the average time for baseball game
NEW YORK (AP) â Major League Baseball's average game time has slowed during the first week of the season and was back over 3 hours. The average time of a nine-inning game was 3:04 through the first 79 games of this season, according to STATS. That is up 8 minutes from a 2:56 average for the first 79 games last year. MLB introduced new pace-of-game initiatives last season, and the average time dropped from 3:03 during the first full week in 2014.
Major League Baseball games are still getting longer â a slow drip that figures to increase the likelihood strong action will be taken to curtail the trend. After another slate of nine-inning odysseys on Monday, the average time of game has hit 3 hours, 5 minutes, which would be an all-time high by three minutes for a full season, and a 3% increase from 2016âs average nine-inning game - an even 3 hours. 1  Including extra-inning games, the average game time is 3 hours, 9 minutes. Both numbers trump all-time highs of 3:02 and 3:07, both set in 2014, according to data gathered by Baseball-Reference. As the weather warms and home runs â also headed for an all-time high â continue flying out of the park, games are getting longer.