[codva]

A well played 1-0 baseball game that takes 2 hours to complete is an absolute joy to watch. A 1-0 game that lasts 3:30, not so much.

It's not the score or HRs or or the hits, it is the length of the game that is ruining baseball. Get the games back to 2 - 2.5 hours and it will be fine.

[peeters]

I think pitcher pace is one area that the umps could enforce better. When you get a guy like Mark Buehrle pitching (avg 16 seconds between pitches) the games going to go a lot faster than somebody that averages 25 seconds between pitches.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/pitcher-pace-time-between-pit...

[seanflyon]

Is there an actual rule on how much time a pitcher can take? I'm not aware of such a rule, but I think it should exist.

[rip747]

you hit the nail on the head. watching a baseball game is like poking your eye with an icepick. there are too many breaks, too many commercials; thus too slow of a pace. they need to pick it up so that a game is shorter and the action is constant. viewers don't have that long of an attention.

[johnchristopher]

We are framing it as a show but what about people who actually play baseball for the sake of playing a game ?

[adestefan]

A classic take on the situation can be found at http://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134960461/its-time-for-basebal...

[joezydeco]

From a related article:

"According to MLB.com, the average time for a nine inning game in the 1970s was around two hours and 30 minutes."

"In 2010, games lasted on average about two hours and 55 minutes, according to Baseball Prospectus. The average game has increased steadily in length every season since, and contests in 2014 have averaged about 3:08."

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/baseball-games-length-pitche...

And lots more delays here:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1271178-major-league-base...

[awjr]

Same situation with cricket in the UK. The newish 20/20 cricket is an evening's entertainment. Normal cricket can take all damn day.

[toyg]

That's more a case of changed expectations due to shifts in demographics. Cricket used to be a sport for upper and middle-upper classes: people with a lot of spare time for whom filling whole days (or weeks) was actually a very attractive proposition. Now it's a spectator sport for masses of TV viewers who work for a living and only have a few hours of free time every day.

[cjg]

Or even five days.