Baseball durations after the pitch clock

https://leancrew.com/all-this/2025/09/baseball-durations-after-the-pitch-clock/

by zdw • 10 months ago

71 108 10 months ago

jm4• 10 months ago

Anyone know why they are still so much longer than pre-80’s? Is it all the pitching changes? That’s maybe 12-15 minutes. More commercials?

A game in 2 hours or less would be pretty awesome.

0x445442• 10 months ago

My guess is higher run totals.

carefulfungi• 10 months ago

Maybe surprisingly, total plate appearances per game is relatively stable. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml.

Pitching has been dominating hitting the last few years and runs (and batting averages) are both relatively low at the moment.

Total pitchers used, however, is up.

thechao• 10 months ago

Assuming approximately 0 commercials in 1920 with a runtime of 110 minutes -> 140 minutes. I'm trying to decide if there's 30 minutes of commercials, or not? I'm thinking about the standard sitcom (TV) commercial density which is a 23-24m show with 6-7m of commercials (25–33%). So... 30m seems in range?

codingdave• 10 months ago

Commercials? I haven't been to a game since the 90s, but I don't recall them pausing for commercials. Do they do that now?

mtillman• 10 months ago

Not during batting. For pitching changes they do and pitching changes are more frequent now that starters “only” pitch 100 pitches or less. Time between innings seems to have a higher ad load though it’s inconsistent from what I can tell depending perhaps on the market.

mkovach8• 10 months ago

The time between half-innings increases, so the radio and TV could play commercials on the broadcast. Pitching changes are longer, etc. You don't see it much at the game, but if you are one of the folks who used to listen to the game on the radio, at the game itself, you get a feel for how the flow of the game is affected by the broadcasts.

mkovach8• 10 months ago

A summer afternoon, static on the radio, the low hum of an announcer calling balls and strikes like he’s reading scripture in a Midwest church. Baseball used to be stitched together with silence. You heard the game as much in the pauses as in the plays.

Then the voice came in. Once the game hit the airwaves, it slowed. Had to. The ball waited for the broadcast.

Out of the dead-ball fog came the home run. No more bunting, no more clever thefts of second. Now it was swing, admire, trot. Alongside the homers came the walks and the strikeouts. Fewer balls in play. More staring, less running. Time thickened, and the nature of the game was trending towards longer games.

World War II shaved minutes from the clock. With so many players overseas, the talent pool shrank. The games got shorter because they became simpler. When the talent came back, the games got longer, largely because, after 1947, the game was flooded with previously segregated talent and players who were returning from overseas.

In the 60s, pitchers took over. Dominance from the mound. ERAs dropped. Batting averages plummeted. In 1968 they called it the Year of the Pitcher, then called the rulebook to fix it. Scoring came back, and with it, longer games.

Television followed with commercial breaks and camera angles. The game had to pause for sponsors. The seventh-inning stretch now came with a soft drink.

In the 70s, the bullpen became a revolving door. Specialists. Situational matchups. Every pitching change added minutes. Coaches walked the mound like they were heading to confession.

And the game kept expanding. OPS rose. More runners meant more pitches. More strikeouts meant more throws. Every batter became a saga.

If you look at the graph, you can see a trend that matches well with changes in baseball. We could probably break down every high and low to describe the shift based on rules, personal changes, etc.

Then came the pitch clock. No more dawdling. No more meditative pacing between pitches. And now a reliever has to face at least three batters in an inning. No more one-pitch exits.

It’s not that baseball got lazy. It got layered, commercialized, optimized, and strategized, but it forgot about time management.

The graph shows an outline, with the trends representing a chapter in baseball history, which is very cool.

drivers99• 10 months ago

You’re a wonderful writer. It made me curious enough to look at your previous comments. (Your comment about your grandma who baked was also like a wonderful short story but in fewer words.) Do you write books as well, by chance? Or a blog, or anything like that? Sorry to anyone if this seems weird. A simple upvote didn’t seem enough.

Mistletoe• 10 months ago

I thought this was some famous passage about baseball. Bravo.

BearOso• 10 months ago

It’s not that baseball got lazy. It got layered, commercialized, optimized, and strategized, but it forgot about time management.

This is why I can't stand modern basketball. Deliberate fouling in the last quarter is optimal and strategic as far as winning. I'm sure those extra commercial slots are enticing to the networks as well. But it's boring as hell when the last 5 minutes stretch out to an hour, and the final result now boils down to a lucky draw instead of skill. Any sense of fun has been lost.

ecommerceguy• 10 months ago

I logged in just to uptoot this. As a small market season ticket holder, i appreciate you.

nocoiner• 10 months ago

Excuse me, are you James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams? Terence Mann, is that you?

t_serpico• 10 months ago

brilliant

spiesd• 10 months ago

I wouldn't say they're "so much longer" now (since the pitch clock was implemented, that is). This year, 9 inning games averaged 2:38. In 1960, they ran 2:33. There are lots of factors that contribute to longer gametime. A couple that correlate with the general trend for longer:

  - pitchers/game: 2025: 4.29, 1960: 2.45
  - strikeouts/game: 2025: 8.36, 1960: 5.18

Commercial breaks are currently limited to 2 minutes by rule, and it takes some time just to run on and off the field, so I am dubious of the impact of that. (Though the rule has changed, and I forget whether there were an additional 20 minutes because of that back in the 1990s/2000s.)

That said, unless it were a stellar pitching duel, I'd really despise constant sub-2 hour games.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/bat.shtml

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/warmup-pitches

mkovach8• 10 months ago

Yes, the pitch clock and the relievers' requirement to face at least three batters in an inning have done a very good job of handling game times.

At some point, as the game continues to evolve, I think we'll see an upward swing in game times in the future, but I don't believe it will trend as high as it has before. I think that sub-three-hour games will remain the sweet spot going forward.

Now, for sub-two-hour games, this is one I wish I could watch and re-watch

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1908/B10020CLE1908.htm

In the middle of a pennant race, Addie Joss pitched a 74-pitch perfect game against Ed Walsh, who had already won 39 games that year. The game kept Cleveland in the running for the pennant. Game time? 1:40 minutes. The minimum number of batters for a nine-inning game is 54, this game had 56.

hluska4• 10 months ago

The game has changed dramatically since the 1970s. My favourite example is from 1979.

In 1979, Phil Niekro lead the major leagues with 342 innings pitched. In 2025, Logan Webb lead the majors with 207 innings pitched.

Modern pitchers throw about 2/3 the pitches that pre-80s pitchers threw. Part of this is player safety - baseball destroyed some amazing arms. And part of it is the fact that relievers today tend to throw 98+.

dgs_sgd• 10 months ago

Until recently I had only ever been to one baseball game.. saw the Jays when I was 10. I remember falling asleep at the game because it was so slow and boring, and never really watched baseball after that.

But in the last couple years I’ve seen the Mets and Phillies multiple times, and it’s now one of my favourite sports to watch thanks to the pitch clock increasing the pace of the game. I’d be really curious to see data on how many new fans the league got after the change.

jfengel• 10 months ago

It's too soon to tell. Here's total attendance data:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml

COVID did such a number on attendance that it's hard to separate anything else out. It has been increasing since it bottomed out but is still below the peak.

The best I can say: it was falling before the pandemic and it's now above where it was even before everything shut down. So... maybe?

toast04• 10 months ago

I remember falling asleep at the game because it was so slow and boring, and never really watched baseball after that.

If you listen to people talking about how they loved going to the game with their family, it's usually about what they did to pass the time during the boredom. It was America's pastime, because you needed to figure out how to pass time during the boredom.

The pitch clock is nice though, gives a rythym to action.

That said, minor league baseball is a lot more fun to watch because there's a lot more variance, and they have a lot of stuff going on between the innings to keep you awake ;)

relwin• 10 months ago

This is why the Savannah Bananas (and the banana league) are so popular. Banana-ball draws sellout crowds wherever they play. The main focus is "don't be boring."

jackconsidine• 10 months ago

The graph shoes interquartile range, so this wouldn't be a factor, but worth noting: baseball also changed its rules on extra inning games in the past few years which speeds things up. A runner starts on second base which reduces the 0-run extra innings that are responsible for the 19 inning game I remember as a kid. [0]

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jul-10-sp-alrdp...

jrockway2• 10 months ago

What is shorter games doing for attendance, concession sales, ad sales on the TV broadcast? Seems like you want people stuck in the park for as long as possible (well, at least until they make them stop selling alcohol) but if that's too long, people simply won't go. Meanwhile, I have no idea whether longer or shorter games are better for TV. I would guess shorter is better? After an hour of the same insurance commercial over and over, you're either going to switch insurance companies or you're not. Seeing the ad 3 more times probably isn't worth very much.

jghn2• 10 months ago

Where I am, the people I know are spending a lot less on concessions & alcohol. Not because of the shorter game but because the beer prices have become astronomical and the food quality has become terrible.

So instead we pregame nearby, maybe have a beer, and then go out afterwards.

gdulli2• 10 months ago

That's one of the reasons inflation doesn't scare me as much as it does other people. When it gets out of hand I always find easy ways to adjust some unnecessary spending. I'm eating healthier since I decided to spend less money on food by cooking.

next_xibalba• 10 months ago

I went to a Metallica concert at a large basketball stadium this summer. The concession stands were charging $22 for a beer. I can get that same can of beer at my grocery store for $1.25.

prokopton2• 10 months ago

The $1 hotdogs at Riverfront Stadium were a lot better than the $7 dogs at Great American Ballpark.

kentonv• 10 months ago

Well, speeding up the gameplay doesn't affect the number of commercial breaks. There are 18 guaranteed commercial breaks per game (two per inning). I suppose the density of ads goes up. Good deal for advertisers.

(Additional commercial breaks may happen due to mid-inning pitching changes, and I suppose it's possible that the pitch clock affects the number of pitching changes, but it's not obvious to me whether they'd become more frequent or less frequent.)

(Though separately, they did make other rules to reduce the frequency of pitching changes. But OTOH pitching changes have been gradually becoming more common for decades, with starters hardly ever completing a game anymore.)

whartung• 10 months ago

Anytime the inning ends, or the pitcher changes, there's a 2 minute pause. Save for the mid-7th inning, when it jumps to 3 minutes. I believe they are longer during the All Star Game, and, maybe, the WS. I didn't notice them longer during the recent Wild Card.

They typically jump to commercial on every break. I watch all my games on delay, and for local broadcasts, it's 3 clicks on the skip button (1.5m) and we're back in the ball park. On national broadcasts, it's 4 clicks and we typically return with the ball in flight or the batter swinging at the first pitch. They cut it really close.

During things like mound visits, they'll slip in an interstitial ad, that's about 10s. There's also voice over ads from the announcers during short pauses (between batters, say), which is almost always team related vs a sponsor, but not as bad as on the radio. On the radio its "First pitch brought to you by...", things like that.

My nits on advertising are the shoulder patches for the players and the stencil on the mound. I particularly hate when a national broadcast layers in something over the batters eye, the locals do not do that. Last year, the Umpires were carrying sponsor patches (some crypto company), I honestly can't recall if they were wearing anything this year. The rotating banners in the back that are in park or green screens overlayed by broadcast behind the plate don't really bother me. I always find it amusing when they turn almost entirely Japanese when the Dodgers are playing.

The pitch clock and shift changes have been great, I love the game. Yankee/Red Sox series last week was a nailbiter. Being at the the local park when the Yankees are in town is a blast.

xhkkffbf2• 10 months ago

Yes, you want people around for longer. But it's bad if people don't tune in or attend because of the time commitment. So it's a tradeoff.

It's amazing how much non-action time there is an NFL broadcast. Some people don't watch because of it, but I suppose enough do.

jrockway2• 10 months ago

Yeah, NFL games are kind of crazy. I missed a MNF game recently and saw it on YouTube the next evening (and somehow I hadn't spoiled the score for myself). It was less than 2 hours without a single play or comment edited out. Aired live, it was closer to 3:30. Literally 1/3 commercials. It's a little excessive.

Djonckheere• 10 months ago

Apparently less than 15-minutes of athletic action in a typical 3-hour game, with ~45-minutes devoted to advertising: [2020] How Much American Football Is Even in an American Football Broadcast? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22218909

This explains why NFL RedZone exists.

Fun comparison, a typical Formula 1 Grand Prix clocks in at ~1.5 hours. Live race broadcasts (e.g. Sky Sports F1) will typically show the entire race with no commercial breaks or interruptions. Same goes for MotoGP (e.g. TNT Sports), where a sprint race (~10-12 laps) takes just 25 minutes, not including post race podium and interviews.

English Premier League game durations come in at just under 2-hours with a full hour of athletic action, the remaining 50% occupied by a 15-minutes halftime, substitutions, free kicks, and a mere 10-minutes of commercial interruptions.

saghm3• 10 months ago

Ever since my parents got a DVR, my dad switched to recording NFL games and then only starting to watch them until maybe an hour or so after the kickoff. He'd fast forward through the numerous commercial breaks (like before AND after each kickoff whenever someone scores? come on...) and eventually catch up near the end of the game.

iancmceachern• 10 months ago

My experience from going to giants games is that people leave when they want, not when the game is over (unless it's a nail biter). Same with arriving.

I will say, our personal experience and the comments of many fellow fans. The games seem more engaging, fun, and it's easier to be present and attentive for the whole game. That mentality and experience makes for better attendance in future games and a general attitude of "its worth the time".

saghm3• 10 months ago

You might be surprised. During the peak game length seasons, people would start trickling out around like the 5th or 6th inning, and by the 8th or 9th, the stadium could get surprisingly sparse even if it started full. My dad and my brothers and I used to have a habit of moving down from our bleachers seats after the seventh inning because there would be enough empty seats that we could often move into ones within the first few rows behind one of the dugouts to get a closer view of the last couple innings (and maybe increase our chances of getting a foul ball if we were lucky, which we generally weren't!). This got especially common when they tried to curb people driving home drunk by ending beer sales after the seventh inning, at which point instead of sticking around to sober up, quite a lot of people just opted to leave once they couldn't buy any more beer.

glitcher• 10 months ago

Games are now roughly as long as they were in the early ’80s, so the powers at MLB have cut about four decades of fat from the game. And they did it without reducing the number of commercials, because they’d never do that.

The commercialization of baseball is really ruining the game for me at times.

Company billboards and logos are in almost every square inch of empty space inside the stadiums now, making them look like giant versions of race cars with way too many tacky sponsor stickers. And just like race car drivers, these sponsor logos are creeping into the players' uniforms more and more each year, now placed prominently on one of the shoulders. If they made it into the jerseys I guess the hats are next to get ruined.

One of the worst examples are the led ad screens behind the batter, which sometimes in the tv broadcast they digitally overlay a different advertiser than what the folks in the stadium see, and it creates this messed up outline around the batter/catcher/ump that makes it look like the entire game is fake.

Then there are the tv announcers who are now required to attribute the replay on every exciting play to a different sponsor, like "this homerun replay is brought to you by Hefty! ... blah blah blah". They do it for homeruns, doubles, stolen bases, great catches, pitcher changes, even manager challenges!

But probably the most insidious practice is during an active game mid-inning, sometimes after a strikeout before the next batter gets to the plate, the tv broadcast will shrink the game down into one corner of the screen and play a regular, albeit shortened, commercial on most of the screen. No more announcer analysis about who is coming up to bat, or any other talking points relevant to the moment. Instead it's garbage commercial audio all the way up to the moment the pitcher is about to release the next pitch.

It's almost like they're trying to ruin the integrity of the sport. But I know the truth is simple corporate greed.

hdgvhicv• 10 months ago

Advertising is a cancer on society. It makes everything worse.

jimkleiber• 10 months ago

It almost allows people to create their own real estate and rent it out at growing prices as the crowds increase. And when they max out at what one would pay for one piece of that real estate, they just rent off other pieces of real estate (more ads)

add-sub-mul-div2• 10 months ago

The best concert I ever saw was one I only knew about from a TV commercial.

And I realized after become aggressive about skipping all commercials that I'm no longer seeing movies other than the most mainstream franchise ones that it's impossible not to learn about. I used to come across trailers for movies and now I never do.

As with all things, the far extremist take (advertising is a cancer) is misguided.

Advertising is information. We're smart adults and can separate the facts (a new pizza place opened in town) from the bias (it's the best pizza place in town!)

jghn2• 10 months ago

Company billboards and logos are in almost every square inch of empty space

This isn't new. Have you ever seen pictures of stadiums 100 years ago? I can recall people being upset a while back that the Green Monster was starting to be covered by ads. And yet one can find photos from way back when of it pretty much full of billboards.

_factor2• 10 months ago

For the record, I have managed to limit advertising for tykes to near 0. Young enough where control over electronics is viable.

As soon as a game pops up, the only unfiltered ad exposure basically, and it’s glue. The bright colors, the subconscious techniques, the hidden waveforms, whatever magic sauce they use to steal attention WORKS.

It’s like seeing a fairy tapping kids on the head and stealing all of their attention as they become droolingly attentive zombies to whatever drivel reserves the sales screen real estate for that time slice.

It is concerningly effective, and I can bet most everyone grew up saturated with it. Bordering on harassment/abuse since it can not be entirely avoided.

hluska4• 10 months ago

This is why I didn’t keep my child away from ads. Kids have extremely plastic brains and I wanted to get that neural plasticity to protect my kid for the future. The ad industry spends more money figuring kids out than the education industry - hiding ads makes ads exciting.

My kid is nine and they’re ad proof.

Marsymars• 10 months ago

But probably the most insidious practice is during an active game mid-inning, sometimes after a strikeout before the next batter gets to the plate, the tv broadcast will shrink the game down into one corner of the screen and play a regular, albeit shortened, commercial on most of the screen.

It's common for curling broadcasts to do this for lead stones (so a quarter of stones thrown). Rage-inducing.

oldandboring3• 10 months ago

The pitch clock is undoubtedly the most impactful of the changes made recently to speed up the game. However, other changes were implemented alongside it that have contributed in meaningful ways:

- Limit on the number of times per plate appearance a pitcher can "disengage" by stepping off/calling time or making a pickoff move.

- Limit on the number of times per plate appearance a batter can "disengage" by stepping out/calling time.

- Minimum of 3 batters must be faced by an incoming relief pitcher (or must finish the half-inning)

- Limit on the number of mound visits per game

- Larger bases

- Elimination (mostly) of the defensive "shift"

- Team at bat starts with an automatic "ghost" runner on 2nd base in extra innings

lc9er• 10 months ago

I like the 1, 2, and 4 changes. My feelings about 3 and 6 are mixed. Absolutely dislike the last.

oldandboring3• 10 months ago

While I also dislike the ghost runner, I can't deny that it's been a net positive for the game. By mostly eliminating marathon extra-inning slogs, not only does it speed up the game, but it also makes it much harder for teams to run out of pitchers they can safely use, which reduces injuries and ensures that we are not subjected to watching two backup catchers throw 48mph Eephus pitches in the 17th inning, long after they stopped selling beer.

nsavage• 10 months ago

I hate the removal of the shift. I thought it was such an interesting innovation to the game, and the fact that baseball allowed for such things part of its magic.

astura2• 10 months ago

Absolutely nobody likes the Manfred runner except the players. The players like it because they get to leave work earlier and less tired.

Worth nothing the rule doesn't apply to the post season.

remarkEon2• 10 months ago

The ghost runner rule is by far the most ridiculous. A pitcher can give up no hits, and get an ER and the L in extra innings. Make it make sense. Baseball is also telling on itself here because that rule does not apply in the playoffs.

cthalupa3• 10 months ago

I'm with you. I think it should only apply to games that have fairly clearly gotten "stuck" and things are just dragging - like others have suggested, 12th inning seems like a reasonable start.

I've always felt a lot of intensity going into the 9th inning in any sort of lose came, even moreso if it's tied. And before the manfred man, that carried through if we went to the 10th or 11th.

Now it feels like as soon as we get to extra innings it's a shitshow. It's one thing if a pitcher has made a series of mistakes (or the fielders behind him) and you end up with someone on second and you throw a passed ball and someone scores. It's another when the first pitch of the half inning is a passed ball and this bizarro zombie runner scores on you.

I want to watch teams have to put together a string of "good baseball" moments to win, or at the very least watch a trainwreck in action if one team loses the game more than the other team won it. Or the majesty of a well-hit long ball, ideally with an excellent bat flip. The only thing that should be able to walk off the game in the very first at-bat of the bottom half of the inning is a home run.

radpanda• 10 months ago

To be pedantic I don’t think the 3-batter rule mentions relief pitchers. If a team wanted to use an opening pitcher to face only the first batter and then replace him, that would also be against the rules.

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/three-batter-minimum

hluska4• 10 months ago

If you’re going to be pedantic, don’t rely on a glossary. 5.10 (g) specifically mentions both starting and substitute pitchers.

It’s truly a shame that I had to mention this because it adds nothing to the conversation.

raincole• 10 months ago

The unlimited pickoffs were ridiculous. It technically meant the game could simply not progress until either the pitcher or the runner made a mistake. Glad it's no longer the case.

[0] https://www.mlb.com/news/vince-coleman-drew-most-pickoff-thr... There was an at-bat with 17 pickoff attempts. It only took 7 minutes!

bobbylarrybobby• 10 months ago

I like most of these but I hate the banned shift. If you can't hit it where they're not, you don't deserve to get on base!

rkomorn2• 10 months ago

I guess the problem is the shift just felt gimmicky.

Personally, I'm with you though. If you're a MLB hitter who can't hit a giant opposite field hole, that's kind of too bad.

badlibrarian• 10 months ago

Amusing to see "dos2unix" pop up in the middle of the article. Python and Pandas can handle newlines directly, one pattern is:

  with open("gametimes.csv", "r", newline="") as f:
      df = pd.read_csv(f)

zahlman• 10 months ago

The standard library `csv` used to expect files in binary mode in 2.x and it annoyed me to no end.

jimt1234• 10 months ago

Sorta related: I feel instant replay challenges have sucked the life out of the game. Arguing with the ump over bad calls has never accomplished anything, but it's entertaining, it gets the blood flowing; it always made me feel more connected to the game and other fans. Now, managers just request an instant replay challenge, we wait a few minutes, and that's it - accurate, but boring.

For example, I watched around 100 games this season, but I can't recall a single instant replay challenge. However, ask anyone from St. Louis about "game 6" (typically, that's all you need to say!), and they'll get fired up, ranting about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyt1xEvqqow . Forty years later, people still remember that blown call like it was yesterday.

cthalupa3• 10 months ago

I'm fairly confident you're in the minority of serious fans on this one. Anecdotal, but I don't personally know a single big baseball fan that wants to go back to no instant replay.

Which doesn't mean they're necessarily happy with where instant replay is - particularly since New York relies on their own specific camera feeds, and sometimes don't have the same angles available as those watching on TV do. It's resulted in some fairly rage inducing incidents where we can clearly see the call was majorly blown from home, but the replay room can't overturn it from the angles they have. Every official camera feed should be available for them to use, imo.

alexpotato• 10 months ago

The wildest thing about this chart is that it shows that from the 1920s to the 1940s you could conceivably watch a baseball game:

- that took less than 2 hours

- was in the afternoon

One baseball writer theorized that part of the decline in interest in baseball amongst kids is b/c they moved to night games so kids couldn't watch anymore (bed time etc etc).

e.g. many older people speak fondly of getting home from school and listening / watching a baseball game of their home team.

voidfunc3• 10 months ago

A few problems:

1. baseball competes in a sea of media and multimedia options and its competition has been growing ever since TV moved into the cable-era. Now it also has to compete with internet, games, social media, etc. Theres only so much time and attention for people to focus on it.

2. Long season. I love baseball but you can go 2-3 weeks not watching a game and have missed nothing.

3. Cost to go to games plus location of stadiums in car-centric areas often means painful commutes to the games for most Americans and then bringing two kids is like making it a $400 affair between parking, food, souvenirs etc. That's expensive for a lot of people.

The exit of people from the cities into the burbs in the mid-20th did a lot of damage to the idea of going to a game.

iambateman2• 10 months ago

All true.

Meanwhile, we saw the Savannah Bananas tonight. I wonder if their brand of baseball will find appeal more broadly? It’s more spectacle than sport but it’s the most enthusiastic I’ve seen a crowd for anything other than football.

saghm3• 10 months ago

Agreed, this is pretty huge. I think at one point in my early teen years (I think 2008? My recollection was that it was a year the Phillies were in it, although that could have been 2009) there was a game in the World Series that got postponed and had to be restarted the next night, and because it already was a few innings in, the remainder the next night started maybe at 8 and ended at 10, which was much nicer given that I always struggled with the early morning starts for school.

The other major thing I think affected it is that in most of the markets where baseball is most popular, ticket prices skyrocketed over the past few decades, and a lot of the more popular teams would sell out for almost every game pretty early on in the year. Growing up in the Boston area, it was pretty noticeable how much more of a hassle it became for my dad to take my brothers and I to Red Sox games in the early 2000s[1]. In my earliest years, I remember my father taking us each to one game individually each season as well as usually a couple with all of us there, but it got to the point where eventually he'd just buy all of us tickets for one game because getting tickets to 5-6 separate games just wasn't worth the money. He and I started going to a lot of minor league games in my high school years just because we enjoyed getting to see baseball in person enough, but my brothers generally weren't as interested in taking an hour or two to ride to New Hampshire to see the Fishercats or something similar. I have to imagine that this phenomenon made it a lot harder to get kids interested in baseball for my generation.

[1] Yes, this also happened to coincide with the years that the Red Sox started doing really well, but that wasn't necessarily the cause. Their streak of sell-outs that lasted close to a decade iirc started earlier than the 2004 season, and the prices were not nearly as high (even after adjusting for inflation) in previous times they had made it to the World Series. My dad had told stories about going to see large numbers of games despite being a mostly in debt grad student in the mid eighties, including the year they won the penant in 1986. Baseball just wasn't as expensive to see in person until relatively recently.

bdcravens• 10 months ago

The speed of games in those days was influenced by very little reliance on relievers (it's why Cy Young is the leader in wins AND losses, though even in recent history, Nolan Ryan had more complete games in some years that many pitchers today have in their ENTIRE careers). The need for breaks between innings, switching pitchers, etc to fit with TV commercial breaks is also an influence.

toast04• 10 months ago

- was in the afternoon

There's more night games than day games, but day games aren't unusual (at least they aren't unusual for west coast teams)

cafard• 10 months ago

Older boomers attended school in the days when there existed

  - daytime World Series games
  - pocket-sized transistor radios
  - a corps of teachers who had not grown up around hand-held electronic devices

I forget whether it was 1966 or 1967 that a classmate followed the game without getting caught.

gre• 10 months ago

Cool now take away commercial breaks.

Drblessing• 10 months ago

Baseball should be 7 innings.

cthalupa3• 10 months ago

This would more than halve the amount of relief pitchers needed, so the MLBPA will never ever think about agreeing to it.

Starting pitchers averaged ~5.5 innings per game in 2024, and going 7 is hardly a rare occurrence. You would basically just have starters, 2-3 relief pitchers, one "long-man." vs. the average of 8 on the roster today.

iambateman2• 10 months ago

We went to see the Savannah Bananas tonight…they have a very dramatic “start the clock” opening. But when the clock starts, there’s 2:00 until the game is over.

It was kinda nice to know that it would end at a specific time.

My family went to see the July 4 fireworks at our minor league stadium this summer. I remember thinking “it’s 2-2, what if there’s extra innings? My kids will be devastated.”

I hope we as a society can find ways to keep baseball interesting…it’s really a beautiful game.

Fripplebubby• 10 months ago

One of the interesting experiences I have being a member both of this community and the baseball analytics community is seeing posts like this, where apparently the author thinks that they're the only one who had the idea to look at this, shared widely within the hacker community because it comes from one of their own. Rest assured, within the _baseball_ community, this has been discussed and analyzed to death - it just doesn't get posted here because nobody mentions using unix tools to do it, because it isn't really relevant.

See for example:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-have-the-new-rules-changed-t...

https://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/rules-changes-stats....

And many others, these are two early and relatively canonical ones. If folks reading this post are interested enough in baseball, please, come join us in the baseball analytics community where this is merely the very tippy top of the iceberg of interesting things.

Baseball durations after the pitch clock

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