First Weekend Of Spring Training Shows Pitch Clock Shaving Nearly 30 Minutes Off Games

If the implementation of a pitch clock in Major League Baseball was designed to get more action into the game, it appears to be working to good effect.

Between Friday and Sunday, a total of 35 Spring Training games were played with an average game length of 2 hours and 37 minutes compared to an average of 3 hours and 1 minute for Spring Training in 2022.

What’s important is that even with games with a high number of runs and action, only a small number of games barely exceeded 3 hours in length. Out of 35, just six games went over the 3-hour mark, or 17% of the total. The longest was three games that went 3:06 and in these cases they saw total runs of 19 and 18 (twice). Sunday’s Diamondbacks-Padres game that ended 6-18 with 34 total runs ended at 3:03. More often than not, games with runs in the double-digits stayed under three hours. All told 20 of the 35 saw games with over 10 runs combined that ended in under three hours.

Starting this year, pitchers have 15 seconds to pitch once the ball has been received from the catcher when bases are empty and 20 seconds when runners are on base. Batters are under the same clock and must be in the box ready to swing when the clock ends. Should the pitcher violate the clock the batter is issued a ball. Should the batter be in violation, he is issued a strike.

League officials are aware that this new system will place players under a whole new set of pressures and are looking to make any chaos involved arrive early in Spring Training. Players are clearly feeling the system out.

Over the course of the 35 games, there were 69 clock violations for an average of 1.97 per game.

• Friday (2 games) – 4 violations
• Saturday (17 games) – 30 violations
• Sunday (16 games) – 35 violations

As mentioned, MLB is hoping to get the chaos of clock violations largely out of the way. On Saturday, history was made when the Braves and the chance to walk it off with the bases loaded, but Cal Conley didn’t get into the box in time, was issued the third out and the game ended in a tie (Spring Training games allow for ties).

It’s just one weekend. The data is just for nine-inning games and extra innings will certainly go longer. But if the plan was inject a faster pace into baseball, where batters stepping out of the box and pitchers stepping off the rubber have pushed games into a more slothingly pace, the pitch clock has shown early on in Spring Training to increase action and lower down time. Officials at MLB have said that lessons learned from nearly 9,000 at bats in the minor leagues using the clock garnered the data to show that game pace would be improved and that certainly appears to be the case.

Maybe the real test will be the first regular season Yankees-Red Sox tilt. Those that know, know. Those games run like molasses in the dead of winter.

What’s clear is that the days of 3.5 to 4-hour nine-inning games are about to go the way of the Dodo bird. At a time when MLB is looking to not only pull new fans in, but retain interest (look at what the impending Bally Sports bankruptcy is doing to the RSN model), especially with broadcasts, the move will pull the game back toward where it was in the 1970s and 1980s. You know… the good-old days.