Home / General / Should MLB games be shorter?

Should MLB games be shorter?

/
/
/
1026 Views

human rain delay

One of the more arcane pleasures afforded by baseball.reference.com is the chance to browse through a season’s worth of 90-year-old box scores.

Apparently in that simpler more innocent time the duration of MLB games was only haphazardly recorded: only 48 of the Yankees’ box scores for the season include this information. What data there is indicates that games today are 50% longer than they were then. The median length of games for the Yankees that season was 1:56, with a quarter of them lasting 1:45 or less. The longest nine-inning game the team played (among the games for which the information is available) was 2:35.

According to Elias the average length of MLB games from 2000-2009 was 2:58. I don’t know if anyone has tried to figure out systematically why games are so much longer now, although some likely contributors are longer breaks between innings for commercial purposes, pitchers waving off catchers three times between pitches, batters lollygagging at the plate (in my youth Mike Hargrove was known as The Human Rain Delay, but I venture to guess that today he would hardly stand out among his peers) and of course the much larger number of pitching changes that games today feature.

In regard to the latter factor, the Yankees roster had a total of 69 relief appearances in 1922, as compared to 356 last season. The 1922 staff threw 100 complete games; the 2011 edition tossed five.

I’ve been watching a lot of European soccer this year, and one of the attractions of the sport is that with rare exceptions games last just about exactly as long as what a MLB game lasted in 1922. This makes me wonder if it might be worth considering altering the rules of MLB in order to speed it up. How about 20 seconds between pitches? Wasn’t there a rule along those lines once that was never enforced? (I seem to remember a story about Charlie Finley installing a horn at Kansas City A’s games that was supposed to be sounded whenever the pitcher took more than the allotted time). Edit: I see there is a rule already, and it’s 12 seconds! LOL! Managers should get no more than one pitching change per game other than between innings, and pitchers should get no more than two pickoff attempts per at bat.

Also, there are too many states these days. Please eliminate three.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :