Very true. Football isn't going anywhere and basketball has been growing in popularity. Soccer, even hockey to a degree, MLB is becoming unwatchable and it's a serious issue for the future of the sport imo. They've gotta figure out this pace of play thing, some of these 4+ hour 9 inning games are unwatchable.

The game times themselves for a while have been in the 3h-4h range. A cursory glance on Wikipedia.. back at least 20 years, these times weren't too far out of normal - of course 18 inning game was an exception. A big problem is when the start time is either 8:07 or 8:29 or whatever to arrange around football, that's way too late and it's not surprising - people go to bed and figure they'll read about it. I just don't understand why every pitch requires a walk around the mound, a guy out of the batters' box, adjustment of gloves. And I like baseball a lot. When Puig got the check swing strike call last night it was 30s before he even stepped back into the batters' box as he grandstanded his displeasure of the call. Who knows what they can do without being gimmicky. They already added the auto-IBB. Play clocks or whatnot just go against the inherent untimed nature of baseball. The Boston games could have been first pitch 7:05 or whatever like regular season, and LA weekend games could have been during the day.. but - TV. There's no day baseball in the WS anymore is there? Martinez lost the ball in right last night because that is the absolute worst time of day for sky color to be playing. If not for football they could have played at 1pm West Coast.

TV is driving it, both the schedule and the commercial time. Used to be final out recorded, cut to commercial, 3 or 4 of those, and back just in time for first pitch of the next half inning. Now they show replay, follow the involved players on camera back to dugout, show 4 full length 30s commercials, come back to booth to hear announcers speak, show batter walking to box.. I'm not sure exactly how much time but it seems like 3m is the standard half inning break now? So there's a guarantee of 51m of inaction.

Whatever at this point I'm just rambling. Today's fast-paced, technology driven, instant info demographic is NOT buying into baseball. And even those that do are on their phones between pitches. Football will have it happen eventually. You know the max amount of action is 60m in a 3.25-3.5h game, and in reality there's between 15-20m of actual game action. Their advantages over baseball are obvious - games are at a reasonable hour, night games are a novelty not the norm, weekend only except 17 games all season, and the 16 game schedule - even casual fans can buy into 1 game a week.

It's always nice to see the Dodgers be losers. Kershaw is the best regular season pitcher, maybe even of all time, but give me MadBum anytime in the World Series. All teams are now officially back in it. Here's to the Giants in 2019!

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~Brad

re: game time, this has been a slowly-increasing issue so it's not like overnight it became a problem, but the average game in the 80's would be 2:35-2:45, lately it's been 3-3:10. That 20-30 minutes makes a big difference, this is the AVERAGE game time.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/misc.shtml

Further, playoff games always took a bit longer, it was inevitable that teams and players would 'bear down' more and that meant longer at bats. Now, however, starters know they could be pulled in the 2nd if they have a rough start so from the very first pitch it's a tractor pull. Once they're pulled managers juggle their bullpen, using almost double the relievers in a typical postseason game as in the 90's. Plus, they're tinkering with things like starting a reliever and doing 2-inning stints for 4-5 pitchers in a game, or using starters for an inning of work on their typical bullpen day so it gives the manager another arm to use every game.

There are a LOT of contributing factors but here are some stats on game times in combined ALCS, NLCS and WS games from 2018, 1998 and 1988. I excluded all extra-innings games from this.

2018 - average game time: 3 hrs, 41 minutes.
2018 - 4+ hour games: three (of fifteen)
2018 - sub-3 hour games: zero (of fifteen)

1998 - average game time: 3 hrs, 15 minutes
1998 - 4+ hour games: zero (of fourteen)
1998 - sub-3 hour games: four (of fourteen)

1988 - average game time: 3 hrs, 03 minutes
1988 - 4+ hour games: zero (of fifteen)
1988 - sub-3 hour games: eight (of fifteen)

That's a dramatic increase in average game time and there are also no more of those breezy 2 1/2 hour games, now you're psyched when a game finishes up in 3:30 and you get to bed before midnight.

The rapid time increase was from mid 80s to mid 90s, which corresponds directly to the TV boom in baseball, going to cable, the RSN's and off of air TV. Since 1994, you're really only looking at a 10m/game increase for the whole season. But I agree with you overall that's it's become a big issue. They've got to get back below 3 hours for the average all season. Shoot, they used to slot just 2.5 hours for a NL game.

I should've included 2008 for a good 10 year comparison season to season but at least in the playoffs the increase has been pretty linear. Here are 2008's numbers:

2008 - average game time: 3 hrs, 23 minutes (8 minutes more than 1998, 18 minutes less than 2018)
2008 - 4+ hour games: one (of sixteen)
2008 - sub-3 hour games: two (of sixteen)

The reason it's so much more grueling and noticeable now, vs the jump from the 80's to 90's, is that original jump was caused by additional commercialization, so you'd sit through a longer game but it was just more commercials, the gametime was largely the same. Now, however, you have 18 more minutes (2 minutes per inning) that are almost exclusively caused by longer time between pitches; those 3-5 extra seconds between each pitch is excruciating....JUST THROW THE BALL ALREADY!

I have the same problem with all the use of analytics. When you use numbers from all season or multi seasons you get that home runs are the most important thing and strikeouts do not matter but it is different in the postseason. You dont get the at bats against pitchers with a 7 ERA that are finishing a game where they are down by 8 runs. Sometimes playing for 1 or 2 runs instead of the big inning can work, especially in the postseason.

How are the Dodger fans treating Roberts? Some talk radio has been killing him, others are saying he doesn't set the lineup or starting pitchers and is given an outline to follow the whole game. Just wondering how you are feeling or are hearing?

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Pain or damage don't end the world, or despair, or beatings. The world ends when you're dead, until then you're due for more punishment. Stand it like a man. And give some back.

I get that, but if you don't think that the analytics guys aren't creating stats specifically against low ERA guys, etc, you're mistaken. I took a class on baseball stats (sorry I'm a nerd) and just learning to use R and SQL to query lead to some interesting questions and answers, and I'm just a dumb joe blow.

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~Brad

cora was getting KILLED for leaving rodriguez IN for game 4. during the game! by the announcers! (before the red sox rebounded and won). and roberts is getting killed for taking hill OUT. so, you can't win for losing. everybody's an expert.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

While we were hibernating.. Joe Kelly, his nastiness, is an LAD now? I really was under a rock for all things MLB. How does this sit with the Boston fans?

Who gives a shit what Boston fans think, much less what any Giant cunt thinks?

While we were hibernating.. Joe Kelly, his nastiness, is an LAD now? I really was under a rock for all things MLB. How does this sit with the Boston fans?

I saw where he had to miss his first scheduled spring training appearance last week where he hurt his back from standing at the stove too long making Cajun food.. As much as I love baseball, these kinds of injury stories always make me shake my head. Meanwhile back in Boston, Bruins forward Noel Acciari took a puck to the mouth and lost three teeth and also got 18 stiches yet still played the next night.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

That's how I found out he left Boston. That Cajun food is a lot of work, you know with the making of rice and tossing a bunch of live water creatures into a pot. Maybe he tweaked a lat reaching for the spice rack.