Major League Baseball’s campaign this season to speed up the pace of the sport shaved six minutes off the average length of regular-season games, to 2 hours 56 seconds.
Not bad. But in the postseason, that effort might come to a halt as the weight of the games takes precedence over warning or fining pitchers for not throwing pitches quickly enough, or hitters for dawdling outside the batter’s box. Thus a program that shortened games will be relaxed during the most important, most watched games of the year.
“During the regular season, we monitored violations of all pace-of-game rules and issued warnings to players when appropriate,” said Chris Marinak, M.