Faster-paced MLB games being embraced by fans and players, no longer 'too much of a time commitment'

CHICAGO (AP) — On a cloudy, breezy day in September, Tate Conrad and his son, Miles, settled into their seats behind the home dugout at Wrigley Field. The New York Yankees — Tate Conrad's favorite team from when he was growing up in New York — were in town to play the Chicago Cubs.

A pretty good way to spend an afternoon, made even better by a brand of baseball that moves along more quickly than it did just a few years ago.

“I think the shortening of the game is a big difference,” said Tate Conrad, 49, of Des Moines, Iowa. “At least for me, that’s the biggest thing. To sit down and watch a game used to be just too much of a time commitment.”

Not so much anymore. At least, not as much as before.

Through Tuesday's action, the average time of a nine-inning major league game in 2024 was 2 hours, 36 minutes, according to Sportradar. It was 2 hours, 40 minutes last year, down from a record 3 hours, 10 minutes in 2021.

While many longtime fans are indifferent when it comes to their time at a ballpark — “I’m out here to enjoy the game and if it takes a little longer it takes a little longer,” said Ken Jahns, 64, a Cubs fan who lives in St. Louis — there are some indications baseball is getting what it was looking for when it made a series of changes designed, in part, to speed up its games.

The average attendance for the majors' 45 games last weekend — during the regular season for the NFL and college football — was 34,516. It was the biggest non-final September weekend since 2015, according to MLB. The majors' average attendance this season — through Tuesday's games — was 29,423, up slightly from 29,165 at this same point last year.

Viewership for nationally televised games is up overall, according to MLB, and the league also is reporting higher streaming numbers on MLB.TV.

“I mean just looking at kind of the rule changes the past couple years, I think pace of play probably has affected things positively for fans,” Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said.

Especially for relative newcomers like Miles Conrad, 13, part of a generation that has generally looked at baseball as too slow and plodding for its taste.

"People aren’t just like sitting here for a long time watching a game where the innings seem like they take forever,” Miles Conrad said. “Things just seem a lot more exciting.”

The introduction of the PitchCom electronic pitch-calling device helped shave a couple minutes off the average nine-inning game time in 2022, but a couple rule changes that were installed before last season have made a major difference.

Major League Baseball instituted a pitch clock of 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base. It made an adjustment ahead of this season, making it 18 seconds with runners on. The pitcher has to begin his delivery before the clock expires.

MLB also introduced limits on what it calls disengagements — pickoff attempts or steps off the rubber — per plate appearance.

“The fans have been re-engaged,” Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s not a long, drawn-out game where there’s so much downtime. There’s a lot of stimulus per pitch and per inning."

The pitch clock was approved despite the opposition of the four players on the majors' 11-man competition committee. The players also voted against the reduction of the clock to 18 seconds with runners on.

But the transition has been relatively seamless.

“It is a boring sport in some ways. So I like the pitch clock,” Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes said. “I think how it is right now, I wish pitchers got a timeout when there was nobody on, that’s the one change I would make to the pitch clock.”

Some players and managers also think the shorter games have been good for the sport. The drop in the nine-inning average may not seem like much, but it adds up for regular position players over the course of 162 games in the regular season.

“I know it’s a more enjoyable game from our standpoint,” Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. "Especially when the games get out of hand, that it’s not 4 or 4 1/2 hours, that’s a big difference. That’s keeping guys on the field more, too. That’s a health issue as well. Guys aren’t on their feet as much through the course of a long summer, too.”

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AP National Writer Will Graves and AP Baseball Writers David Brandt, Mike Fitzpatrick and Ronald Blum contributed to this report.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb