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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

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

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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

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)

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!)

"Advertising is a cancer" is the moderate position, in that it assumes the patient can be saved. My personal view is that art that has been infected by advertising should be taken out back and shot.

I'm glad you enjoyed the show! Again, my personal opinion is that we gather more enjoyment out of these things if we spend a modicum of effort to curate our experiences rather than being spoon-fed the slop with the largest marketing budget.

As for "we're smart adults": The research on cognitive biases wrt advertising is settled. No, we're really really really not smrt.

Edit: I realized I am criticizing without offering a solution to my 2nd para. Think about the art (music / games / movies / comics) you like. Find those artists on the internet and see what art they recommend, and then consume that.

Nightmares on Wax doesn't have a huge marketing budget, but okay.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I get into a rhythm with the "advance ten-seconds" button between plays I can get down to around an hour, without missing any plays, or pre-snap action. It'd be a lot less, even, but there are times we want to see the replays, and other times I "miss" and have to jump back. It's amazing how much dead time there is in American football.

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)

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.

> 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 ;)

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Thanks for pointing that out, seriously.

For a while, I was inflicting baseball history on the unsuspecting readers of Pitcher List[1], until the twin boulders of professional and personal life demanded I focus on pushing them.

One persistent frustration is that my writing voice never quite captured how I meant to express myself. So, this past year, I've been working (sometimes stubbornly) to close that gap, assuming I take the time to think and edit. Your kind words mean a lot.

Most days, pray for a recent sabbatical, I try to post a daily baseball history note[2]. I hope to resume this ritual after this weekend, assuming the stars (and schedules) stay in proper hyperdrive alignment and maintain the boulder automation.

As the chaos of my life dwindles, a blog, or book (or both) remains a possibility.

--- [1] https://pitcherlist.com/author/mat-kovach/ [2] https://bsky.app/profile/siddfinch.xyz

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

Kind and humbling words, thank you. As a Cleveland Guardians fan, I need a boost!

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?

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?

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.

> You don't see it much at the game

I haven't paid enough attention at baseball games. At hockey games, if you can see the scorekeeper, they have a lamp at the glass that will come on during a stopage to let the refs know it's time for a commercial (if you watch for this, you can get a jump on the crowd if you need a bathroom break or refreshments). You can usually predict a commercial timeout, they've got guidelines that are pretty consistently applied [1]

[1] https://nhlofficials.com/know-the-rules/week-20-need-a-break... search for "Commercial’s time-outs should be taken at the first whistle"

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.

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

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

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.

Wouldn’t the minimum be 51? 932 =54, but if the team batting second is winning after the top of the 9th then they don’t need to play the bottom of the ninth, so subtract 3? Not a baseball person.

You are correct. I should have clarified that for this game, Cleveland was visiting Chicago, so they got to bat in the ninth.

I thought the same thing.

And if you have rain , they can call the game "complete" if the losing team had 5 half innings at bat. So that could be 28. Assume 27 outs and one home run by the home team.

Not for no-hitters, perfect games. The pitcher has to complete nine innings.

My guess is higher run totals.

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.

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.