Robot Umps Making Baseball Games a Little Longer

Robot umpires aren't speeding things up: The average time of a nine-inning Major League Baseball game increased by 3 minutes, 43 seconds this season to 2 hours, 42 minutes following the introduction of the devices. MLB said Monday that 61 seconds of this year's increase was attributed to the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, which allows batters, catchers, and pitchers to appeal umpire ball/strike decisions to a computer, per the AP.

MLB's average fell from 3:04 in 2022 to 2:40 the following year when the pitch clock was instituted and decreased to 2:36 in 2024 , its lowest since 1984's 2:35. It rose to 2:38 last year. The average game time passed three hours for the first time in 2016. It reached a record 3:10 in 2021 before the introduction of the PitchCom electronic pitch-calling device helped bring it down to 3:04 in 2022.