Postseason's pace problem
— -- Here's a suggestion for baseball's committee on speeding up the pace of games: Please hurry yourself up and take action ASAP so that postseason games can end before midnight. In Hawaii.
Don't get me wrong. This has been a very dramatic and gripping postseason. The Royals have sent four games into extra innings and have won five of their six games in their final at-bat. The Cardinals have electrified their fans with big home runs.
As entertaining as they are though, the games simply are lasting far longer than necessary. The nine American League playoff games so far have averaged four hours. Sure, there have been four extra-inning games, but even so. Four hours? Heck, Saturday's Game 2 lasted 4 hours and 17 minutes despite going just nine innings. The shortest AL game has been 3 hours and 38 minutes.
"They're really slow," Baltimore reliever Darren O'Day said after Game 2. "They're tough to watch. I understand it's the postseason. But these are taking too long."
He is right. Local and passionate national baseball fans will watch from beginning to end. But casual fans will not set aside four to five hours for a game. Even devoted fans wouldn't mind being able to watch an occasional game in less than 3½ hours. This is nothing new. People complain about postseason games lasting too long year after year. Yet year after year, postseason games just last longer and longer. And the reasons why are obvious.
Long commercials: Commercial breaks last three minutes during the postseason. With at least 17 breaks in a game, that's 51 minutes, or nearly an hour devoted strictly to advertising. The GEICO gecko is already threatening Derek Jeter's career record for postseason air time.
Pitching changes: The mounting number of pitching changes means there are even more commercial breaks. The Angels used seven relievers in their Game 3 division series loss to the Royals. The Orioles used six relievers in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. I guess we can just be grateful the networks don't take an additional commercial break after a reliever's first batter the way they often do right before and immediately after a kickoff in football.
