Part of the problem with the game length is the late start. I just don't see the necessary motivations to make the people who need to change change. I would like nothing better than to watch every playoff game beginning to end. Absent that, nothing will change.ĮTA: I desperately want it to change. Hurt the owners' bottom line and they would institute rules to actually speed up the game (as opposed to the PR we've gotten so far). As long as people buy tickets at the rate they are (doesn't seem likely to change all that soon) and watch TV at a sustainable rate (this seems more likely to change), no one really has any motivation to change behavior on the field. Ultimately, that would have to come from the paying audience. What is needed is some sort of force that overpowers the money and the performance gain. I'm sure everyone involved would like to make the same amount of money with the same performance in a two hour game. Rushing turns out to be bad for both pitching and hitting.īetween innings, more ads sell with longer breaks. Pitchers get more of a blow between pitches. What they've learned is that their performance is better if they take their time. And that’s probably an undercount because the 2021 playoff data doesn’t include the World Series yet, and those games tend to last the longest of any round. But from 2011 to 2021, the average playoff game has increased by 22 minutes. From 2001 to 2011, the average playoff game increased by six minutes.

From 1991 to 2001, the average playoff game increased by eight minutes.

Game length has almost always increased, but now that increase is accelerating, too. This graph shows how the average nine-inning playoff game length has changed since 1969, the first season with intraleague playoffs before the World Series. Remove the 13-inning, five-hour-and-14-minute battle between the Red Sox and Rays, and the average for nine-inning contests is still an absurd 3:38, the highest ever. The average playoff game this postseason has lasted a gobsmacking three hours and 42 minutes. The extreme game length that caused this overlap and prevented fans from devoting full attention to both crucial contests is not an aberration, however, but the new postseason norm. Baseball Games Are Still Too Long-and Getting Longer

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