The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

Mark Buehrle would’ve finished games in 70 minutes with today’s rules.

A prime Buehrle-Kluber match-up in an hour, tops.

 

This was baseball for 100 years. People got on the box and pitchers threw. It’s only the last 20 years or so (Nomar) that games have been longer because suddenly jock straps stopped staying put.

Cling to the slog all you want but don’t pretend a two hour game is not what baseball has been.

 

If my utilization of Play Index is correct (no sure thing), there were 255 nine-inning games that ended in 2:15 or less in 1983. There have been five in the first three days of this season. That's 304 such games over a 182-day season. People--especially those paying good money to go to games and those paying good money to air said games--will be complaining about this once the novelty wears off.

 

So will the teams. Shorter games means a shorter time in which beer can be sold to the general public.

 

I said that too and was told people will just eat and drink before they get to their seats. Oh no they won't!

 

Your main point aside, in regard to the stats, just remember that there were four fewer teams in 1983, which means fewer games back then.

 

You can take your context and shove it, sir!!!

 

Game 7, 1960 World Series.

The Mazeroski game.

19 runs, 24 hits. 2 hours, 36 minutes.

 

And commercial breaks between every half-inning lasted...

(I truly don't know, my guess is on the super low end, but I could be wrong and the YouTube broadcasts I saw had them edited out)

 

Guardians beat the Yankees 2-0 last year the day before we celebrated our independence. It took 2 hours, 55 minutes. There were 11 more strikeouts, two fewer walks, and just as many hits as tonight's game.

THAT'S baseball!

(I was only at one of the games.)

 

It will be interesting to see the tradeoff -- how many more people will actually go to a game knowing they can see the whole thing? That attending a random game on a weeknight staring at 7 means you'll get home by 10, if not earlier, than some slog of a game that doesn't end until 1030, so you'd leave in the sixth inning and so why spend the money in the first place.

 

The difference in just game action and "time of game" is 25 minutes, meaning almost 90 seconds between half innings. Same as a tennis changeover. That between-innings time was 175 seconds for postseason games in 2017. So even if you used those rules in 1960, the time of the game would be 3 hours, 2 minutes. Perfectly acceptable for a 10-9 World Series game.

By contrast, the 10-inning, 13-12 Dodgers-Astros World Series game in 2017 took 5 hours, 17 minutes.

In the 1960 game, most of the time only 22-25 seconds elapsed between an out and the pitcher winding up to throw to the next batter. Think about that. The average MLB pitcher was taking about 25 seconds between pitches TO THE SAME BATTER last year. In this game they were taking less time to throw a pitch to a NEW BATTER. Last year there was an average of 54 seconds between batters. More than double what you see here.

For the same batter, a windup would start 9-10 seconds after the pitcher received the ball back from the catcher.