The Toronto Blue Jays, the passion of our northern friends led the league in combined Replay Challenges with ninety seven. However, there Game Time only averaged 3 hours and one minute, which was the second fastest Game Time Average in the Majors. Obviously, this means there is no correlation between game time, so we can move on and talk about the Cubs signing Jon Lester, effectively ending his career as a Major League pitcher.
1908 — and we are coming to Mesa this spring to hunt you down.
Of course, perhaps the Blue Jays, being from Canada and all, are just some sort of outlier. Let’s tale a look at the top ten MLB teams in combined Replay Challenges and their game times (using STATS Inc.’s data, which for some reason is different than B-Ref because COUNTING IS HARD).
Team RC Game Time
TOR 97 3:01
CHC 90 3:12
LAD 88 3:14
TEX 88 3:06
TAM 81 3:19
DET 79 3:14
COL 77 3:12
KCR 77 3:02
SEA 75 2:59
PIT 74 3:09
LAA 74 3:15
SDP 73 3:01
ARI 72 3:03
SFG 72 3:05
CWS 72 3:08
MIL 70 3:07
HOU 70 3:10
BOS 70 3:17
MIN 69 3:07
ATL 65 3:04
CLE 62 3:12
CIN 61 3:03
PHI 60 3:09
BAL 60 3:07
STL 59 3:05
OAK 59 3:05
WAS 54 3:05
FLA 53 3:05
NYY 52 3:12
NYM 50 3:08
There really isn’t much of a correlation between Time of Game and Total Replay Challenges. You know what has a strong correlation with Time of Game? Extra inning games. If baseball is serious about speeding up the game, they would do something about those abominations — and, yes they are abominations because beer is not served after the seventh inning, but one is supposed to sit in a hard plastic seat and continue to watch baseball. If baseball wants to speed up the games, then allow ties, which would certainly change some managerial strategies — or at least put in the International Tie Breaker.
Now some of you might be saying, “Bads85, you’ve done lost your mine. But even if we took your raving seriously, MLB is more concerned with the time it takes to play nine innings.”
Well, the answer to that is easy — a clock. Don’t give me any romantic bullshit that baseball never had a clock — guess what, baseball never had three hour plus nine inning games before. Put a clock on the batter and the pitcher and speed things along. Fuck Mr. Batting Gloves if he gets all hurt, and the Mr. Compusure on the mound can’t get his shit together quick, he can look for a new line of work.
Dead Religions 