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Rockies Journal: MLB pitch clock, shorter games were huge success

The Rockies’ 103-loss season was interminable. Or so it seemed.

But it was actually 1,579 minutes shorter than their 94-loss season a year ago.

We can all thank the baseball gods, Major League Baseball, and the pitch clock for that. Despite the objections of the players’ association, MLB instituted a pitch clock this season set at 15 seconds with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base.

Players might have grumbled during spring training but the change was a grand slam and any controversy melted into the background. I can’t tell you how many games I covered where the Rockies were in the seventh or eighth inning at the two-hour mark. I was amazed, pleased and thankful that deadlines weren’t pressed quite as often.

Plus, it was nice to often see the fans — especially the kids — still in the stands at the end of the night. The 3 1/2-hour games that used to be commonplace at Coors Field are not so common anymore.

It’s not just that the games were shorter, the pace of the game was quicker, too, though it might not have seemed that way given the frequent journeys of pitching coach Darryl Scott and manager Bud Black from the dugout to the mound. I wonder if head groundskeeper Mark Razum had to work overtime to keep the infield grass growing?

Some specifics on a better brand of baseball:

• The average time for a Rockies game in 2023 was 2 hours, 44 minutes, more than 19 minutes shorter than last season (2:44).

• The average time trimmed off all major league games was even more impressive, dropping from 3:04 last season to 2:40 this season (24 minutes). It marked the first time since 2015 that the average length of time fell under three hours. More impressive, MLB’s average time was the quickest since 1985.

• The longest game at Coors Field this season was 3:38 for an 11-inning, 9-8, walk-off win over the Yankees on July 16. The longest home game in 2022, was 4:14 for a 10-inning, 13-12 walk-off win over the Marlins on June 1. That was the second game of a doubleheader of what should be remembered as a truly ugly day for baseball. The Marlins won the first game, 14-1, in a game that took three hours.

• According to The Associated Press, in 2023 there were only nine games that lasted 3 ½ hours or longer. By comparison, in 2021 there were a record 390 games that had lasted that long.

• The Rockies’ shortest home game in 2022 was their 5-2 win over the Nationals on May 4. The game took 2:18 to compete. Colorado’s shortest game at Coors Field this season — a 3-1 loss to the Reds on May 16 — was completed in a scant 2:05.

Outside of hardball curmudgeons who insist that a clock should never, ever, be part of our national pastime, the only ones who might have had objections to baseball’s leap forward were the beer drinkers and beer vendors.

But even that problem was solved. When it became obvious early in the season that the pitch clock was speeding up the pace of play, the Rockies gave fans an extra inning to buy brews. Beginning in mid-April, the club pushed back the cutoff on alcohol sales from the end of the seventh inning to the end of the eighth inning.

MLB’s pitch clock has remained the same for the postseason, which averaged 3:23 for nine-inning games last year. Not everyone was thrilled with that policy, with some believing that playoff baseball is a bit of a different animal.

“There are bigger moments, bigger times where we do need to step back and think about something we just did or think about something that we’re going to be doing pitch-wise or swing-wise,” Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler told AP before the playoffs began. “I’m not a big fan of the pitch clock, but it is what it is.”

What it is is a roaring success that just happened to shorten the length of Rockies fans’ misery.

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