If you found yourself watching Thursday’s matinee in Queens between the Oakland Athletics and New York Mets and thinking, “man, this feels really long,” you were correct. It was the longest in the pitch-clock era, as long as we exclude extra innings (obviously) and the playoffs, where timing rules are different.
The final score was 7-6 in favor of the A’s.
This game lasted three hours and 45 minutes. The previous record-holder — if we can call it that — was the Padres-Giants bout in Mexico City last year that lasted three hours and 44 minutes (per MLB’s Sarah Langs).
One might recall that the first Mexico City game finished with a 16-11 Padres win. There were 30 combined hits, including 11 home runs.
This A’s-Mets affair was certainly a good offensive showing, but it wasn’t that extreme. The pair combined for 13 runs on 21 hits, along with 16 walks. There were a ton of stressful pitches with traffic, though, and that’s part of the reason this thing dragged on so long. The A’s loaded the bases in the first, third, fourth and seventh innings. The Mets loaded the bases in the third.
The A’s had 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position, leaving nine runners on base. The Mets had 11 at-bats with runners in scoring position, leaving five on.
Of course, keep in mind we’re also dealing with a relatively small sample of data. The pitch clock was only implemented at the big-league level before the 2023 season, so we’re a bit past season and a half of it. This is to say that it’s possible we’ll see a longer nine-inning game here in the near future.
On the flip-side, this was an incredibly long game under the circumstances. Nine-inning games this season are averaging two hours and 36 minutes. As an illustration of how far over this one went, the average game this season is 156 minutes while this A’s-Mets game lasted 225.
