Through Monday, the average time of a nine-inning game was 2 hours and 37 minutes, the fastest MLB pace since 1984Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY NETWORK
MLB’s new pitch clock rule has “required a recalibration of the sport’s familiar rhythms,” but the results are “impossible to ignore,” according to Tyler Kepner of the N.Y. TIMES. Through Monday, the average time of a nine-inning game was “2 hours 37 minutes,” which would be the “fastest MLB pace since 1984.” Last season’s average, through the “same number of days, was 3 hours 5 minutes.” The average time of a nine-inning game had “never been as high as three hours until 2014.” After a “slight dip in 2015,” it had been “at least three hours ever since.” MLB EVP/Baseball Operations Morgan Sword said, “We started Day 1 of spring training with rigid enforcement of all these new rules, and we felt that that was the best way to help players through that adjustment period and to get to the other side.” She added that the rule changes have “worked as MLB intended.” With bigger bases and a limit on pickoff attempts per plate appearance, stolen-base attempts are “up to 1.8 per game, the most since 2012," and the 78.7% success rate is the "highest in history.” With a ban on defensive shifts that positioned more than two infielders on one side of the diamond, batting average on balls in play is “up to .298, an increase of six points from last year," and "fielding is back in style.” The true impact of the new rules will “take years to assess” (N.Y. TIMES, 5/24).
