A perfect shot in baseball is something special in professional sports: the so-called “batter” needs a lot of precision, timing, body tension and strength in order to throw the ball, thrown by the pitcher, with his bat as far as possible. If it even becomes a home run when the ball flies out of the interior of the stadium, then the audience can explode.
But baseball, long considered America’s favorite pastime, has lost popularity in recent years. The World Series of Major League Baseball (MLB), the final series at the end of a season, only had an average of 11.7 million television viewers in 2022, the second lowest rate ever, only undercut by the pandemic year 2020. In 2016 the average was still there 22.8 million. In addition to an ever harder television landscape, the reasons for the decline also lay in the game itself. It no longer seemed up to date. Everything took too long with no action on the pitch.
Thies: “A lot of dead time”
Andreas Thies is a baseball commentator for Sport1 and followed everything very closely: “The status quo was that we didn’t really have any time restrictions. The pitchers were allowed to take their time. The players at bat were also allowed to take their time, for example they were allowed to adjust their gloves, their batting gloves, were allowed to line up properly again and were allowed to take their time. In the last 30 years this has become very popular. The average game lasted two hours 44 minutes in 1985. That had increased to such an extent in recent years that the 2022 game, an average MLB game, lasted three hours eleven. And there was too much dead time in between, too much of any kind of glove adjustments etc. and things that just weren’t good for the game.”
That’s why the MLB introduced new rules. Now there is something called a pitch clock. A throw must be completed within a specified time. “If a pitcher stands up and wants to throw the pitch, he has 15 seconds to throw that pitch. However, the batsman himself must not delay either, he must be ready to bat eight seconds before this clock runs out. And that greatly speeded up this game. There is an additional rule: So if, for example, a runner is already on base, then the pitcher has 20 seconds instead of 15 seconds. And between two batsmen there is a time rule of 30 seconds for the new batsman to be back at bat. And that shortened this game considerably, especially in the first few days.”
There are also larger base plates, which are intended to reduce the risk of injury, but at the same time give runners more chances of reaching these plates before they can be eliminated from the game. Defensive changes are also no longer possible in the usual manner. Because lately, the catchers in the outfield were changed very often so that the best of them were in those zones where the batters hit the ball according to previous analysis. This has reduced the number of successful shots, which count only if the ball touches the field and is not caught out of the air.
“Game hadn’t evolved for the better for fans”
As a team manager, Theo Epstein himself has long exploited the existing rules. Most recently, however, he chaired the commission that brought about the rule changes. He says: “There’s no doubt about it: the game has changed a lot in the last two or three decades. Some of these changes have come from optimization, which has brought team leaders and people like me forward. While it might have brought us a few more wins , the game hadn’t turned out for the better for the fans – in terms of how the game looked on the field from an aesthetic point of view.”
Before the introduction, some rule ideas were tested in around 8000 games of the minor leagues, i.e. lower divisions. The new set of rules was used for the first time during MLB pre-season, with mixed reactions from players. Kansas City Royals pitcher Daniel Lynch said, “I honestly didn’t really realize it. I tend to act fairly quickly. I checked the clock a couple of times, but I had maybe 12 seconds left. So I knew everything was looking good for me.”
Manny Machado gets first time penalty
Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres was the first batter to receive a time penalty and was down 1-0 in the duel with the pitcher: “I have to make a big change. I’ll probably be 1-0 down a few times. It’s very quick and definitely needs an adjustment period, but at least I’m going down in the history books. You have to be ready eight seconds before the end and look at the pitcher, go into a duel with him. When I looked up, I was told, ‘You have two seconds, two seconds.’ And when I performed, bang, it was already done. I got caught and was 1-0 down.”
However, by the first week of the regular season, which began on March 30, many players had already adjusted to the new rhythm. Some traditionalists may not like the fact that American baseball is changing the rules after almost 150 years, but it was necessary. Most recently, a TV station that had broadcast many MLB games regionally went bankrupt. With competition from the NFL and NBA growing, baseball’s viewer decline seemed inevitable. Maybe more action and shorter seasons will turn the tide.