Major League Baseball had a problem. Fans were tuning out.
To combat the growing narrative that baseball was dying, the MLB added a series of new rules to make the game easier to watch.
When these rules were implemented, I was skeptical. Long games are my cup of tea. I love sitting down on a Sunday afternoon and watching a three-and-a-half-hour-long baseball game. It never occurred to me that the length of the game is the reason why people were turned off to baseball. I just thought it was because they didn’t like the sport itself.
But as I watched these rule changes in effect, the impact they had on the sport and its viewership became impossible to ignore. The game was not just faster; it was more engaging, more accessible and more fun to watch.
PITCH CLOCK
The pitch clock acts as baseball’s equivalent to basketball’s shot clock. After receiving the ball back from the catcher, the pitcher must begin their motion within 15 seconds with the bases empty, and within 20 seconds with runners on base. On the offensive end, the batter must be in the box and alert to the pitcher with eight seconds to go.
When the pitch clock was first brought up, I hated it. Some of my favorite moments in baseball games were the long dramatic pauses between pitches in a World Series game. With the crowd’s roar in the background, you can feel the magnitude of the situation.
Despite feeling rushed at times, the pitch clock’s positives outweigh the negatives. It is proven to kill dead time in baseball games.
Before the pitch clock was introduced, baseball games were getting longer and longer. In 2021, games were at a whopping average of 3 hours and 10 minutes long, which is the longest ever. In 2023, the first year of the new rules, games were decreased to 2 hours and 39 minutes, the shortest they’ve been since 1985.
Since games are shorter they’ve become a lot easier to watch, as shown in the average viewership increasing by 7% and the average ballpark attendance increasing by 8.3% from 2022 to 2023.
PICKOFFS
When there is a runner on base, pitchers are now limited to two disengagements from the pitching rubber (pickoff attempt or stepping off) per plate appearance. If a pitcher attempts a third disengagement and is unsuccessful (the runner is not picked off), it is considered a balk, allowing the runner to advance a base.
This rule change has significantly increased bag swiping. Teams stole nearly 3,617 bases this season (the most since 1915), continuing a surge that started in 2023 when runners stole 3,503 bases. Many speedsters who were more conservative on the base paths, turned into juggernauts. With pictures not being able to keep the runners in check, the latter took advantage.
We’ve seen Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. win the 2023 National League Most Valuable Player award while leading the league with 71 stolen bases (36 more stolen bases than his previous best), while this season we saw Dodgers two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani swipe 59 bags while also hitting 54 home runs, being the first to enter the 50-home-run 50-stolen-base club.
AN ATTACK ON STRATEGY
One thing that baseball lacks compared to the other core sports (basketball, hockey and football) is the X’s and O’s element, where you can pick out a “play” and run it — like when a head coach calls a run play, when the point guard calls for a pick or when the center handling the puck wants a give and go.
The strategy element in baseball is different because it’s an organized sport, and not free flowing. Strategies are incorporated not in X’s and O’s, but for elements like pitch selection, when to bunt or what relievers you should bring in. The one baseball strategy that is purely X’s and O’s is the shift.
Big pull heavy lefty up at the plate? Managers would throw three infielders on the right side of second base, almost guaranteeing any ball, hard hit or not, in that direction to be an out.
However, this thinking has gone extinct, as the MLB enacted a rule that basically banned the shift. Now, four infielders must have both feet within the outer boundary of the infield, with two infielders on each side of second base when a pitch is delivered.
Changes like these handicap the manager’s ability to manage his team, which then ruins that ‘set play’ strategy in baseball.
It’s not just the shift restrictions where we have seen an exit of strategy from baseball. The three-batter bullpen rule states that a pitcher must face at least three hitters before being taken out.
Managers now can’t take the opposing at-bats hitter by hitter. It also has proven to handicap the careers of lefty/righty specialists, who used to make a living of only coming into the game to face left-handed or right-handed hitters.
WHAT’S NEXT?
These changes have revitalized the game, grabbing the attention of die-hard and casual fans alike. There seems to be an energy around baseball that we haven’t seen since the Home Run Race of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
But where does baseball go from here? Should the MLB ditch umpires? Having the game being called by artificial intelligence will surely crack down on the flawed human aspect, but it takes away more of the elements that make baseball unique.
Sure this will probably make the game better, but when does it stop becoming baseball?
