San Francisco Giants

NL West games don't seem to be affected by MLB's pace-of-play rules

Published Apr. 22, 2015 6:57 p.m. ET

foxsports

Major League Baseball’s new pace-of-play rules seem to be working. Nine inning games during the first week of the 2015 season were about eight minutes faster than the average game length in 2014. Although the data only takes into account the first week of the this season, Jayson Stark of ESPN reported that the length of games during the first week of last season varied very little from the average over the course of the entire season.

For some reason, games in the National League West are lasting longer than the average this year. In fact, the five teams in the division are playing the slowest games in the league and are the only teams, except the Cubs, with games averaging over three hours. The Giants lead the way with games lasting 3 hours, 9 minutes. Taking into account the American League, only the Yankees and Red Sox are playing slower games than the Giants, Dodgers and Padres.

To see a listing of average MLB team game lengths, check out this chart at Baseball Reference.

Maybe the West Coast really is more laid back than the East Coast.

(h/t McCovey Chronicles)