The pitch clock gets credit for a lot of things in baseball conversation: shorter games, more stolen bases, more offense. Four full seasons of data are now available, and they support some of those claims and complicate others. The first complication is that the clock did not arrive alone.
MLB’s rule glossary describes the 2023 package. The pitch timer allowed 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and 20 with runners on, plus 30 seconds between batters; the runners-on limit dropped to 18 seconds in 2024. Batters must be in the box and alert by the 8-second mark, or take an automatic strike, and pitchers who violate get an automatic ball. Pitchers are limited to two disengagements per plate appearance, and a failed third pickoff attempt sends the runner up a base. The same glossary lists two other 2023 changes: bases grew from 15 to 18 inches square, and defensive shift limits began.
Start with game length. Baseball-Reference’s miscellaneous team tables list a time of game for each club. Averaging the 30 clubs’ figures, which is our own calculation and therefore approximate, gives about 3:07 in 2022, 2:42 in 2023, 2:39 in 2024, 2:41 in 2025 and 2:45 in 2026. The clock took roughly 25 minutes off in its first season. Since the 2024 low, six minutes have crept back, though 2026 is still about 22 minutes shorter than 2022.
Baseball Savant’s pitch tempo leaderboard tells a similar story. It measures the median time from one pitch release to the next, counting only pitches that follow a take to the same batter, and it notes that this is not the same as the MLB timer. The league median was 18.1 seconds in 2022, then 15.3 in 2023, 15.5 in 2024, 15.8 in 2025 and 16.3 in 2026. The share of those pitches thrown within 15 seconds went from 13.0 percent in 2022 to 30.1 percent in 2023 and has since slid to 20.4 percent. The share taking longer than 30 seconds fell from 5.6 percent to 0.5 percent, then rose to 2.5 percent in 2026.
Enforcement tells the other half. Summing the 30 club rows on Savant’s pitch timer infractions leaderboard gives 1,075 violations in 2023, 620 in 2024, 472 in 2025 and 390 in 2026. Pitcher timer violations went from 753 to 291. That is consistent with players adapting, though the leaderboard does not say why, and 2026 works out to roughly one violation every six games across the majors.
Base stealing is shakier ground. Baseball-Reference’s league totals show 2,486 steals in 2022 and 3,503 in 2023, an increase of about 41 percent, with the success rate rising from 75.4 percent to 80.2 percent. Steals peaked at 3,617 in 2024. They were 3,440 in 2025 and 3,289 in 2026, with the success rate back to 77.0 percent. Runs per team game peaked a year earlier: 4.28 in 2022, 4.62 in 2023, then 4.39, 4.45 and 4.48.
Scoring fell back after its 2023 jump, and stealing has slipped since its 2024 peak. The 2023 jump also cannot be pinned on the clock, because bigger bases, shift limits and a cap on pickoff attempts all arrived in the same season. The disengagement limit bears directly on running, which makes it a reasonable suspect, but the data here cannot separate those rules. Add another unknown for 2026: Awful Announcing’s April and May 2026 coverage describes automated ball-strike challenges in regular-season games, and no source we found isolates their effect on pace.
What the evidence supports is narrower than the folklore. The package of 2023 rules shortened games by about 25 minutes right away. Violations then fell, and some of the time returned. A faster game is real and measurable. A claim that the clock alone changed running or scoring needs evidence that these numbers do not provide.
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