Games will be longer in 2026

For several years now, Major League Baseball has been doing everything it can to shorten the length of its games. Until last year, this approach had been successful, as the average duration of the first 421 games of the 2025 season was two hours and 37 minutes. That was faster than in any season since 1984.

However, nine-inning MLB games this season are taking six minutes longer than they did during the same number of games last season and are on track to be the longest of the four seasons under the pitch-clock era.

At first glance, one might blame the ABS system. But not so fast.

In fact, the ball-and-strike review system has added only 63 seconds per game, based on an average of 4.1 challenges per game.

It's actually the pitchers who are slowing the game down a bit right now, as they're taking even longer before making their pitch. When the pitch clock was first introduced, pitchers were in a hurry to get the ball to the plate to avoid getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

But every year since then, the average time remaining on the clock when a pitch is thrown has decreased. Many now use the clock as a tool to play mind games with batters.

Hitters are also more comfortable playing with the clock, as evidenced by their increased use of timeouts. Although batters are limited to one timeout per at-bat, the average number of timeouts per game has risen from 7.7 in 2023 to 12.8 in 2024, then to 14.4 last year and 16.9 this year.

Not to mention the fact that some teams in the Manfred era call pitches from the dugout, such as the Miami Marlins and the Colorado Rockies.

So, the ABS system, pitchers wasting time, a few more pauses by batters, catchers waiting for instructions from the dugout—all of this means that games are longer in 2026.

Created by humans, assisted by AI.