Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports

How long is a Major League Baseball game?

By Joe Smeltzer | Last updated 7/23/19

Major League Baseball is the only major sport without a clock. In the 2018 season, the average nine-inning game lasted three hours, according to Baseball Reference. Overall, games (including extra-inning games) lasted 3 hours, 4 minutes in 2018.

How long are games in the 2010 decade?

Over the course of this decade, the average pace of play in MLB has slowed. In 2010, a nine-inning game took 2 hours, 50 minutes to complete. Since then, however, games have taken longer to complete every year except 2015. That was last MLB season in which the average nine-inning game took less than three hours (2 hours, 56 minutes). In 2017, an average nine-inning MLB contest lasted 3 hours, 5 minutes, the slowest in the majors' recorded history, according to Baseball Reference.

How long are games in 2019?

Near the midpoint of the 2019 season, a nine-inning game lasted 3 hours, 3 minutes. MLB is on pace to challenge the record for slowest pace, set in 2017. MLB initiated several pace-of-play initiatives in 2018. For example, mound visits were limited to six per team per nine innings, according to MLB.com. A rule giving a pitcher a certain amount of time to deliver a pitch was considered but has not been implemented.

Joe Smeltzer has more than a decade of journalistic experience, starting when he was a sophomore in high school with his blog, Smeltzer on Sports. Since then, he’s earned a degree in communication (with an emphasis on journalism) from Waynesburg University, where he worked on the student newspaper for all four years, eventually becoming sports web editor. Joe began contributing for Yardbarker in the summer of 2019, the same year he became a stringer for the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he still contributes to local high school sports coverage. He is also a Penn State athletics beat reporter for Nittany Sports Now, under the Pittsburgh Sports Now umbrella. In two and a half years on the Penn State beat, Joe’s mainly covered football, wrestling and men’s basketball and covered prime events such as the 2023 Rose Bowl and 2024 U.S. Olympic wrestling trials.

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