Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Red Sox-Yankees slow games
Posted by Mike FastThe New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have garnered a lot of attention for their slow games, particularly their three-hour, 46-minute affair on opening day. I've been thinking about this since then, but Joe Posnanski's post today gave me the push I need to crunch the numbers. He compared the average times for intra-division games in the American League. The Yankees and Red Sox led the way with the longest games in 2009, while the Mariners-Rangers matchups were the shortest.
I compiled the numbers for 38 Yankees-Red Sox games and 41 Mariners-Rangers games for which we have pitch time data from 2008, 2009 and 2010. Here is the breakdown.
Boston-New York Seattle-Texas Event Each Per Game Each Per Game Time between innings 2:50 45:13 2:31 40:54 Pitching changes mid-inning 3:29 8:38 3:23 6:37 Time between at-bats, runners on 0:55 32:39 0:50 27:19 Time between at-bats, bases empty 0:43 15:55 0:38 14:05 Time between pitches, runners on 0:30 54:40 0:26 40:39 Time between pitches, bases empty 0:22 44:32 0:18 34:26 Other (rain delays, untimed pitches) --- 8:59 --- 4:20 Total --- 3:30:35 --- 2:48:19Thanks to MLB Advanced Media and Sportvision for providing the detailed pitch time data.
Mike Fast is a Royals fan who enjoys investigating baseball questions using data of many sorts. He is a member of Complete Game Consulting. He welcomes comments via e-mail.
Great job, Mike. I’m most struck that there’s a difference in time between at-bats with the bases empty. What could that be?