These World Series Games Are Real Long

sleeping

The start time of GM2 of the 2016 World Series was moved up an hour to 6:08p CT in the hopes that everyone would avoid a weather delay from a front predicted to roll through Cleveland around 10:00p CT.

The Cubs 5-1 victory to tie the series was able to be completed.

But not before 10.

The official game time ended up being 4:04. That’s right FOUR OH FOUR. A whopping 244 minutes to play 9 innings of baseball – an average of 27.1 minutes per inning. And that’s on the heels of GM1 which took a breezy (by comparison) 3 hours and 37 minutes.

It’s not you… these games are much longer than they were when you were growing up.

game-length

After the 2014 season, MLB decided to take action and started testing a number of changes in various minor and instructional leagues to try to speed up the game.

For the 2015 season, they introduced clocks between innings/for pitching changes and required batters to keep one foot in the box unless they foul the ball off.

Hasn’t worked.

Here are the 2015 World Series lengths:

  • 5:09 (14 innings)
  • 2:54
  • 3:22
  • 3:29
  • 4:15 (12 innings)

And 2016 through 2 games:

  • 3:37
  • 4:04

I’m not naive enough to think that professional baseball games will ever be back to that perfect 2.5 hour-ish range. And I’m sympathetic to the fact that these are the most important games of the season. And I know that we aren’t going to see fewer commercials.

But dang.

4:04 for a 9 inning game that wasn’t even close? Let’s put our heads together and see if we can’t figure out some serious solutions to making baseball – and especially the playoffs – brisker.

Photo: JUGS Sports

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