How Many Innings in Baseball? MLB, Extra Innings and Rain Rules

A Major League Baseball game is scheduled for nine innings. Each inning has two halves, the visiting team bats in the top and the home team bats in the bottom, and each half ends when the batting team makes three outs.

Nine is the starting point, not a guarantee. A game can finish after eight and a half innings, run to the 10th or the 18th, or stop early because of rain. College teams also play nine, high school teams play seven, and most Little League divisions play six. Below is how the structure works and every common way the count changes. If you want to know how long all of this takes on the clock, our companion guide on how long a baseball game lasts covers average times, the pitch clock and doubleheaders.

How an inning works

Baseball has no game clock. Time does not end an inning; outs do. The visiting team hits first, in the top of the inning, until the defense records three outs. Then the teams swap and the home team hits in the bottom half. When both halves are done, the inning is complete.

The Official Baseball Rules put it plainly in Rule 7.01(a): a regulation game consists of nine innings, unless it is extended because of a tie or shortened because the home team does not need all of its last turn at bat, or because the umpire or the league calls the game.

Some simple arithmetic shows the shape of a full game. Nine innings times three outs is 27 outs that each defense must record. Add both sides together and a game that goes the full nine has 54 outs. If the home team is already ahead after the top of the ninth, the bottom half is skipped, so the game ends after 51 outs.

That last case is why you will often see an "X" in the bottom of the ninth on a box score. The home team won without needing its final turn.

When a game ends before or after nine full innings

Rule 7.01(e) spells out the three normal endings of a nine-inning game. If the home team leads after the visitors finish the top of the ninth, the game is over and the home team never bats in the bottom half. If the visiting team leads once the full ninth inning is complete, the home team had its chance and did not catch up. And if the home team scores the winning run in the bottom of the ninth, or in the bottom of any extra inning, the game ends the moment that run crosses the plate. That last one is the walk-off.

The walk-off has one wrinkle worth knowing. Normally the game stops as soon as the winning run scores, so extra runners do not count. A home run hit out of the park is the exception: the batter and every runner on base are allowed to score.

A worked walk-off example

Take a hypothetical game tied 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth, with runners on second and third. The batter singles. The runner from third scores and the game ends 4-3 right there, even if the runner from second would easily have scored too. The official final is 4-3.

Change one detail. Same tie, but runners on first and second, and the batter hits the ball over the fence. All three runners are allowed to score, so the final is 6-3, not 4-3.

Extra innings and the automatic runner

If the score is tied after nine completed innings, the game keeps going. Under Rule 7.01(b), play continues until the visiting team is ahead at the end of a completed inning, or the home team scores the winning run in the bottom of an inning. There is no limit on the number of innings. The major league record is 26 innings, played by the Brooklyn Robins and Boston Braves in 1920, a game that was finally called for darkness at 1-1.

In the MLB regular season, extra innings now come with a twist. Every half-inning after the ninth begins with a runner already standing on second base. Fans call this player the ghost runner or Manfred runner; MLB calls it the automatic runner. The details, from Rule 7.01(b)(2) in the 2026 rulebook:

• The leadoff batter of the inning stays the same as it would have been without the rule.
• The runner placed on second is the player who bats immediately before that leadoff hitter. The rulebook's own example: if the number five hitter leads off the 10th, the number four hitter (or a pinch-runner for him) starts on second.
• If the player in that spot is the pitcher, the team may use the player who bats before the pitcher instead.
• For earned run purposes, the automatic runner counts as if he reached on a fielding error, although no error is charged. If he scores, the run is unearned for the pitcher, which matters for ERA.

The rule first appeared in the shortened 60-game 2020 season as a pandemic measure, stayed on a temporary basis in 2021 and 2022, and was made permanent for the regular season by MLB's Joint Competition Committee in February 2023. The point is simple: with a runner already in scoring position, a single can win the game, and marathons that wear out bullpens become rare.

Shortened, called and suspended games

Weather is the main reason an MLB game does not reach nine innings. Rule 7.01(c) lets the umpire-in-chief or the Office of the Commissioner postpone or call a game for weather, field conditions, a power or lighting failure, a curfew and a long list of other circumstances.

What happens next depends on whether the game has become a regulation game, often called an official game. Under Rule 7.01(d), a called game counts as regulation if:

• five innings have been completed, or
• the home team is ahead after four and a half innings (the visitors have batted five times, the home team four), or
• the home team scores in the bottom of the fifth to tie the score.

Once a game is official, the score at the moment it is called normally stands as the final. There are two big exceptions, and both turn the game into a suspended game that is finished later from the exact point where it stopped. The first is a tie score when the game is called. The second is a game called in the middle of an inning after the visiting team has scored to tie or take the lead, before the home team has had its chance to answer.

A game called before it becomes official is not wiped out either. Under Rule 7.02(a), it is also suspended and must be resumed and played to a completed regulation game, usually before the next scheduled game between the same two clubs. Only if the league cannot fit it in, and the game never reached regulation length, is it declared a "No Game" that does not count for anything.

Two rain examples

Hypothetical one: the home team leads 4-2 after five innings. Rain arrives in the sixth, and the home team adds a run in the bottom of the sixth before the umpires stop play. The game is official, the visitors did not tie or lead in the unfinished inning, so the final is 5-2.

Hypothetical two: same 4-2 lead after five, but the visitors score three runs in the top of the sixth to go up 5-4, and then the storm hits. Because the visitors took the lead in an incomplete inning and the home team has not batted, the game is suspended. It resumes on a later date in the top of the sixth with the visitors ahead 5-4 and the same lineups.

This is a fairly modern approach. Before 2020, a regular season game stopped before it was official was usually started over from scratch. MLB expanded the use of suspended games in 2020 and made the change permanent in its 2022 labor agreement. Postseason games are a separate case: after Game 5 of the 2008 World Series was halted by rain in the sixth inning and finished two days later, MLB made sure playoff games are always played to completion, and Rule 7.02(g) still lets the league set special postseason rules.

Innings in college, high school and youth baseball

The nine-inning game is a professional and college standard. Younger levels play shorter games, mostly to protect young arms and keep games to a reasonable length.

• College (NCAA): nine innings. The NCAA rule allows a game to be stopped after seven innings if one team leads by 10 or more runs, but only by conference rule or if both coaches agree before the game. College extra innings start with the bases empty; there is no automatic runner.
• High school (NFHS rules, used by most US state associations): seven innings. State associations may adopt a run rule that ends a game when a team trails by 10 or more after four and a half or five innings, and they set their own tiebreaker procedures for extra innings.
• Little League: six innings in the Major Division and below, seven in the Intermediate (50-70), Junior and Senior divisions. A 15-run rule applies after three innings (four in the older divisions), and local leagues may use an optional eight-run rule after five innings (six in the older divisions) in the regular season.
• Fastpitch softball: a separate sport, but a frequent question. Softball games are seven innings at most levels.

The arithmetic makes the difference clear. A six-inning Little League game asks each team for 6 x 3 = 18 outs, compared with 27 in the majors. That is one third fewer outs, before any run rule kicks in. Once the inning structure makes sense, the stats follow more easily; OPS is a good one to learn next.

Why baseball has nine innings

Nine innings was not always the rule. Under the Knickerbocker rules of the 1840s and early 1850s, a game ended when one side scored 21 runs, then called aces. As players got better, reaching 21 became less certain, and in 1857 a convention of 16 New York area clubs replaced the 21-run finish with a fixed nine innings. The same convention made five innings the minimum for a game to count if it was stopped by rain or darkness, which is why the five-inning official game still exists today.

The number fits the rest of the sport neatly. With 27 outs to make and nine hitters in the lineup, every team gets at least three full trips through the batting order, so the best hitters usually come to the plate four or five times.

Quick reference: innings at every level

Use this as a cheat sheet the next time someone asks how many innings are left:

• MLB regular season: 9 innings; ties go to extra innings with a runner on second from the 10th
• MLB postseason: 9 innings; extra innings with the bases empty, no limit
• MLB official game if rain stops play: 5 innings, or 4.5 with the home team ahead
• NCAA: 9 innings; optional 10-run rule after 7 by conference rule or coaches' agreement
• High school (NFHS): 7 innings; run rules and tiebreakers set by each state
• Little League: 6 innings (Majors and below), 7 innings (Intermediate, Junior, Senior)
• Outs per team in a full MLB game: 27