|
Yeah, I'm still keeping tabs on this (so those tired of my blabbering can switch the channel now).
The good news is that things are looking a bit better a month into the season and into these minor adjustments that were made to try an counteract the ever-lengthening games.
Based on my own data gathering (patent pending):
52% of 9 inning games in March/April clocked in at 3:00 or less. That compares to just 43.3% for all of 2017. So basically slightly more than half vs right around 3 games out of every 7
And the numbers show an improvement at just about every data point on the spectrum:
Towards the longer end "Only" 18.9% of games were over 3:20, which still stinks IMO but is better than last year's 22.7%. 8.5% of games were over 3:30 so far this year vs 2017's 11.5%
At the other end, just about 1 game in 7 (14.7%) came in at 2:40 or under, last year is was fewer than 1 game out of every 8 (11.9%); also 6.4% at 2:30 and under vs 4.2%
So it's a nice trend, although keep in mind that these are only modest improvements over what was the worst year ever for time of game. And it's only April so we'll have to see if it holds up through a larger sample size.
The other thing is that it's been done without any game altering rules. The mound visit limit was really the only 'major' change but I one suspect that's been the biggest part of the difference even though I've only
heard of one instance where a team burned all their trips (Scoscia and the Angels not surprisingly). And although there certainly could have been others, I think merely having the threat of running out of visits
has kept the endless stream of early game committee meetings down which potentially shaves multiple minutes off a game and, more importantly, multiple minutes where no actual baseball is being played.
| 
