This is some must-click link material. It’s from Sam Miller at ESPN who, along with a healthy amount of research help from Baseball Prospectus, broke down a single game of the 2019 World Series to determine why World Series games take so dang long.
The game in question: Houston’s 4-1 victory over the Nationals in Game 3, which took four hours and three minutes. Miller notes that there were 65 games in the 2019 regular season, but they averaged only two hours and fifty-five minutes. Where did the 68 extra minutes come from in Game 3?
For that full breakdown you’ll have to read the whole article, but it’s worth noting that, no, it’s not all TV commercial time, which usually gets all the blame. Some of it definitely is -- a good bit of it in fact -- but there’s a lot more going on there too, some of which could be fixed with simple tweaks but much of it which either could not be or should not be.
A good read that should give MLB a lot to think about.
