Fall baseball is here. The tournament begins this week, and who will win and who will have their hearts broken remains unknown. What isn’t unknown is that the games will move more quickly, and will end sooner, than in years past.
Many baseball insiders, including Jeff Passan and Buster Olney, have said that 2023 will be remembered as the year of the pitch clock. Many pundits believe this to be the most meaningful and impactful rule change for MLB in the last century. And while many purists still bristle at the idea of there being any clock in baseball, the results are unambiguous.
As a quick reminder, the new rules provide:
There was much hand-wringing when the rules were first introduced, and players acknowledged it would take some time to get used to. However, many current MLB players had already been subject to the rules in the minors, so the adjustment really fell to the veterans who never had anyone monitoring their dilatory habits. And with the World Baseball Classic interfering with much of Spring Training, players had an even shorter period of time to adapt.
As such, the first few months of the season saw the most infractions, and the shortest period between pitches. And game times fell precipitously. As pitchers became more comfortable with the ticking clock, and as the new rhythm of the game took hold, there were fewer and fewer violations. However, this acclimation led to games getting longer, which risked giving back all that was gained by instituting the rules in the first place.
Pitcher violations are down roughly 80%.
Pitchers got more comfortable with the pitch clock as the season progressed.
It should be noted that Rob Manfred and Theo Epstein repeatedly stated that the duration of the game is not what matters; that the goal is to increase the pace of action. Instituting a pitch clock was a means to that end. Again, this worked quite well at the beginning of the campaign, but suffered some backsliding as the season wore on.
Time between plate appearances is down roughly 20 seconds, and has held steady all season.
For the season, game times are down about 24 minutes. However, to be clear, Game times have risen by about eight minutes since the beginning of the season. And with the “Manfred Man” not being utilized in the postseason, it is very likely there will be games of more than three hours in October.
While game time has crept up, it is still down nearly 20 minutes from 2022 and 26 minutes from 2021.
However, insofar as the time between pitches has only increased by about 1 second since March, hope remains that the game will still move apace. Adding an additional second per pitch over roughly 300 pitches only adds about five minutes to game time.
If MLB can continue to force pitchers to start their wind up and batters to get in the box in a timely manner, there is a high likelihood that this year kids on the East Coast will get to watch full World Series games. And that is something all baseball fans can celebrate.