The Pitch Clock and How It Affected Timber Rattlers Game Times

The 2022 season was the first Wisconsin Timber Rattlers season played with the “pitch clock”. The clock was introduced to help with “pace-of-play”. Did this new innovation work? Yes.

The chart below shows the average time of a nine-inning Timber Rattlers home game compared to the average time of a nine-inning Midwest League game from 2005 through 2022. The 2005 season is the first year data was available on average game time. That is why the chart starts in 2005.

The red line is for the Timber Rattlers average time of home games. The blue line is for the Midwest League average time.

The averages stayed mostly steady from 2005 through 2015. The Midwest League game time went up at a steady pace from 2015 through 2021 to reach a peak of 3:06:32. Wisconsin game times went up and down between 2015 through 2018 before a sharp increase to reach 3:12:11 in 2021.

The introduction of the pitch clock for the 2022 season dropped the league average to 2:33:19 and the Timber Rattlers home game average to 2:29:43.

The pitch clock also had an effect on both seven-inning and extra-inning games. These times are not included in the chart, but you can see that data in the table included in this article.

Here are comparisons between 2021 and 2022 average game times for seven-inning and extra-inning games for both the Midwest League average and the Timber Rattlers home game average from the table:

Timber Rattlers 2021 home seven-inning average game time: 2:32:53
Timber Rattlers 2022 home seven-inning average game time: 1:52:25

Midwest League 2021 seven-inning average game time: 2:24:46
Midwest League 2022 seven-inning average game time: 2:02:16

Timber Rattlers 2021 home extra-inning average game time: 3:38:39
Timber Rattlers 2022 home extra-inning average game time: 2:59:48

Midwest League 2021 extra-inning average game time: 3:40:20
Midwest League 2022 extra-inning average game time: 3:38:39

The pitch clock and other initiatives that started with the 2022 season had a dramatic effect on game times. Even elapsed times of the longest and shortest nine-inning games of the season saw a drop.

The longest nine-inning game for Wisconsin in 2021 was a 4:28 marathon with Cedar Rapids on September 10. Wisconsin's longest nine-inning game in 2022 was 3:25 against Cedar Rapids on July 1, a difference of over an hour.

The shortest nine-inning Timber Rattlers game in 2021 was 2:18 against Quad Cities on June 16. The Rattlers shortest nine-inning game in 2022 was a 1:55 sprint with South Bend on July 6.

Also, the Timber Rattler had four nine-inning games concluded in less than two hours in 2022.

It will be interesting to see how the pitch clock affects MLB games in 2023.