Another Long (and Sometimes Boring) World Series

The Los Angeles Dodgers wrapped up the 2025 World Series last night with a four games to three win over the American League Champion Toronto Blue Jays. Last night's game was exciting as the two evenly matched clubs played eleven innings to decide this year's championship. Unfortunately, it was another one dimensional game in which the game was decided by home runs.

I've written of the times of World Series games for the last several years. But, I'm not going into the length and boredom factor of each game as in years past. Here are the actual times of game for each of the seven in the 2025 “Fall Classic.”

Game 1     3:13
Game 2     2:36     This was the most snappily played game of the series.
Game 3     6:39     This was an 18-inning game. Had it been two games, each would have been long.
Game 4     2:54
Game 5     3:02
Game 6     3:02     Yes, it's the exact same length as the previous game.
Game 7     4:07     The game went 11 innings.

All together it was 1533 minutes of baseball. Not all of it was good when nothing happened at the plate due to walks, strikeouts, or hit batsmen. To put it another way, it was 25 and a half hours of  “America's Pastime.” Or, to put it another way, over a day of your life was gone if you watched every single game and every single pitch.

Rather than ignore the time the extra innings added to Game 3 and Game 7, I've calculated the average length two ways. The actual average time of game was 3:39. But, if recalculated using an average time per inning, the number is 20.716 minutes. Then, when that average per inning is multiplied by 9, it results in a time of game of 3:06.

While both times are still way too long for me, it's better than it had been before MLB implemented its time clock to speed up play. It's helped, but now the Major League Baseball powers that be need to go back to the drawing board and shorten the time between pitches.