What would be the right game time length in travel ball?

[cnardone]

Last year, my 12U DD played an 1:20 + 1. Saturday was great. I found the longer games very enjoyable. It really exposed depth. Sunday in 95 degrees, playing 4 games was REALLY hard. We were lucky that we had the dugout in the shade and were able to play the full 12 on our roster. In both game 3 and 4, the other team (sitting in the sun) just wilted. The team with the best pitcher in the tourney lost in the 2nd round of bracket. She pitched quite a bit on Saturday and then ran out of gas in game 2 on Sunday. They did not have a P2 worth putting in the circle.

 

[Rolling Hard]

Impossible to run a tournament with games running consecutively on the same fields without time limits.

Is this ^^^^ difficult to understand. Time is money. Everybody wants longer games. Everybody hates reverting back. If you have 40 teams playing and you want to finish the tournament/friendlies the games must be timed. Period. Even if you try to have bracket games 1:30 No New the tourney will always run behind. The scheduled 7:30 pm Sunday night championship game will start at 9:00pm or later or not be played at all.

 

[CoachJD]

IMO it changes on all the factors OP mentioned. I am not sure anwser.

Some HS games finish like 60-55. How is that even possible and how long was the game?

I think the worst of these we played was 23-20. I don't specifically remember how long it took (my guess is 2 1/2 hours), but I know it was cold and miserable and I wanted to die the whole time. And we actually won that game.

The closer high scoring/bad games are worse than the big blowouts, because at least in the blowouts you can see the end coming and the winning team usually tries to do things to speed up the game. When it's close, both teams are trying to win, and that rarely makes the game go faster.

 

[DryHeat]

I do love full 7 innings games, but it can be a lot in a tournament. Better have a deep pitching staff.

For timed games I like 1:30 finish the inning. That usually gets you 5 or 6 innings, sometimes a full 7. 1:15 finish the inning is OK for younger ages.

Those 60-minute high school games happen, but they are usually 5-inning run-rule affairs.

 

[S Spiff]

It's easy to understand that time limits allow tournament directors to play more games or even to schedule them more accurately. What is difficult is finding the right balance between ease of schedule/more teams in the tourney and good quality games. I feel like its pretty rare for games to get out of hand timewise in a way that doesn't get shortened by run rule, at least as the girls get older. I hate time limits and have a hard time getting past it. Stay off my lawn. Turn down your music.

 

[canyonjoe]

I like 80 or 90 if possible. Ideally it's 7 innings but you have a limited amount of fields so time is needed. If you go drop dead or revert back it's not even a real game. At the very least you need to have the same number of at bats.

 

[ang2bmd]

In pgf we often play 80 min finish in pool play and full 7 in bracket. It really separates real teams that have a pitching staff from teams that ride 1 good pitcher until her arm falls off


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[YoungBuck]

Times have definitely changed. I played in a number of tournaments as a kid (most of us probably did). None of them timed. Don't ever recall playing before 10am. Games would go late in to the evenings and no one seemed to mind. My DD experience (probably like many of yours) very different today... not sure it's better.

 

[_MIA_]

Times have definitely changed. I played in a number of tournaments as a kid (most of us probably did). None of them timed. Don't ever recall playing before 10am. Games would go late in to the evenings and no one seemed to mind. My DD experience (probably like many of yours) very different today... not sure it's better.

Most baseball games I ever played in a day was two..they were called doubleheaders

 

[canyonjoe]

On this subject, if coaches did a better job of preparing their teams to be ready at the end of an inning you can get a lot more innings in. Make sure
you communicate changes, get your catcher off base with 2 outs,etc.