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Major League Baseball has seen several changes in recent years that many fans and even players have had to get used to.
From pitch to larger bases, from limiting haug visits to pitchcom and potentially automated balls and strikes, the game is a different product than it was even in before-pandemic days.
Perhaps the biggest change is that the average length of a game has been shortened by more than half an hour.
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St. Louis Cardinal’s starting pot Adam Wainwright (50) delivers a pitch during a game against Milwaukee Brewers on September 14, 2022 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (Rick Ulreich/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
This state reached its peak as the average nine-in-in-in game lasted for three hours, 10 minutes. MLB implemented a pitch hour in 2023 and this number was abbreviated to 2:39. The following year, another three minutes were stored, but two of them have been given back this year.
Former St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright struck in the mid-2000s and retired after the first year of the Pitch Clock implementation, and when his career reached his back nine, he began to notice how long games took.
“It probably got a little too much,” Wainwright admitted in a recent conversation with Pakinomist Digital.
Wainwright doesn’t miss out on the long games and say, “The length of the game now is perfect.” But there is one thing he misses about the old days.
“I miss the days when it’s the bottom of the ninth, it’s the playoffs that is so much drama a jug can go off and be able to think about what he wants to throw next time and build the drama even more. And then you sit there a little there and watch and you like ‘What’s going to happen?’ I miss it, ”Wainwright said.
St. Louis Cardinal’s starter jug Adam Wainwright responds after Los Angeles Dodgers’ Trea Turner grounds for a double game during the third round of a National League Wild-Card play game on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
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“From another point of view, I miss the fact that a pitcher third time through the order, has time to go, ‘you know what? Okay, the first time I got him out with fastballs in the next time I got him out with shifts down and in, now have to be far open. But I see him going towards the record. I miss that ability, because when you are on the haug and you get the ball back and you see the ball back, and you look at Catcher, you got eight seconds at that time. is a thinking man’s pitcher, I love the imaginable side of it.
Wainwright also saw the overall revision of analyzes implemented in the game, but nevertheless took a knowledgeable veteran whom he himself took a lot of the information.
“And in many ways it was good. There is so much information out there that a jug needs. There is a happy medium where analyzes and old-school meetings that are probably the perfect sweet place. I have appreciated the slow Mo camera that shows you exactly why spin was better at this particular pitch. angle through the throwing movement. ‘ Or he doesn’t hit it, why doesn’t he hit it?
But like everyone else, there are sometimes when analyzes are too much, including a time when Wainwright said he succeeded after getting Freddie Freeman out.
“I got him out on a terrible backup cutter that I tried to squeeze under his hands. I threw it up and away, and he jumped it up to the second base. And then analytics came back and said, ‘Look if you pull up and away again, analytical side says it’s a pretty good pitch for you.’ And it’s just not something a jug will try to replicate.
St. Louis Cardinals Pitcher Adam Wainwright works against Atlanta is bravening during the first lap of the opening match of a double header on Saturday, June 19, 2021 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
“There are things that in terms of information, you take it all in, and then you have to say, ‘Ok, I understand you, but it’s a computer, it doesn’t understand the human side of things. I won’t try to throw that pitch again. It was absolutely luck and if I throw it again, it would be a disaster.’ So you filter all these things and then you put it through the filter and then you go, ‘OK, I really like it, I really like it.
As for the rule changes, they appear to have brought in fans, as the average participation is intended for the top 29,000 per year. Fighting for the third year in a row, the first such stretch since before 2017. It should also be noted that two teams, athletics and Tampa Bay Rays, play in smaller League ballparks this year, which limits participation for 162 games.
Each of the last two seasons was the first time since 2011 and 2012, when participation rose in back-to-back seasons.
