Major League Baseball Makes Collective History on Monday Night in Terms of Pace of Play
Major League Baseball had a goal at the outset of the 2023 season to shorten game times. That goal was fully recognized on Monday night as baseball games across the league averaged well under 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Ahead of the 2023 season, Major League Baseball put in a slew of new rules to make the game quicker and more entertaining. The league implemented a pitch clock, bigger bases that made stealing more appealing and limited the amount of times that batters could call timeout or pitchers could throw to first.
When they did that, Monday night is what the league office had in mind. There were 11 games around the league on Monday, meaning more than 2/3 of the teams were in action, and the average game time league-wide was 2 hours and 22 minutes.
Per @TanoTiger on social media, that made some baseball history:
The average game time for the 11 games yesterday was 2:22
That is the lowest number since Sunday, Oct 5, 1986 (last day of the season)
Prior to that: Sunday, Sep 30, 1984 (also last day of season)
1979 was the last season it happened on a non-final day
The new rules obviously help speed the game along, but it also helped that there were excellent pitching performances across baseball. Four games involved shutouts and 14 teams in action scored three runs or less, so there wasn't much offense to speak of.
As the weather gets warmer and offense conceivably ticks up again, the game times will get longer, but given the rule changes in 2023 and the further belief in them in 2024, baseball is heading in the direction that it wants to be.
There's a full slate of action on Tuesday, so we'll see what the data looks like afterwards.
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