ![]() In the first 400 games of 2019, 26 lasted longer than that. In practice, though, it’s now almost impossible for games to go on as long as they used to: The longest game thus far this season, an 11-inning affair, lasted only three hours and 50 minutes. Theoretically, that’s still true: Baseball’s clock governs the time between pitches and batters, but not how many pitches or batters there are. Theoretically, one game could go on forever. You remain forever young.” Eight years later, Herb Caen expressed the same concept a little less lyrically and romantically: “The clock doesn’t matter in baseball. In 1971, Roger Angell wrote, “Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. And even more than the reduction in average game length, it’s the reduced variation in game length that has truly transformed the sport into something unseen in living memory.īaseball’s trademark refusal to stick to a timetable has long been a source of delight or a source of frustration, depending on the observer. They’re also significantly more uniform in duration. But the games aren’t just shorter than the ones MLB fans had grudgingly become accustomed to. Most of the pitch-clock headlines have, understandably, been about the total time saved relative to last year: At this rate, over a 2,430-game regular season, MLB will have trimmed more than 68,000 minutes, 1,130 hours, or 47 days of hitters lollygagging in and out of the batter’s box and pitchers either staring into space or peering in at signs for the pitches they’d eventually get around to throwing. On that night, you could almost set your watch to baseball-traditionally, and either famously or infamously, the sport with the most malleable, variable approach to time.Īpril 25 was one day, but that predictable pattern is pretty representative of this season as a whole. ET, and every West Coast game ended shortly before 12:30 a.m. Every East Coast game was over before 10 p.m. Only 36 minutes separated the longest game ( 2:52) from the shortest game ( 2:16). But there weren’t any extra-long games that were balanced out by a bunch of extra-short ones. April 25’s 15 contests included close games and lopsided games, shutouts and slugfests. What may be even more remarkable, though not nearly as widely remarked on, is how alike in length this year’s games have been. The Forgotten History of MLB’s Pitch Clock The 2023 MLB Preseason Power Rankingsįans who follow baseball closely, and a good many people who don’t, know that the pitch clock has cut almost half an hour off the average MLB game time this year. That alone is remarkable, given that nine-inning games in 2022 took three hours and three minutes, on average, which was actually less time than they took in each of the three preceding years. All 30 MLB teams were in action, and on average, they took two hours and 36 minutes to go about their baseball business, exactly in line with the full-season standard for nine-inning games in 2023. If you had to pick one day from this season to sum up the impact of the pitch clock, you could do worse than that day: last Tuesday, April 25. One minute, there were still three MLB games going on roughly six minutes later, all three were over, and baseball was done for the day. Three minutes after that, it was the Angels’ turn to celebrate: In Anaheim, Oakland’s last hope, Esteury Ruiz, had grounded out to second against Angels closer Carlos Estévez. closer Scott Barlow had gotten a grounder to third from Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker for the final out of the game. ![]() One minute later, the Royals’ Twitter account followed suit: In Phoenix, K.C. At 9:22, the Giants’ Twitter account declared victory. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley over the center-field fence in San Francisco. Pacific time on Tuesday, April 25, San Francisco Giants rookie catcher Blake Sabol capped off a three-run comeback in the bottom of the ninth by taking a two-out, two-strike breaking ball from St. ![]()
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