Major League Baseball has introduced significant rule changes to improve pace of play during the 2023 season. The league has introduced a pitch clock, limited defensive shifting, and made the bases larger.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-larger-bases-shifts
According to Baseball Reference, the average 9-inning game length was 3:03 during the 2022 regular season. An average game length less than 2:40 would be a decrease of over 23 minutes per game.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml
According to ESPN, use of the pitch clock during the 2022 MiLB season reduced the length of an average 9-inning game by 25 minutes, from 3:03 to 2:38. The article claims that MLB would like to replicate this effect in the upcoming season.
This market will resolve at the end of the 2023 MLB regular season based on the Baseball Reference data here:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml
The market will resolve YES if the Time/9I column reads less than 2:40 for the 2023 regular season. If the column reads 2:40 or more, the market will resolve NO.
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Edit: oops looked at wrong column
(I checked it yesterday and it was at 2:39)
Edit: Update Sept. 29
Probability of game time of 160 mins using bootstrapping: 0.03 %2385 / 2430 games completed (98.1481 %)
45 games remaining
Game time average for 9-inning games: 159.8207 minutesThe webpage (misc.) does show the same number of games, so it seems they do update the table every day it seems...
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Key to this is that the time shown on the website looks like it is not rounding since it shows 2:39 rather than 2:40 when I get 159.8602 minutes (so it looks like it is taking the math.floor). My bet is largely on assuming this is correct and it is using the same methodology as me (adding up all the games minutes and then dividing by the number of games). Since I am using pybaseball it is using the same data as on their website for game times so there should not be any errors there.
Notebook here:
https://github.com/JRPdata/wastebook/blob/main/mlb_2023.ipynb
Went on twitter and tried to estimate the game times from scheduled start to first post that the game had ended, and after crunching the numbers the time went down after including estimates of today's game lengths:
Before today's games: 159.9300 minutes
After today's games (estimate): 159.9035 minutes
Looks to be about 6 seconds shy of 2:40 if the estimates are correct (they might be over-estimates)
For reference here are the game estimates (for 9 inning games and the two 11 inning games (which obviously don't count):
TEAM START END GAME_LENGTH
ORIOLES 3:05 5:51PM 2:46
MARLINS 3:05 5:25PM 2:20
DODGERS 3:05 5:51PM 2:46
ANGELS 3:07 5:39PM 2:32
RAYS 3:07 5:56PM 2:49
ASTROS 3:10 5:54PM 2:44
BRAVES 3:10 6:25PM 3:15
*PADRES 3:10 6:18PM 3:08 11 innings
*TWINS 3:10 6:19PM 3:09 11 innings
TIGERS 3:10 5:38PM 2:28
ROYALS 3:10 5:41PM 2:31
CUBS 3:10 5:36PM 2:26
METS 3:10 5:42PM 2:32
RANGERS 3:10 5:14PM 2:04
REDS 3:15 5:42PM 2:27
sep30str_9 = ['2:46','2:20','2:46','2:32','2:49','2:44','3:15','2:28','2:31','2:26','2:32','2:04','2:27']
sep30str_11 = ['3:08', '3:09']
With an average of 2:35 for today's 9 inning games (155.385 minutes)