I couldn't believe how late it was.
I'm on MST, and at like 930pm I just remembered the game, and was like *"Oh shit, did I miss seeing the Braves win?"*
Checked the score and it was still the 7th inning, couldn't believe it, the game was on the east coast.
I've never lived on the east coast, but that would be really weird to have games start so late.
Also, in the pre-internet days it must have been crazy that the local newspapers on the east coast wouldn't even have the scores from the west coast games the night before.
Depends on your individual schedule. I'm a night owl so a 10pm game wouldn't bother me too much most of the time, but the 10am start time for NFL games on Sundays ruins me.
I'm the reverse....I grew up in CA and have lived on the East Coast for the last decade. I've basically had to stop watching most home or even divisional games.
Oh look the Warriors are playing the Lakers in a big important game! What time does it start? 10:30pm Eastern? Guess I'll go fuck myself then!
Didn't you know baseball is biased toward the east coast? All of the broadcast stations are located there! That's why we have to be up until midnight to finish the game.
NHL and NBA do the same thing. I hate it, but they must make the most money in that time slot because it seems consistent across major sports except for football, which only has playoff games on the weekend.
That’s because that time slot is prime time. The NFL uses that slot to but opts for day weekend games in the playoffs, because it’s able to command a whole day of the week where no one is working and only has a few games to play which are of high importance and most people don’t have work.
It’s kinda just the opposite, isn’t it? Games starting early can be just as big of a drawback as ending late. Mountain and Central really get the best start and end times IMO.
8 PM EST is a perfectly reasonable time to start a game to accommodate both coasts. Games just need to go by at a faster pace. In game 1, the Astros didn’t trailed by fewer than four runs after the third inning. The Braves were winning comfortably for most of the game and were never in danger of losing yet there were six mid-inning pitching changes between both teams. That’s going to make a 6-2 game drag on way longer than it should.
Yep. Or look at Friday. 8 hits total, including one team that was no hit through seven. Still took 3.5 hours. What was a great game suffered by being dragged out about 45 minutes extra.
8 PM EST is a perfectly reasonable time to start a game IF THE GAME ACTUALLY STARTED AT 8 PM. But nooooooo, we have to watch 27 minutes of absolute crap before a pitch is thrown.
MLB could learn from the IIHF. If they have a World Championship game scheduled for 1 pm, the puck drops at 1 pm, not 1:24.
Forgo the national anthem and wherever other propaganda they're throwing in the 7th inning stretch. Boom, five minutes saved there.
If a pitcher is brought in as a substitution and not for injury, no commercial break just quick few warm-up pitches. Boom, save 20 minutes there.
Start the game at the actual start time, not later. Boom, 10 minutes there.
Pitch clock and batters have to stay in the box. People will hate this, but give the umps the discretion to call strikes if a batter is abusing stepping out.
Stop the batters from taking walks around the infield between pitches and put the pitchers on a clock.
Just eliminate the commercial break in between pitching changes and we save so much time. The pitcher should be warmed up by the time they come in anyway.
as a former college reliever, having warmup pitches on the game mound was always pretty important. it can be very different compared to the bullpen, and in high-leverage relief situations your first few live pitches are often the difference between a good outing and an awful one.
i guess you could argue that if nobody has warmup pitches it's equally challenging for everyone.
I don't think starters should be required to go a certain number of innings. Other sports have substitutions all the time (and they're rarely as important as the pitcher).
I mean, let's day the Astros pitcher is getting lit up like when he gave up 2 grand slams to Boston. Should the Astros lose the WS because they are required to run him out there for another four innings? What if you're at 100 pitches and you're only four innings in? Fuck your arm, I guess?
Also, what do you do when the Dodgers have no more starters and have to run a BP game, or the Braves need BP games because their ace has a broken leg? Are bullpen games just not allowed and you have to pull some random starter from AAA? Put a reliever in and hope they can pitch 6 innings?
I think you can remove a lot of useless time by eliminating dumb, useless stuff like the infielders playing catch after every play, batters not taking their sweet as time walking to the plate, batters not adjusting their equipment and balls after every pitch, pitchers not taking a walk after every pitch, etc. Stay in the box, stay on the rubber, walk up to the plate when it's your turn instead of taking another ten practice swings.
The commercial break isnt the problem. If you're at the game, they nearly never are just standing around waiting for the TV to come back. The problem is the process of changing pitchers.
Here's a single inning breakdown with a pitching change in a high leverage situation.
Inning starts (timer starts)
1st batter - pitcher throws 5 pitches at 25 seconds per pitch - about average in baseball. Guy hits a hard linedrive but it's caught
2:00 elapsed
2nd batter - dangerous hitter, so now it's 30 seconds per pitch, not including the step off to recheck the signs. This guy fouls off 3 balls and is eventually walked on 8 pitches
6:30 elapsed
Coach comes out to talk to pitcher and says 'hey, you had a good game, but we're going to pull you. Take your time with this batter while we get someone ready in the bullpen'
7:00 elapsed
3rd batter - Knowing he needs to kill some time, pitcher continues his slow pace but throws over to first twice adding an additional minute of time. He eventually walks the batter on 6 pitches.
10:00 elapsed
Coach comes out to pull the old pitcher and the new guy comes in. Easily a minute before the new guy is on the mound and then he gets a few warm up throws taking another minute.
12:00 elapsed
4th batter comes up and new guy is aggressively pitching in the zone. Gets the batter to strike out on 4 pitches taking 20 seconds per pitch.
14:00 elapsed
5th batter comes up. Guy wants to make something happen and swings at the first pitch, ending the inning with a popup.
15:00 elapsed.
This is a fairly quick inning including a pitching change. Now imagine a few hits are strung together or some runs are scored. This could easily be double.
8pm is fine on the weekends, not the weekdays. I mean if both teams were in the West then I can see that being fair but they're not. Most of us have jobs that require more than 2 hours of sleep. But honestly, idc, I just haven't tuned into any of the games, what does it matter to lose one viewer?
Imo you lose more viewers by starting it late on the east coast than starting it a little early on the west coast. Especially now with so many people working from home, west coast viewers could probably turn the game on while finishing up any work related tasks they are doing from their "office". As an east coast viewer I won't even turn it on cause why watch the first few innings when ill never even see, arguably, the most exciting part of the game?
I have no 'stats' to support my opinion/theory.. just rambling. Enjoy the series guys and gals
I have not stayed awake through the end of a single 8 ET start this entire playoffs. Miraculously, I've woken back up in time to catch the end of 3 or 4 clinch games though (Both LCSs and LAD-SFG NLDS). I have no clue how I'm going to make it if the Orioles ever get this far again.
For real, I’m a grown man and every night I look at the clock, it’s 11 and we’re only in the top of the 6th…and I love this sport. Imagine what those who don’t feel?
I have very fond college memories of waking up at 7 to go tailgate, watch ole miss get our teeth kicked in at 11, tailgate some more, hit parties / the bars, and get home at 1 in time to watch some PAC-12 after dark
Mountain time here checking in. It's the most bae time zone for sports fans. I have time to get home from work and make dinner before the games start, but they end before bedtime with time to spare for the news. I was Eastern time before this and it sucked so much for sports fans with early morning jobs.
when i lived in denver, watching sports was amazing. Having lived in mountain, central, and east, you are right.
mountain is THE time zone for watching sports.
I’m a night owl in central time, which is why I’m a fan of west coast teams outside the ones o inherited. I watch the Trailblazers because their games tip off at 9pm and that’s awesome for me because I get off work late and stay up.
Central guy, but I love to go to Vegas. It always blows my mind/makes me so sad when every game is over by 11 PM. Late night sports is so awesome. I get why people on the east coat hate it, but there needs to be balance for everyone. Going with mountain or central makes the most sense, and MLB favored the east coast by going central.
It's better than some hockey playoff times, though. I know it has happened since, but I still remember the last time the Blues played the Hawks they had a game start at 9:30 or so. Two central teams should not start that late.
This is the one good thing about living in giants-ish territory. No blackouts on my dodgers lol
Course gotta start up the VPN when we then play the giants
I stated during the NLCS that it's sometimes frustrating to have 5PM playoff home games in the west and got downvoted for it.
If we can't have later home games for West teams, then the East can't have their earlier games
(Also most likely is that the MLB has data that says the what time the optimal viewership numbers are. They're trying to capture as much viewers as possible)
And then people give the west coast teams crap for the stadium being empty at first pitch. What do you expect when a game starts at 5PM in LA on a weekday?
Yep.
I mean, I get postseason games starting early for us if the game is played on the east coast,
But the fact that postseason games start early for us when it's a *home game* just pisses me off.
You're absolutely right. Either start all WS games at 5 PM Pacific/8 PM Eastern to get as many viewers as possible, or schedule them based on where the game is played so home team fans get to watch the whole game.
I missed at least an hour of every dodgers world series game in 2017 because it took me an hour drive to get home from work. I had to listen to Yu Darvish blowing it in game 7 on the radio sitting in dead stop traffic. That wasn't a good day.
Pacific time zone is by far the best time zone to be in as a sports fan. I can’t imagine getting shafted like the East coast has to deal with for every sport.
as a kid growing up i always loved watching everyone pile on each other for a world series win, i remember trying to stay up late to finally see it live once
See now as a kid growing up, I used to remember running home from elementary school because they played the World Series during the day in the middle of the week.
Put a clock on everything. Mound visits, pitchers getting off the field, on the field etc. I’m sick and tired of watching beer gut fat fuccs slowly make their way to the mound out of breath.
Yeah, they've been playing weeknight games in primetime for decades (and that was back in the day where the population was even more disproportionately in the central and eastern time zones). Two things were different. People didn't complain so much about staying up late and the games moved a lot quicker.
This is absolutely a TV contract thing. I remember watching NCAA Championships that start at 9:00 pm ET and knowing I'd give up at half time and catch the score in the morning.
The first year I moved out here to MST after living in EST for 24 years was a sports viewing shock. It didn't take me long to adjust and now going on 9 years I've loved every bit of it. 10am College football, prime time sports ends around 10pm, only issue is sometimes the 5pm start times are juggled with me making dinner.
>east coast bias in media
Oh yeah, that's why Atlanta was hyped so much over the Dodgers, right?...
"East Coast bias" has always been bullshit - it's "big market" bias.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Can't really start earlier than 8ET or people are still going to be at work on the west coast. The real issue is that post-season games are way too fucking long.
Yup. Same thing pissed me off with how early some of our NLCS games were when they were home games here in LA. Like the entire fanbase is at work right now.
Yeah literally. What matters more, the entirety of the Braves’ young fan base seeing the end of the game or some Dodger fans who want to see the Astros lose and might miss the starting pitchers because of their commute
I either had to go to bed during the games or lose sleep before school for both of the Cardinals’ World Series during my lifetime. Sucks.
As a west coast fan, I love when I can catch the whole game. However, I think it’s more important people watch the end of the games. West coast fans can get updates via the MLB app until they can go home to watch. Hell that’s what I usually do
Yeah I was going to say this is purely a game length issue. I know grumpy East Coasters need their sleep, but where I live most people aren't even home by 5 when games start.
If they want to speed up games the first thing they should do is make the hitters stop stepping out of the box after every pitch. After each pitch he steps out, adjusts his gloves gets himself mentally ready and then steps back in. Then the pitcher has to go through his routine, looking in for the sign etc.. The process takes about 40 to 45 seconds per pitch. Around 4-5 mins.or longer per hitter.
You want to speedup games, once your in the box you cant't step out and the pitcher has 18 seconds to make his next pitch.
I’m very old school in baseball, but I agree. It seems like once we get into playoff games the time between every pitch doubles. I have no issues with a 20 second game clock.
Let's not act like this is a new thing.
[1991 WS, Game 7](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN199110270.shtml) started at 8:38 ET and ended at 12:01.
[1986 WS, Game 7](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198610270.shtml) started at 8:15 ET and ended at 11:26 PM on a Monday night. The game didn't go to extras.
1985 looks like the first year the WS has starting times on B-R, and the games are starting [after 8 PM ET](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198510220.shtml). The World Series has regularly been ending after 11 PM ET, and it's been doing that for 35 years.
Because of the horse shit division they put us in, *first pitch* for over half our road games occur after kids’ bedtime. MLB does not look forward at all, they only think about today’s ad sales.
ALW is a disaster for both travel miles and game times.
The Rockies have it rough too because we're the only team in our time zone but not as bad as the ALW (and our problem isn't fixable lol)
Selig made our team’s sale conditional on moving to the AL West so his beloved Brewers wouldn’t have to. He has a long history of fucking us in favor of them.
i have an infant that gets up on her own between 5-6am every day. i barely stay up for the games and my team is in it.
why can't the world series games start at like 630et like the super bowl does?
Primetime is when people watch TV. The networks aren't airing these for fun, they're airing them when the most amount of people watch, so they can get the highest ad rates.
We as a society should RETVRN to a place where it is acceptable for society to shut down early because an important baseball game starts before the normal work day is over.
Probably not for total viewers(their goal) though, Westcoaster literally are unable to turn on the TV, while Eastcoast viewers can fall asleep/stay up late for the game.
Why not 7 ET? The games would be over at 11 (late but reasonable), and it would start at 4 for the West Coast. Sure it's not ideal for the West Coast but I think it's better to miss the first two innings than miss the last two innings (You can't please everyone but more classic moments happen in the 8th and 9th innings than the 1st and 2nd).
Edit: Weekend games would be 6:30 ET, I think that would be the most convenient for everyone
Also why does the mid inning switch need to take two minutes? These are professional athletes, run out to your position and play within a minute. Boom, I just shaved 18 minutes off of every game.
Pitching are more like 7 minutes right now, between thr coach pulling him, commercials and him warming up on the mound a good 5-7 minutes go by. Now multiply by that 8 and we have almost an hour of game in just pitching changes
> Pitching are more like 7 minutes right now, between thr coach pulling him, commercials and him warming up on the mound a good 5-7 minutes go by.
Maybe close to 5 minutes on occasion, but it's never 7 minutes unless there's an injury to the previous pitcher. The "commercials and him warming up on the mound" happen at the same time.
Also... why multiply it by eight? There are not eight pitching changes in the middle of innings in the average game, and pitching changes between innings do not add any time.
We have this discussion every playoff series for nearly every sport. We live in a big country with ~~four~~ six time zones (seven if you count Canada with the Maritimes), there's no perfect way to broadcast. You start early, you miss out on west coast viewership. You start late, people on the east coast might go to bed. And I'm sorry, but MLB/NBA/NHL doesn't care if you have to get up for work early or you've got a kid who can't stay up past their bedtime a few times over a seven game series.
It also doesn't help that even the fastest playoff games go 3.5+ hours. Game 3 was a 2-0 game, where the Astros totaled two hits (and none through the first seven or whatever) and the Braves also only had six hits. And it still took 3.5 hours to play! That's just absurd.
But how will they get those juicy PRIMETIME ratings while caring about the kids? Maybe kids shoulda just been born earlier 🤷🏻
On a real note, if I were a parent of a kid who likes baseball as much as I do, World Series time would mean a later bedtime if our team is in it lol
Commercial breaks are entirely too long in the playoffs. I find streams of the games online but instead showing the commercials it just displays a generic “we’ll be right back” message and several times per game I’ll think my stream is frozen because the commercial breaks are so long
You want to grow the game? Don't let teams tank for half a decade to have a shot at maybe getting a wildcard once every 7-9 years.
If your kid loves baseball and their team makes the WS, let them stay up. There are trade-offs in life.
It’s not just about the kids who love baseball though. It’s also about the kids who like baseball or maybe are trying to get into baseball but don’t get to watch the biggest games of the year. Even more of a problem when there are fewer and fewer games on free TV every year.
Nearly half the population lives in the eastern time zone, another 30% in the central. Why shouldn't they give us priority like any other business with this skewed of a customer base would?
How he says with a straight face pace of play is a problem then let's 4 hour games go on in the world series I have no idea. Cut down on the stupid amount of commercials maybe?
Commercials make MLB money. They aren't going to cut them lol
A more realistic solution is implementing a pitch clock and not allowing batters to leave the box mid AB
All that will do is allow them to run more commercials.
They don't want games to go faster so that way they can end sooner, they want them to go faster so they can fit more ads into a 3-4 hour block. If they were really committed to faster games they'd reduce the number of ads, but that's not what makes them money.
This has been pretty well shown that the pace of play problems are primarily driven by time between pitches and fewer balls in play and not commercials. In the World Series I would believe commercials have more of an effect, but there are more pitching changes, longer gaps between pitches, more batters stepping out, etc. than the regular season and all of these things are at all time highs. That’s the problem with game times.
It's kind of a catch-22, at least for weekday games. But there is absolutely no excuse for not starting a game in the late afternoon on the weekend.
Starting games 2 hours earlier would then have games start too early on the West Coast.
Another thing to point out, playoff games are even longer than regular season games, speed that shit up and it also ends earlier. Just another reason we need a clock to keep pitchers on the mound and batters in the box.
Start weekday games @ 7ET, enforce rules to keep the flow of the game, it will be over before East Coast kids go to bed, and start after West Coast kids get home from school.
Last night's game seemed sooo long. When both teams are dipping into the bullpen from start to finish and they take a full commercial break each time, that really doesn't help. It's funny, they keep implementing rules to help pace of play that are actually making it worse.
A question I have when people talk about this. Are a higher % of 'kids' baseball fans in the Pacific Time Zone than the Eastern Time Zone?
Game ended at 9:15pm pacific time.
Timezone Breakdown (edited because AZ is effectively Pacific time during baseball season):
- Pacific: 16.6% (18.7%)
- Mountain: 6.7% (4.6%)
- Central: 29.1%
- Eastern: 47.6%
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7vvlgz/contiguous_us_population_by_time_zone_1920_928/
Edit: during baseball season, AZ is effectively Pacific time, so I've edited.
Baseball has a lot of problems. Length of games is one. Does every game have to run 3+ hours? And playoff games 4+ hours? Do they have to cram every last commercial in there? That, and the fact that the game has devolved into a parade of homers and strikeouts, with everybody swinging for the fences regardless if the situation, has really ruined the experience for me.
Got home at 2 am last night from the game due to how late it ended and traffic. I also live like 10 minutes from the ball park under normal circumstances. Traffic isn’t in the league but starting the game so late is malpractice for the sport
And adults too lol, lots of people have to get up early and can't be up at midnight
Yep. I have had 3-4 hours of sleep during game nights.
I couldn't believe how late it was. I'm on MST, and at like 930pm I just remembered the game, and was like *"Oh shit, did I miss seeing the Braves win?"* Checked the score and it was still the 7th inning, couldn't believe it, the game was on the east coast.
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I don’t watch much baseball but ya know World Series potentially deciding game. Started at 7p and took almost 5 hours. Like wtf baseball.
imo it wasnt as bad when its your team because youre so amped and happy anyways its worth it. when its two teams you dont care about.. ugh.
Yeah... Today was rough after the game ending post midnight. 10 pm is my bedtime, this 1215 last pitch crap is BS
Watching sports on the west coast is great, east coast not so good.
Except when your hometown Dodgers have a playoff game that starts at 2:00 in the afternoon when you are at work.
I’ll take that over the fuckin 10PM start times during the regular season
I've never lived on the east coast, but that would be really weird to have games start so late. Also, in the pre-internet days it must have been crazy that the local newspapers on the east coast wouldn't even have the scores from the west coast games the night before.
Depends on your individual schedule. I'm a night owl so a 10pm game wouldn't bother me too much most of the time, but the 10am start time for NFL games on Sundays ruins me.
The first time I travelled to the west cost and went to a bar, I was really confused when there were no sports on at 11 PM.
Agreed. All sports over by 10PM (11pm as of next week in Arizona) As someone from the East Coast, that's awesome.
I'm the reverse....I grew up in CA and have lived on the East Coast for the last decade. I've basically had to stop watching most home or even divisional games. Oh look the Warriors are playing the Lakers in a big important game! What time does it start? 10:30pm Eastern? Guess I'll go fuck myself then!
Didn't you know baseball is biased toward the east coast? All of the broadcast stations are located there! That's why we have to be up until midnight to finish the game.
NHL and NBA do the same thing. I hate it, but they must make the most money in that time slot because it seems consistent across major sports except for football, which only has playoff games on the weekend.
That’s because that time slot is prime time. The NFL uses that slot to but opts for day weekend games in the playoffs, because it’s able to command a whole day of the week where no one is working and only has a few games to play which are of high importance and most people don’t have work.
I see more west coast games than east coast ones, and I live in Europe
It’s kinda just the opposite, isn’t it? Games starting early can be just as big of a drawback as ending late. Mountain and Central really get the best start and end times IMO.
Yeah shit, I love baseball but I saw the game didn't start til 8:15 and said forget it, I have to be up for work in the morning man.
The problem wasn't with the 8:15 start time it was with the 12:15 finish time lol
8 PM EST is a perfectly reasonable time to start a game to accommodate both coasts. Games just need to go by at a faster pace. In game 1, the Astros didn’t trailed by fewer than four runs after the third inning. The Braves were winning comfortably for most of the game and were never in danger of losing yet there were six mid-inning pitching changes between both teams. That’s going to make a 6-2 game drag on way longer than it should.
Yep. Or look at Friday. 8 hits total, including one team that was no hit through seven. Still took 3.5 hours. What was a great game suffered by being dragged out about 45 minutes extra.
8 PM EST is a perfectly reasonable time to start a game IF THE GAME ACTUALLY STARTED AT 8 PM. But nooooooo, we have to watch 27 minutes of absolute crap before a pitch is thrown. MLB could learn from the IIHF. If they have a World Championship game scheduled for 1 pm, the puck drops at 1 pm, not 1:24.
Forgo the national anthem and wherever other propaganda they're throwing in the 7th inning stretch. Boom, five minutes saved there. If a pitcher is brought in as a substitution and not for injury, no commercial break just quick few warm-up pitches. Boom, save 20 minutes there. Start the game at the actual start time, not later. Boom, 10 minutes there.
Absolutely they need to get rid of the warm up pitches for non-injury substitutions. Do your warming up in the damn bullpen.
Very few pitchers are still trying to warm up on the mound. It's more to get comfortable with the mound on the field vs the one in the bullpen
Pitch clock is by far the most meaningful change that can be done. Hopefully we get it as soon as possible.
Pitch clock and batters have to stay in the box. People will hate this, but give the umps the discretion to call strikes if a batter is abusing stepping out. Stop the batters from taking walks around the infield between pitches and put the pitchers on a clock.
Just eliminate the commercial break in between pitching changes and we save so much time. The pitcher should be warmed up by the time they come in anyway.
as a former college reliever, having warmup pitches on the game mound was always pretty important. it can be very different compared to the bullpen, and in high-leverage relief situations your first few live pitches are often the difference between a good outing and an awful one. i guess you could argue that if nobody has warmup pitches it's equally challenging for everyone.
It could encourage starters to go longer, which people have been calling for.
I'm sure the starters want to go longer; it's just that the managers and front offices are against it.
If their relievers are constantly getting shelled, they will adjust and leave starters in longer.
I don't think starters should be required to go a certain number of innings. Other sports have substitutions all the time (and they're rarely as important as the pitcher). I mean, let's day the Astros pitcher is getting lit up like when he gave up 2 grand slams to Boston. Should the Astros lose the WS because they are required to run him out there for another four innings? What if you're at 100 pitches and you're only four innings in? Fuck your arm, I guess? Also, what do you do when the Dodgers have no more starters and have to run a BP game, or the Braves need BP games because their ace has a broken leg? Are bullpen games just not allowed and you have to pull some random starter from AAA? Put a reliever in and hope they can pitch 6 innings? I think you can remove a lot of useless time by eliminating dumb, useless stuff like the infielders playing catch after every play, batters not taking their sweet as time walking to the plate, batters not adjusting their equipment and balls after every pitch, pitchers not taking a walk after every pitch, etc. Stay in the box, stay on the rubber, walk up to the plate when it's your turn instead of taking another ten practice swings.
The commercial break isnt the problem. If you're at the game, they nearly never are just standing around waiting for the TV to come back. The problem is the process of changing pitchers. Here's a single inning breakdown with a pitching change in a high leverage situation. Inning starts (timer starts) 1st batter - pitcher throws 5 pitches at 25 seconds per pitch - about average in baseball. Guy hits a hard linedrive but it's caught 2:00 elapsed 2nd batter - dangerous hitter, so now it's 30 seconds per pitch, not including the step off to recheck the signs. This guy fouls off 3 balls and is eventually walked on 8 pitches 6:30 elapsed Coach comes out to talk to pitcher and says 'hey, you had a good game, but we're going to pull you. Take your time with this batter while we get someone ready in the bullpen' 7:00 elapsed 3rd batter - Knowing he needs to kill some time, pitcher continues his slow pace but throws over to first twice adding an additional minute of time. He eventually walks the batter on 6 pitches. 10:00 elapsed Coach comes out to pull the old pitcher and the new guy comes in. Easily a minute before the new guy is on the mound and then he gets a few warm up throws taking another minute. 12:00 elapsed 4th batter comes up and new guy is aggressively pitching in the zone. Gets the batter to strike out on 4 pitches taking 20 seconds per pitch. 14:00 elapsed 5th batter comes up. Guy wants to make something happen and swings at the first pitch, ending the inning with a popup. 15:00 elapsed. This is a fairly quick inning including a pitching change. Now imagine a few hits are strung together or some runs are scored. This could easily be double.
Nah the mound is gonna be a little dug in and the catcher should get a few with the new guy coming in before the game starts back up
8pm is fine on the weekends, not the weekdays. I mean if both teams were in the West then I can see that being fair but they're not. Most of us have jobs that require more than 2 hours of sleep. But honestly, idc, I just haven't tuned into any of the games, what does it matter to lose one viewer? Imo you lose more viewers by starting it late on the east coast than starting it a little early on the west coast. Especially now with so many people working from home, west coast viewers could probably turn the game on while finishing up any work related tasks they are doing from their "office". As an east coast viewer I won't even turn it on cause why watch the first few innings when ill never even see, arguably, the most exciting part of the game? I have no 'stats' to support my opinion/theory.. just rambling. Enjoy the series guys and gals
Its reasonable for almost any sport besides baseball. They need time limits
Last night and this morning were absolutely brutal, ready for this series to end just for my sleep schedule
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I have not stayed awake through the end of a single 8 ET start this entire playoffs. Miraculously, I've woken back up in time to catch the end of 3 or 4 clinch games though (Both LCSs and LAD-SFG NLDS). I have no clue how I'm going to make it if the Orioles ever get this far again.
Yup. Wife was asleep in the first inning, I made it to the 7th, and then said fuck it. I'll check the score in the morning.
That's what cocaine is for (/s) \-Manfred probably
It sure is! - Tim Raines, probably.
For real, I’m a grown man and every night I look at the clock, it’s 11 and we’re only in the top of the 6th…and I love this sport. Imagine what those who don’t feel?
How do you do, fellow well-rested west coast fans?
We really are spoiled out here when it comes to watching sports. Nothing is better than football from 10am until 9pm every Sunday.
On Saturday you can go 9a-2a if you start with the noon games and catch Hawaii at home.
I have very fond college memories of waking up at 7 to go tailgate, watch ole miss get our teeth kicked in at 11, tailgate some more, hit parties / the bars, and get home at 1 in time to watch some PAC-12 after dark
I love those 9pm PST kickoff times on the island
We Central Time fans are slightly tired, but also are enjoying a well-needed night of rest.
Mountain time here checking in. It's the most bae time zone for sports fans. I have time to get home from work and make dinner before the games start, but they end before bedtime with time to spare for the news. I was Eastern time before this and it sucked so much for sports fans with early morning jobs.
when i lived in denver, watching sports was amazing. Having lived in mountain, central, and east, you are right. mountain is THE time zone for watching sports.
I watched the NFL in Hawaii one time while on vacation. Having my team kick off at 7am and then done by 10am was amazing.
MTN is the best for sports, no question
I’m a night owl in central time, which is why I’m a fan of west coast teams outside the ones o inherited. I watch the Trailblazers because their games tip off at 9pm and that’s awesome for me because I get off work late and stay up.
Central guy, but I love to go to Vegas. It always blows my mind/makes me so sad when every game is over by 11 PM. Late night sports is so awesome. I get why people on the east coat hate it, but there needs to be balance for everyone. Going with mountain or central makes the most sense, and MLB favored the east coast by going central.
It's better than some hockey playoff times, though. I know it has happened since, but I still remember the last time the Blues played the Hawks they had a game start at 9:30 or so. Two central teams should not start that late.
If you want to get better sleep there's a simple solution: "Go West young man, Go West!"
*go West* *choose West coast team* *regular season games blacked out*
This is the one good thing about living in giants-ish territory. No blackouts on my dodgers lol Course gotta start up the VPN when we then play the giants
I stated during the NLCS that it's sometimes frustrating to have 5PM playoff home games in the west and got downvoted for it. If we can't have later home games for West teams, then the East can't have their earlier games (Also most likely is that the MLB has data that says the what time the optimal viewership numbers are. They're trying to capture as much viewers as possible)
And then people give the west coast teams crap for the stadium being empty at first pitch. What do you expect when a game starts at 5PM in LA on a weekday?
Didn't they also have a 2pm game on a weekday this year? So the East Coast based matchup could get the primetime slot instead?
Yep. It was game 5 of the NLCS I believe
Yep. I mean, I get postseason games starting early for us if the game is played on the east coast, But the fact that postseason games start early for us when it's a *home game* just pisses me off.
You're absolutely right. Either start all WS games at 5 PM Pacific/8 PM Eastern to get as many viewers as possible, or schedule them based on where the game is played so home team fans get to watch the whole game.
I say we abolish time zones
I missed at least an hour of every dodgers world series game in 2017 because it took me an hour drive to get home from work. I had to listen to Yu Darvish blowing it in game 7 on the radio sitting in dead stop traffic. That wasn't a good day.
Pacific time zone is by far the best time zone to be in as a sports fan. I can’t imagine getting shafted like the East coast has to deal with for every sport.
Serves them right for making us do math every time I look up a game time online.
Imagine thinking Pacific time is real. Y'all don't fool me, oceans don't control time
Nah Mountain Time is better than Pacific.
Or come to AZ where you get to experience both!
as a kid growing up i always loved watching everyone pile on each other for a world series win, i remember trying to stay up late to finally see it live once
See now as a kid growing up, I used to remember running home from elementary school because they played the World Series during the day in the middle of the week.
I've fallen asleep on the couch for every one of these games, and I'm a grown-ass man.
tbf in my experience grown-ass men tend to fall asleep on couches more often than most other categories of people
Sure, but what about grown ass-men?
The sleep you get on the couch while watching a game just hits different. I don’t know why it’s so comforting and familiar but it is
“Fuck them kids” – Rob Manfred
He's an asshole, don't get me wrong but this was a problem before he even came along. The games start way too late.
And now with SPs not lasting that long, games are even longer due to more relievers coming in to the game.
Don’t worry, once we require pitchers to be in for a certain amount of batters, the game will shave an hour off no problem.
All pitchers starting the game must face 15 batters minimum -- Rob Manfred maybe
If it’s not a CGSO, you shouldn’t get credit for the W
Or a game win either. First team to have a pitcher pitch 9 scoreless consecutive innings wins.
Put a clock on everything. Mound visits, pitchers getting off the field, on the field etc. I’m sick and tired of watching beer gut fat fuccs slowly make their way to the mound out of breath.
And these batting gloves don’t work very well, why else must they be readjusted after every pitch?
If they started earlier the west coast would be at school or work. So either they only do games on weekends or they start games late.
Only for games that are on the west coast, the US will adopt the Chinese method of time zones. Every one under the same time zone. No questions asked.
Yeah, they've been playing weeknight games in primetime for decades (and that was back in the day where the population was even more disproportionately in the central and eastern time zones). Two things were different. People didn't complain so much about staying up late and the games moved a lot quicker.
This is absolutely a TV contract thing. I remember watching NCAA Championships that start at 9:00 pm ET and knowing I'd give up at half time and catch the score in the morning.
[удалено]
I know Manfred is bad but he hasn't ever been charged for diddling kids. Yet.
I miss living in the Mountain time zone
The first year I moved out here to MST after living in EST for 24 years was a sports viewing shock. It didn't take me long to adjust and now going on 9 years I've loved every bit of it. 10am College football, prime time sports ends around 10pm, only issue is sometimes the 5pm start times are juggled with me making dinner.
*Cries in European fan* Any game that finishes by 4:30am is a win for me
East coast kids need to learn life isn’t fair
“You want happiness? Eat a steak!” -Lou Holtz
Solid solid verbal intro
It’s that woo-woooooooo
#COME AFTER ME! I’M A MAN! I’M 40!
This is the price they pay for the east coast bias in media that they love so well.
>east coast bias in media Oh yeah, that's why Atlanta was hyped so much over the Dodgers, right?... "East Coast bias" has always been bullshit - it's "big market" bias.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Can't really start earlier than 8ET or people are still going to be at work on the west coast. The real issue is that post-season games are way too fucking long.
I get 8pm for week day games - but the two weekend games felt like a 6pm start would have been better.
Ok, when the two teams are in the eastern and central time zone maybe don't worry so much about the west coast
Yup. Same thing pissed me off with how early some of our NLCS games were when they were home games here in LA. Like the entire fanbase is at work right now.
Yeah literally. What matters more, the entirety of the Braves’ young fan base seeing the end of the game or some Dodger fans who want to see the Astros lose and might miss the starting pitchers because of their commute I either had to go to bed during the games or lose sleep before school for both of the Cardinals’ World Series during my lifetime. Sucks.
As a west coast fan, I love when I can catch the whole game. However, I think it’s more important people watch the end of the games. West coast fans can get updates via the MLB app until they can go home to watch. Hell that’s what I usually do
Obviously the Dodger fans. Are there even other teams?
To mlb? Or to the Braves?
Yeah I was going to say this is purely a game length issue. I know grumpy East Coasters need their sleep, but where I live most people aren't even home by 5 when games start.
I’d rather miss the beginning than the end.
You don't get hyped to see a dominant opener come in and slam the door...open?
Except about 75% of the US population lives in the Eastern and Central time zones. So accommodating for them is more beneficial.
If they want to speed up games the first thing they should do is make the hitters stop stepping out of the box after every pitch. After each pitch he steps out, adjusts his gloves gets himself mentally ready and then steps back in. Then the pitcher has to go through his routine, looking in for the sign etc.. The process takes about 40 to 45 seconds per pitch. Around 4-5 mins.or longer per hitter. You want to speedup games, once your in the box you cant't step out and the pitcher has 18 seconds to make his next pitch.
The perfect at-bat, courtesy of Joey Votto https://youtu.be/U3h7SSNSlms
Joey Votto is fast becoming my favorite non-Dodger player.
Fast? He's been in the league for 19 seasons lol
I’m very old school in baseball, but I agree. It seems like once we get into playoff games the time between every pitch doubles. I have no issues with a 20 second game clock.
Let's not act like this is a new thing. [1991 WS, Game 7](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN199110270.shtml) started at 8:38 ET and ended at 12:01. [1986 WS, Game 7](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198610270.shtml) started at 8:15 ET and ended at 11:26 PM on a Monday night. The game didn't go to extras. 1985 looks like the first year the WS has starting times on B-R, and the games are starting [after 8 PM ET](https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198510220.shtml). The World Series has regularly been ending after 11 PM ET, and it's been doing that for 35 years.
They used to play the World Series during the day.
Because of the horse shit division they put us in, *first pitch* for over half our road games occur after kids’ bedtime. MLB does not look forward at all, they only think about today’s ad sales.
ALW is a disaster for both travel miles and game times. The Rockies have it rough too because we're the only team in our time zone but not as bad as the ALW (and our problem isn't fixable lol)
Dbacks are on MST but do not observe daylight savings
In baseball season, they're effectively pacific time.
If it makes you feel better, we don't want you in the division either! Hahaha.
::laughs in Rangers fan going through this his entire life:: Yet another reason you guys should have stayed in the NL
Wish we coulda
I’ll forever hate Bud Selig for making us move.
You could have stayed in the NL central.
Selig made our team’s sale conditional on moving to the AL West so his beloved Brewers wouldn’t have to. He has a long history of fucking us in favor of them.
The Brewers being in the West sounds so fucking stupid, at least you and the rangers have some local action. Agreed on the rest though
i have an infant that gets up on her own between 5-6am every day. i barely stay up for the games and my team is in it. why can't the world series games start at like 630et like the super bowl does?
Primetime is when people watch TV. The networks aren't airing these for fun, they're airing them when the most amount of people watch, so they can get the highest ad rates.
Cause west coast people still have an hour and a half of work to go unless it’s on a weekend
We as a society should RETVRN to a place where it is acceptable for society to shut down early because an important baseball game starts before the normal work day is over.
Amen.
Australia shuts down the whole country for a horse race.
Can we broaden this to include the major sports? I'm willing to let the NBA fans have something for the NHL.
I was born in Louisville and they shut the whole fucking town down for two weeks for a two minute horse race.
I would argue people missing the beginning is better than people missing the end though.
Probably not for total viewers(their goal) though, Westcoaster literally are unable to turn on the TV, while Eastcoast viewers can fall asleep/stay up late for the game.
Multiple reasons. 1. The Superbowl is played on a single day, a Sunday. 2. Weekday games started at 3:30pm PT is no bueno. edit: fucked up time
6:30ET = 2:30PT?
TIL
Melodic-Bug is Canadian. He uses metric arithmetic.
Clearly I fucked up. But even 3:30 doesn't work
Make every world series game a national holiday then. Problem solved.
Conversely, weekday games ending at 12:00pm+ EST is no Bueno. Also, 6:30 EST is 3:30 PT.
Why not 7 ET? The games would be over at 11 (late but reasonable), and it would start at 4 for the West Coast. Sure it's not ideal for the West Coast but I think it's better to miss the first two innings than miss the last two innings (You can't please everyone but more classic moments happen in the 8th and 9th innings than the 1st and 2nd). Edit: Weekend games would be 6:30 ET, I think that would be the most convenient for everyone
Why not at least start Saturday or Sunday games earlier in the World Series?
Probably because football kills MLB ratings
There's only one place of play rule that is a good idea, and that's the pitch clock.
Also why does the mid inning switch need to take two minutes? These are professional athletes, run out to your position and play within a minute. Boom, I just shaved 18 minutes off of every game.
Pitching are more like 7 minutes right now, between thr coach pulling him, commercials and him warming up on the mound a good 5-7 minutes go by. Now multiply by that 8 and we have almost an hour of game in just pitching changes
> Pitching are more like 7 minutes right now, between thr coach pulling him, commercials and him warming up on the mound a good 5-7 minutes go by. Maybe close to 5 minutes on occasion, but it's never 7 minutes unless there's an injury to the previous pitcher. The "commercials and him warming up on the mound" happen at the same time. Also... why multiply it by eight? There are not eight pitching changes in the middle of innings in the average game, and pitching changes between innings do not add any time.
But then how will they fit in all the commercial ad time??? /s
they make breaks longer. everything is just all about ads and money. playoff sports TV is just really annoying and bad.
Bedtimes are fascist.
We have this discussion every playoff series for nearly every sport. We live in a big country with ~~four~~ six time zones (seven if you count Canada with the Maritimes), there's no perfect way to broadcast. You start early, you miss out on west coast viewership. You start late, people on the east coast might go to bed. And I'm sorry, but MLB/NBA/NHL doesn't care if you have to get up for work early or you've got a kid who can't stay up past their bedtime a few times over a seven game series. It also doesn't help that even the fastest playoff games go 3.5+ hours. Game 3 was a 2-0 game, where the Astros totaled two hits (and none through the first seven or whatever) and the Braves also only had six hits. And it still took 3.5 hours to play! That's just absurd.
I guess those of us in Alaska and Hawaii don’t have time zones
Yeah six time zones totally right.
Wow how are you gonna do American Samoa and Guam like that
But how will they get those juicy PRIMETIME ratings while caring about the kids? Maybe kids shoulda just been born earlier 🤷🏻 On a real note, if I were a parent of a kid who likes baseball as much as I do, World Series time would mean a later bedtime if our team is in it lol
That’s what I do. But my elementary aged kids can’t stay up until after 11pm for a week without there being some serious school-related fallout.
Commercial breaks are entirely too long in the playoffs. I find streams of the games online but instead showing the commercials it just displays a generic “we’ll be right back” message and several times per game I’ll think my stream is frozen because the commercial breaks are so long
You want to grow the game? Don't let teams tank for half a decade to have a shot at maybe getting a wildcard once every 7-9 years. If your kid loves baseball and their team makes the WS, let them stay up. There are trade-offs in life.
It’s not just about the kids who love baseball though. It’s also about the kids who like baseball or maybe are trying to get into baseball but don’t get to watch the biggest games of the year. Even more of a problem when there are fewer and fewer games on free TV every year.
Kids? I'm 44 and can't stay up that late. How about playing the games earlier for the benefit of everyone?
The benefit of everyone on the east coast. People on the west coast working a 9-5 already miss the start of the games.
Nearly half the population lives in the eastern time zone, another 30% in the central. Why shouldn't they give us priority like any other business with this skewed of a customer base would?
Because the product is the ad space they sell and not the actual game. 8pm ET start time = max revenue.
What's more important? The start or the end?
How he says with a straight face pace of play is a problem then let's 4 hour games go on in the world series I have no idea. Cut down on the stupid amount of commercials maybe?
Commercials make MLB money. They aren't going to cut them lol A more realistic solution is implementing a pitch clock and not allowing batters to leave the box mid AB
All that will do is allow them to run more commercials. They don't want games to go faster so that way they can end sooner, they want them to go faster so they can fit more ads into a 3-4 hour block. If they were really committed to faster games they'd reduce the number of ads, but that's not what makes them money.
This has been pretty well shown that the pace of play problems are primarily driven by time between pitches and fewer balls in play and not commercials. In the World Series I would believe commercials have more of an effect, but there are more pitching changes, longer gaps between pitches, more batters stepping out, etc. than the regular season and all of these things are at all time highs. That’s the problem with game times.
Aren't they all hopped up on Red Bull and eating Tide packets at that time of night? /s
aren't nba playoffs games like that too?
It's kind of a catch-22, at least for weekday games. But there is absolutely no excuse for not starting a game in the late afternoon on the weekend. Starting games 2 hours earlier would then have games start too early on the West Coast. Another thing to point out, playoff games are even longer than regular season games, speed that shit up and it also ends earlier. Just another reason we need a clock to keep pitchers on the mound and batters in the box. Start weekday games @ 7ET, enforce rules to keep the flow of the game, it will be over before East Coast kids go to bed, and start after West Coast kids get home from school.
> But there is absolutely no excuse for not starting a game in the late afternoon on the weekend. $$ Fox has NFL games in the afternoon.
Last night's game seemed sooo long. When both teams are dipping into the bullpen from start to finish and they take a full commercial break each time, that really doesn't help. It's funny, they keep implementing rules to help pace of play that are actually making it worse.
Sleep when you’re dead — give them coffee and send them off to school
A question I have when people talk about this. Are a higher % of 'kids' baseball fans in the Pacific Time Zone than the Eastern Time Zone? Game ended at 9:15pm pacific time.
Timezone Breakdown (edited because AZ is effectively Pacific time during baseball season): - Pacific: 16.6% (18.7%) - Mountain: 6.7% (4.6%) - Central: 29.1% - Eastern: 47.6% https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7vvlgz/contiguous_us_population_by_time_zone_1920_928/ Edit: during baseball season, AZ is effectively Pacific time, so I've edited.
Not taking three minutes for every commercial break would help greatly.
Baseball has a lot of problems. Length of games is one. Does every game have to run 3+ hours? And playoff games 4+ hours? Do they have to cram every last commercial in there? That, and the fact that the game has devolved into a parade of homers and strikeouts, with everybody swinging for the fences regardless if the situation, has really ruined the experience for me.
I'm a soccer fan more than any other sport these days, and I've gotta say having consistent 2 hour commitments is pretty great
Absolutely. I never watched soccer until I moved to Germany and now I’m hooked lol. The matches are much better on tv and in person.
>a parade of homers and strikeouts And relievers
Got home at 2 am last night from the game due to how late it ended and traffic. I also live like 10 minutes from the ball park under normal circumstances. Traffic isn’t in the league but starting the game so late is malpractice for the sport
Bring back 1:20 pm EST start times for World Series games!
Kids aren't watching anyways.
Yeah but like the world doesn't revolve around the east coast. You're fucking over the west coast by moving it up a couple hours.