Shohei Ohtani hit a home run for the Los Angeles Dodgers as they beat the Chicago Cubs 6-3 in Tokyo during the MLB Opening Series. Photo courtesy of AP.
JAMIE HEALY | STAFF REPORTER | jdhealy1@butler.edu
Overtime, or “OT,” is an opinion column series where the Collegian takes national sports headlines or polarizing topics and gives them a Butler-centric angle.
On March 18 and 19, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs played a two-game series in Tokyo, Japan. This series opened up the Major League Baseball (MLB) regular season for both teams.
The MLB regular season features 162 games for each team, spanning from Opening Day in March to the final series taking place at the end of September.
Major League Baseball has played 162 games each season since 1962, when both the American League (AL) and National League (NL) added eight more games to the schedule.
All 30 clubs face each other in at least one series in the regular season. There are 13 games against the four other teams in the same division, six to seven games against the other 10 teams in the same league, four games against a “rival” in the other league and three against every remaining team in the league.
While MLB may want to tinker with the number of games, there is a downside to taking away games from the regular season.
With 81 home games and 81 away matches, there are more opportunities to catch games, even when one can not sit down and watch a full nine innings every day.
Maggie Baranick, a senior risk management and insurance major, has always appreciated the long season and connects it back to her youth.
“There’s just something about the regular season,” Baranick said. “I have childhood memories of listening to [Cubs games] on the radio.”
The sheer number of clashes also allows more opportunities to go to games and make memories.
“I love going out and being in the bleachers when it is a rivalry game,” Baranick said. “You have that whole environment of fans cheering [the team] on.”
Innovations such as the pitch clock have also added a better flow to the game and allowed fans to enjoy quicker contests.
The pitch clock was introduced in 2023 as a way to speed up the game. The pitch clock is a timer that forces pitchers to release the ball before the time runs out. If the pitcher does not, an automatic ball will be called. The batter also needs to be in the batter’s box before the eight-second mark of the timer in order to avoid an automatic strike being called against them.
The pitch clock is set at 15 seconds when there is not a runner on base, and 18 seconds when there is a runner on base.
First-year sports media major Jackson Roemer has grown to appreciate the pitch clock and thinks it has done wonders for the fans.
“As someone who watches 162 games plus in a year, three-and-a-half-hour games just don’t work, it gets super exhausting,” Roemer said. “When you get these games [now] in a two to two and a half hour [window], it is much more digestible as a consumer.”
The addition of the pitch clock helped bring the average game time down to two hours and 40 minutes in the first year, which marked a 24-minute decrease from the previous year.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB added an automatic runner who starts on second base during the regular season. This was meant to speed up the games and preserve health and safety during the shortened season that year. However, along with the pitch clock, this was a permanent addition to the regular season starting in 2023.
P1 pharmacy major David Rogiers believes this adds more drama to each game throughout the regular season.
“I think it keeps [games] moving faster,” Rogiers said. “I think having the [automatic runner] makes the games more engaging and more exciting.”
Even for teams who may be out of the chase for the playoffs, a 162-game season still allows them to draw attention to new prospects to excite fans for the future.
“I definitely think there’s a benefit to the final month of the regular season because September call-ups mean a lot to these teams,” Roemer said. “Usually, a lot of these teams have an exciting prospect on the cusp of the majors. For example, Jacob Wilson for the Athletics and Kumar Rocker for the Rangers.”
Overall, all of these things help to keep the game palatable for viewers and maintain their interest throughout the long season.
While there may be some who want the MLB regular season to be condensed, the recent additions of the pitch clock and automatic runner help keep the 162-game regular season exciting and worthwhile.
A former version of this article incorrectly identified Baranick as a double major.
