Pirates’ Pace-of-Play Patterns in 2015

Major League Baseball’s pace-of-play initiatives were a major storyline heading into the 2015 season. In an effort to cut down on the league’s exceedingly long game times, batters were to keep at least one foot in the box (with a few exceptions) and new clocks were installed at all ballparks to limit the downtime between innings to 2 minutes and 25 seconds (or 2:45 for national TV games).

So, did it work? Per the Associated Press, the average game time for nine-inning games dropped by six minutes in 2015. The Pirates saw a similar improvement, shaving about five minutes off their average time from 2014:

(I’ve used time per nine innings here to adjust extra-inning games. So we’re essentially looking at minutes-per-inning, and multiplying it by 9.)

While it may not seem like much, those five minutes are considerable — over a 162-game season, we’re talking about saving roughly 810 minutes (or 13.5 hours of our lives!). Still, on a game-by-game basis, the typical ballgame is still right around three hours:

When you break down the Pirates’ average time by month, something interesting happens:

Early on, it seemed there was a legitimate improvement, and that wasn’t just for the Pirates — the league’s average time for a nine-inning game through the season’s first month was 2 hours and 53 minutes. The league was set to start issuing fines to any pace-of-play violators (batter’s box rule, etc.) in May, but decided to relax the fines after the seemingly improved game times in April. The shorter games continued through June, at least for the Pirates, but then it appears they reverted back to 2014 levels for the rest of the year.

We’re accustomed to longer September games, with the deeper benches and bullpens that slow things down in the late innings with various substitutions. But the July/August times are harder to understand, at least on the surface.

As you might expect, there’s a likely association between total runs scored and the time of a game. Average game time appears to be dependent on the combined number of runs scored between the two teams.

Again, you probably would have expected that — slugfests and blowouts tend to take longer than your typical pitchers’ duel. As it turns out, the Pirates’ games featured lower average scores in April/May/June and higher scores in July/August/September.

That’s one possible explanation for the increased game times, especially in July. But other factors are at play, of course. The Pirates played a bunch of nationally televised games down the stretch, and those games typically last longer. As noted above, there are 2 minutes and 45 seconds between innings for national games rather than the standard 2:25, which can add around six minutes alone. The two Sunday Night Baseball games in August were quite lengthy — the 13-6 win vs. Los Angeles on August 9th lasted 3:39 (partially thanks to a nine-run 7th inning) but even the 5-2 win vs. San Francisco on August 23rd took 3:32.

Some other pace-of-play patterns this season…

– By opponent:

– By location:

Home (81) — 2 hours, 56 minutes
Road (81) — 2 hours, 59 minutes

– By time of day:

Day games (47) — 2 hours, 53 minutes
Night games (115) — 2 hours, 59 minutes

—

While we’d need to look at the entire league to gain a better understanding, it seems that — using the Pirates as an example — the league was able to take a few minutes off of games, on average, this season. Commissioner Rob Manfred believes there will be a “continuing evolution” of ways to improve the pace of games, including mound visits and pitching changes. A limit on mound visits would be fine, though it might not fly between pitchers and catchers. I wouldn’t be a huge fan of limiting pitching changes (Manfred specifically notes “requiring a pitcher to pitch to at least two batters,” so eliminating the LOOGY)… A limit on the number of players a team can dress in September might be more reasonable there.

Either way, the continuing changes will only have a small impact — a few minutes per game. If the league is trying to appeal to more casual fans, greater measures would have to be taken to drastically shorten games… and I don’t think the players or diehard fans will want that.

Data via Baseball-Reference 

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