How are the Atlanta Braves doing with length and pace of game?
Time of Game
We’ll look at time of game first. For our post here, I’ve decided just to compare NL teams. The DH in the AL, in general, makes their games longer and makes any comparisons a bit like apples and oranges.
Baseball Reference very conveniently tracks all time of game info so all this data comes from their God-send of a website.
The average time of game among NL teams in 2017 is 3:07. Here’s the breakdown by team:
| CHC | 3:15 |
| WAS | 3:14 |
| NYM | 3:14 |
| LAD | 3:12 |
| PHI | 3:11 |
| MIL | 3:10 |
| STL | 3:09 |
| COL | 3:06 |
| PIT | 3:06 |
| MIA | 3:06 |
| ARI | 3:05 |
| SFG | 3:03 |
| CIN | 3:02 |
| ATL | 3:02 |
| SDP | 2:57 |
Somewhat surprisingly to me the Atlanta Braves are playing the 2nd quickest games in the National League. If you’re wondering, there’s only 1 team in the AL (KC) playing faster so Atlanta is playing the 3rd fastest games in the majors.
I say surprising because, in my head, a team that has struggled to pitch but has produced more than its share of offense, like the Braves, wouldn’t be the type I would think plays relatively quick games.
But there they are. We’ll get to the reason why in a minute.
Some other time of game highlights:
- The longest game in 2017 was 4:06. It was a 14-inning game vs STL on May 7th.
- The longest 9-inning was 3:34 vs the Mets on May 3rd. Mets scored 16 runs.
- The shortest game of the year was 2:20. Braves won 4-2 against SD on April 15th.
It’s important to remember this is a snapshot of 8-weeks’ worth of data. It will change and change again. For instance, Atlanta’s last 4 games played have had game times of 2:41, 2:40, 2:31, and 2:29. All well below their average. Had I put this together a week ago, the average would’ve obviously been higher. It’s just good to remember the earlier noise/signal qualifier.