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Unlike most team sports played in the US, baseball doesn’t use a specific time to decide how long a game will take. Instead, baseball is made up of innings, and in this article we are going to provide newbies to the sport with a comprehensive guide as to how this works in practice. We will answer all your questions about the number of innings in a baseball game, plus the exceptions to the normal rules.
Let’s start with the basics and talk about what exactly an ‘inning’ in baseball means. Basically this is a section of the game where both teams have an opportunity to both pitch and bat. The visiting team will bat for the first part of the inning – the ‘top’ of the inning, as it is known. They try to score runs by making it around the bases, while the home team tries to get them out. Once three outs have been made, then the teams switch places and the home teams get to bat in the second part – the ‘bottom’ – of the inning. Once each team has registered three outs then the inning is over and the process is repeated again for the next inning.
In Major League Baseball there are generally a minimum of nine innings in a game, but theoretically there is no maximum number of innings. If the teams are tied after nine innings then more innings are played until the deadlock is broken. You have to go all the way back to 1920 for the game with the most innings in MLB history, when the Brooklyn Robins played Boston Braves for a mammoth 26 innings until the game was called as a tie. A rule change implemented in 2020 makes it unlikely we will ever see a game this long again. The new rule change automatically puts a runner on second base at the start of each half innings of extra innings, making it much easier for teams to score and the game to be wrapped up quicker.
There are occasions when an MLB game is shorter than 9 innings. One of these is when teams are playing doubleheaders, in other words playing two consecutive games against the same opponent on the same day. Games played during doubleheaders are typically shortened to 7 innings in order to save time. Also, games can be impacted by outside events such as weather, which in the past led to shortened versions of the game. For example, if a game has started and bad weather intervenes making no further play possible, the game could be called as long as 5 innings have been played (or 4.5 innings if the home team is leading, and the result is official. This was changed in 2020 and now any game interrupted by weather will carry on from the point it was stopped at a later time/date.
The most recent example of an MLB game being shortened due to weather happened on August 2, 2011. In this game, the New York Yankees defeated the Chicago White Sox 6–0 in a contest that was called after 6.5 innings because of rain. It is technically possible that some kind of natural disaster or extreme weather event could result in an MLB game being called officially with less than 9 innings played, but since the 2020 rule change this is extremely unlikely to happen again.
Baseball is played beyond the MLB of course, and the number of innings per game can vary in different leagues and competitions. College and Minor League baseball follow the same rules as the Majors, with the sole difference being that college games don’t put a runner on second in extra innings. International baseball games and tournaments also have nine innings and some adopt tiebreaker rules like putting a running on second base, although this varies from one tournament to another.
High school baseball games last for 7 innings, with extra innings if required, although at this level the so-called ‘mercy rule’ applies in some states, where if a team is losing by 10 or more runs after 5 innings the game is called early. Little League baseball games last for 6 innings, with extra innings determined according to the tournament.
As an average, an inning in Major League Baseball generally takes around 15 to 20 minutes to complete, although of course there are a lot of factors to take into account. An inning featuring three straight strikeouts will be a lot faster than one where there are multiple hits, pitcher changes, etc. The introduction of a shot clock in 2023 is estimated to have brought average game times down by 24 minutes – so these days the average inning is closer to 17 minutes in duration.
Ross has been writing about sports for over a decade, spcecializing in the NFL, soccer and boxing. His written work has appeared on a number of online publications over that time.