The average length of a Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason (PS) game this year is about 20 minutes shorter than last year, according to a new report.
“This year’s average time was 3 hours and 2 minutes, a significant decrease from the 3 hours and 22 minutes (in regular innings) it took to play a PS game through last year’s championship series in both leagues,” the Associated Press reported on Nov. 27 (KST).
“In 2021, a PS game took 3 hours, 40 minutes,” AP said, “a drop of 38 minutes in two years.”
The significant decrease in the length of MLB games is due to a “pitch clock” that limits pitching time.
Pitchers have 15 seconds to start their pitching motion with no runners on base and 20 seconds with runners on base, and if they don’t start in time, the pitch becomes a ball.
The batter must also step up to the plate with eight seconds left on the pitch clock or a strike is called.
MLB introduced the pitch clock this year to reduce the average length of a regular season game to 2 hours and 39 minutes, 25 minutes less than last year’s 3 hours and 4 minutes.
Players who have already adjusted to the pitch clock in the regular season haven’t had much trouble in the PS.
There were only seven pitch clock violations in 36 PS games this year.
Steals and batting averages are up from last year.
Last year, there were an average of 0.8 stolen bases per PS game leading up to the bi-national championship series, compared to 1.4 this year. The stolen base rate also increased from 77.8% to 84.5%.
PS batting averages jumped from 0.213 last year to 0.241.
MLB introduced hitter-friendly elements this year, such as limiting defensive shifts and increasing base sizes to reduce the distance between bases.
As a result, stolen bases increased dramatically in the regular season this year, and that effect has carried over to PS.
The Korean Baseball Organization is introducing a pitch clock next season.
It also plans to operate the ABS (Automatic Ball-Strike System), aka ‘robot umpires’, which MLB has not introduced. 파워볼분석