On a cloudy, breezy day in September, Tate Conrad and his son, Miles, took their seats behind the home dugout at Wrigley Field. The New York Yankees—Tate’s favorite team from his childhood in New York—were in town to play the Chicago Cubs.
It was a great way to spend an afternoon, made even better by a style of baseball that moves faster than it did just a few years ago.
“I think the shortening of the game is a big difference,” said Tate Conrad, 49, from Des Moines, Iowa. “For me, that’s the biggest thing. Watching a game used to feel like too much of a time commitment.”
Not so much anymore. At least, it’s not as bad as it was before.
As of Tuesday’s games, the average time for a nine-inning major league game in 2024 was 2 hours and 36 minutes, according to Sportradar. This was down from 2 hours and 40 minutes last year and a record 3 hours and 10 minutes in 2021.
While many longtime fans don’t mind how long they spend at the ballpark—“I’m out here to enjoy the game, and if it takes longer, it takes longer,” said Ken Jahns, 64, a Cubs fan from St. Louis—there are signs that baseball is achieving what it aimed for with its changes to speed up the game.
The average attendance for the majors’ 45 games last weekend—during the regular season for the NFL and college football—was 34,516. This was the largest non-final September weekend since 2015, according to MLB.
The average attendance this season—up to Tuesday’s games—was 29,423, a slight increase from 29,165 at the same time last year.
Viewership for nationally televised games has increased, according to MLB, and the league is also seeing higher streaming numbers on MLB.TV.
“I mean, just looking at the rule changes over the past couple of years, I think the pace of play has probably positively affected things for fans,” said Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan.
Especially for newcomers like Miles Conrad, 13, who see baseball as slow and unexciting.
“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 PitchCom electronic pitch-calling device helped cut a few minutes off the average nine-inning game time in 2022. However, some rule changes before last season have made a big impact.
Major League Baseball introduced a pitch clock of 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base. They made an adjustment this season to 18 seconds with runners on. The pitcher must start his delivery before the time runs out.
MLB also set limits on what they call disengagements—pickoff attempts or stepping off the mound—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 even though four players on the majors’ 11-man competition committee opposed it. The players also voted against reducing the clock to 18 seconds with runners on. But the change has gone fairly smoothly.
“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 believe the shorter games have been good for baseball. While the drop in the nine-inning average may not seem large, it adds up for regular players over the 162 games in the 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 4½ 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.”
