Major League Baseball’s competition committee voted Thursday to approve several rule tweaks aimed at improving the pace of play and another that widens the runner’s path to first base.
The measures, to begin with the 2024 season, followed off-season discussions with umpires, managers and club general managers and came after new pitch clocks shortened game times for the 2023 campaign.
“These modifications will improve on last year’s work by the competition committee, which was a resounding success with our fans and for the sport,” said competition committee chairman John Stanton, chairman of the Seattle Mariners.
The runner’s lane to first base was widened to include the dirt area between the foul line and the infield grass, allowing batters a more direct path to first base while maintaining protection from interference calls.
The total extra distance involved is between 18 and 24 inches, about 45.7-61 cm.
MLB quickened the pace of play on games last year but the average game time grew from two hours and 37 minutes in April to two hours and 44 minutes in September.
To combat the longer times, the competition committee reduced the pitch clock from 20 to 18 seconds with runners on base, keeping it at 15 seconds without base runners and allowing pitchers to step off and reset the clock twice per plate appearance with no penalty.
The clock between innings when a new pitcher enters shall reset to 2:00 rather than 2:15.
Mound visits will be reduced from five per game to four, with an extra awarded for the ninth inning if a team has used up its allocation through eight innings. Only 2% of MLB games would have exceeded that limit in 2023.
A pitch clock timer will reset when the pitcher has the ball and play is ready to resume, not when the pitcher has the ball on the mound, ending pitchers delaying the clock restart by walking around the edge of the mound.
Any pitcher who warms up for an inning must face at least one batter. There were 24 times this past season when a pitcher warmed up but was replaced before throwing a pitch, two of them coming in the World Series and all of them adding about three minutes to the average length of a contest.
