If you think this year’s MLB postseason games are running longer than ever, you’re not wrong.
There have been 17 nine-inning postseason games so far this month (I’ve excluded the 13-inning Rays/Red Sox Game 3 from this calcuation).
The average length of the 17 games thus far is 3:40.
Now, there’s a caveat. In the postseason, games have an extra 50 seconds of commercials per inning, 2 minutes 55 seconds, up from 2:05 for a regular season game. Just two of the 17 games required a bottom of the ninth inning, so that’s basically an average of just over 17 inning breaks that had those extra 50 seconds, or a bit more than an additional 14 minutes per game to squeeze in the extra cash for MLB’s TV partners.