Did Pitch Tempo in the MLB Change with the Pitch Clock?

By: Matthew Smolik

We are three years into the pitch clock and there is no doubt the overall length of major league
baseball games has decreased. The MLB and the Players Association have locked themselves
into a battle over blaming each other for the increase in arm injuries in baseball. Although not
the sole reason, the players association in part blames the implementation of the pitch clock.
The MLB blames training regimens and highlights arm injuries are increasing in younger players.
Either way the argument has a life of its own and is likely well outside of the pitch clock. For
now, attendance is up across the league as game lengths have shortened and
the pitch clock likely is not going away as a result. With the pitch clock here to stay, let’s take a
look at the shift in pitch tempo amongst the league averages.

We’ve shown before how the pitch clock has sped games up, but how does it impact the cadence between pitches? Does the pitch clock impact all pitchers equally? Some more than others? Is it fair to blame the increase in injuries on the increased pitch tempo? All difficult questions, but in this article we’ll start tackling the core question by looking at how pitch clock impacted the average time between pitches.

To start, MLB Statcast defines the pitch tempo as the time between pitch releases meaning the
time it takes for a pitcher to release pitch 1, receive the ball back from the catcher, and then
release pitch 2. The longest pitch tempo indicates the pitcher with the longest average pitch
tempo, or the longest time from pitch 1 release until pitch 2 release, for that given season.
From 2010 through the end of the non-pitch clock era in 2022, there is an increasing trend in
pitch tempo across the league median when pitchers are pitching from the windup. In 2010,
the league median for pitch tempo was 16 seconds and reached a high of 18.4 seconds in 2021.
The implementation of the pitch clock dropped the league median to 15.5 seconds resulting in a
decrease of 2.9 seconds from the high in 2021.

Taking a look at the longest tempo for each year, the trend remained relatively level. The
median for the longest tempo each season prior to the pitch clock was 26.3 seconds. The
implementation of the pitch clock dropped the median tempo of the longest tempos in the
league to 19.3 seconds.

The longest tempos in the league are not consistently held by one person year after year.

The pitch clock may not be drawing a huge decrease across the league but it has made impacts
for those with longer tempos. While those at the top of the list for longest tempo are the most
affected, there is a small, increasing trend in pitch tempos across the league median showing an
increase since 2023. We will see if this trend continues as pitchers’ internal timers continue to
settle into the pitch clock.

This data shows that the pitch clock impacted the slowest pitchers more than others. Though this conclusion is obvious or intuitive, it begins to shed some light on whether the increase in pitcher injuries can actually be blamed on the pitch clock. The pitch clock forced a few pitchers to speed up dramatically while the majority of the league sped only a bit. This seems to make is less likely that the pitch clock is to blame for the injuries as it only significantly impacted an overwhelmingly small subset of the pitching populace.