Baseball, just like any sport, has changed greatly over time. With the changes over the past five years, however, critical rules have been shifting at a record pace. What is driving these changes?
One of the main drivers is the need to retain fans, viewers, and ballpark attendees. Baseball has been seeing a continued decline in attendance. According to Forbes in 2022, total attendance of regular season games had dropped 5.9 percent compared to the season before the COVID-19 Pandemic. This forced Major League Baseball (MLB) to take action in order to regain viewership, and many of the changes put in place were a way to counteract this drop in interest. There are four major changes that have been put in place since 2023 that stick out as important to the game.
The first change implemented in 2023 is the pitch clock. This allows pitchers fifteen seconds in between plays if no runners are on base and twenty seconds if there is at least one runner on. The pitcher must start his motion before the timer runs out or else the batter gets an automatic ball. The pitch clock was an attempt by the MLB to shorten the length of the games in order to retain people’s interest and attention. Though many people were skeptical when this rule was implemented, it has been successful at shortening games. The average game time in 2022 was three hours and three minutes and in 2023 after the pitch clock was created the average game time decreased to two hours and thirty-nine minutes.
Another change made in 2023 was the base size. For over a century first, second, and third base were fifteen inches by fifteen inches, but as of the 2023 season they became eighteen inches wide and long. There were multiple reasons for this change. For one, the hope was that this could lead to more action. This shortens the distance between the bases leading to more such as infield hits, stolen bases, stolen base attempts, runners attempting to take an extra base, and maybe even more double-play turns at second by the defense. The second reason for this change was safety. Baseball players are bigger than they were a century ago and having a small base can lead to collisions between players causing injuries.
A new addition to the game only adopted this season is the Automated Ball Strike (ABS) Challenge System. This system allows the batter, pitcher, or catcher to appeal calls made by the umpire. Each team gets two challenges per game and if a challenge is confirmed it does not count as one of their two challenges, but if the challenge is overturned they lose one of their challenges. This rule is good in that it does not take away the need for an umpire, but stops the arguing that often happens if a player disagrees with a call. The ABS system has brought a new level of strategy to the game as it is important to decide when to use the challenges and who should use the challenge, as some players are better at it than others.
The fourth and final change of the game are the shift restrictions enacted in 2023. This set of rules dictated that infielders must be within the infield boundary when the pitcher is preparing and infielders may not switch sides. In other words, a team cannot reposition its best defender on the side of the infield the batter is more likely to hit the ball. At first, a violation of this rule would only result in a ball added onto the count, but as of 2025 the rule became stricter, saying if a player moved across second base too early the batter would be awarded first base and any batters currently on base would advance. The goal of this rule, much like the bigger bases, was to increase action.
While many longtime baseball fans are upset about all the changes that have been introduced recently, they do seem to be working. As of 2025, the MLB had its third consecutive year of growth for the first time since 2007. This is a big victory for baseball and hopefully this upward trajectory will continue in 2026 and beyond. Sometimes you need to change in order to stay relevant. Baseball has proven that even great things can’t stay exactly as they were.
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