How recent MLB rule changes are evolving the game, and what’s next to come in 2025 and beyond
Commissioner Rob Manfred has been trying to rejuvenate baseball in America, and early indications are that it is working.
MLB
With Major League Baseball’s teams in Florida and Arizona for Spring Training and Opening Day less than three weeks away (March 27), fans can already smell the hot dogs and peanuts in the air. While this is a joyous time for lovers of this re-growing sport, it is also an opportune moment to reflect upon the once dismal state of baseball and just how the game has been turned around in recent years.
Heading into the 2020s, the MLB was facing a ratings and attendance crisis that threatened America’s pastime. Since baseball’s heyday in the 1970s and ‘80s, national TV ratings had shown steady decline, despite occasional spikes and rebounds.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, who took the helm of the league in 2015, began to realize that he was sailing an outdated ship. Games were too slow, and action was lacking; ditto for the season as a whole. Simply put, a three-and-half-hour slog and a 162-game season seemed incompatible with a new generation turning to shorter and more stimulating content. Conversely, the game was becoming unrecognizable to many of the older and most loyal fans, with many traditional sluggers being made obsolete by infield shifts. Added to this was a cheating scandal that had these traditionalists questioning whether the league could even be trusted. But perhaps the most glaring issue was the lack of star power, or at least the league’s perceived inability to market its marquee talent.
The end of the 2010s seemed to be a referendum on the league, if not the sport as a whole. Attendance and ratings were down, and interest was dwindling.
With shifting demographics and tastes, baseball would have to adapt with its audience if it wanted to survive. However, it would have to do so without alienating its existing fanbase, known to be stubborn. Manfred was faced with perhaps the greatest challenge of any sports commissioner in recent history: saving a dying sport. With his back against the wall, he started to make changes, and the results thus far are hard to deny.
For one-time baseball fans looking to find their way back into this rejuvenated sport, for the die-hards who have been around through thick and thin, or even for new fans who want to jump on this momentous wave, VOZ has compiled the recent rule changes in the MLB, including those for this year and potential changes that the league may still make moving forward.
2020: Extra innings ‘ghost runner’
In 2020, the MLB made the first of what have been a series of revolutionary changes to modernize the game: modifying extra innings. Prior to 2020, if a game was tied, the teams would continue to play normally until one team held a lead after a completed inning. However, as a temporary measure during the COVID-affected season, the league opted to have each team start its respective half-inning with a runner on second base.
In 2021, the change was renewed, and it has since become a permanent rule. It should be noted that it does not apply to postseason games, in which extra innings are played without the “ghost runner.”
The aim was to shorten these extra-innings games, and it did. The longest game that has been played since was a 16-inning marathon between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in 2021. However, this felt like a sprint compared to the MLB-record 26-inning game played between the Brooklyn Robins and Boston Braves in 1920 or the two 25-inning games in more recent history (Chicago White Sox-Milwaukee Brewers, 1984; St. Louis Cardinals-New York Mets, 1974).
2022: Designated hitters in the National League
Since 1973, the MLB has employed a designated hitter rule, allowing the pitcher of a team to forgo batting duties in place of any other player. However, it only did so for half the teams, those in the American League. This meant that National League pitchers still had to take their scheduled at bats, and if the manager opted for a pinch hitter, the pitcher would have to be pulled from the mound.
This all changed in 2022. After years of fans calling for NL pitchers to be spared this responsibility (pitchers are typically far worse hitters than position players, with rare exceptions), the league responded, allowing all 30 teams to use a DH.
The change has been noticeable. In the years since the change, league average OPS (on-base plus slugging), which is a metric “to combine how well a hitter can reach base, with how well he can hit for average and for power,” per the MLB, has hovered around .700. The average OPS for pitchers in 2021, the final year before the universal DH rule change, was less than half of that (.293), per CBS.
More hits lead to more runners on base, which lead to more runs, which lead to more excitement and interest for fans. For many, the NL not having a DH felt arbitrary and antiquated, so the rule change also helped present a more modern image for the league.
2023: MLB embraces modernity
While the prior two rule changes represented two small steps into a new era, 2023 saw the league take a giant leap. It did so in the form of three rule changes: a pitch timer, shift restrictions and larger bases.
The pitch timer targeted what was perhaps the league’s most glaring issue: pace of play. With games taking an average of over three hours for over a decade, the MLB aimed to cut down on what it saw as wasted time. The new rule set a 30-second timer between batters, a 15-second timer between pitches with no runners on and a 20-second timer between pitches with runners on base. If pitchers went over the time limit, they would be charged an automatic ball, and batters breaking the rule would be charged with an automatic strike.
The results were instant and impressive. From 2022 to 2023, average game time dropped from 3 hours and 3 minutes to 2 hours and 39 minutes, a total decrease of 24 minutes. This represented the fastest game speed since 1984. 2024 saw another drop to 2 hours and 36 minutes, again the lowest mark in 40 years.
However, game speed was not the only priority. Another was eliminating “the shift,” a defensive strategy teams employed that mainly targeted left-handed hitters. It involved shifting the short stop to the first-base side of the infield or often into shallow right field in order to have more defenders able to stop balls that were pulled by lefties.
From when the shift first took off in the 2010s until 2022, batting averages on ground balls and line drives began to decline. Forbes recounted that from 2016-2022, ground ball batting average decreased from .238 to .208. Line drive average saw a sharp decline as well in this same span, going from .658 to .641.
In 2023, the MLB decided to ban the shift, requiring defenses to have two infielders on each side of second base and that each one be somewhere on the infield dirt when the pitcher is on the rubber. The penalty for breaking the rule was that the pitcher would be charged with a ball unless the hitter wanted to accept the result of a given pitch.
The results were again immediate and noticeable, with ground ball batting average instantly jumping to .215 and line drive batting average up to .668 in the early part of the 2023 season. Again, the league’s thinking was: more runners on base means more runs, more fan intrigue, etc., and all indications are that this rule has been a success in achieving that aim.
The final rule change in the monumental 2023 offseason was increasing the base size from 15 inches-by-15 inches to 18x18, hoping to facilitate stolen bases and make baserunning safer.
Stolen bases, attempts and success rate all jumped from 2022 to 2023. The first year with the bigger bases saw 3,503 total stolen bases, compared to 2,487 the year prior, a jump of over 40%. What’s more, the league-wide stolen base percentage went from 75% to 80% in that same span, meaning players were stealing more bases and doing so with greater success.
Total stolen bases jumped again in 2024 (3,617), though the success rate dropped off slightly (78%). Last season saw a notable accomplishment by Japanese star Shohei Ohtani, who became the first player in league history to join the 50-50 Club, recording 50+ home runs and stolen bases in one season. This created a colossal storyline during the season, drawing interest from across the nation and the world as the league’s biggest star was chasing history.
2024: Doubling down
In the 2024 offseason, the league made more changes than it had in either of the last two, though they were far more subtle. It made a small change to the pitch timer, lowering it from 20 seconds to 18 with runners on base. It also tightened the timer for pitching changes and reduced the number of mound visits available for each team from five to four. Manfred and the MLB were leaning fully into the revitalized and faster game.
In terms of live-ball play, one change was made, widening the running lane between home plate and first base to give runners more flexibility and make violations of the rule easier to call for the umpires.
2025: Changes to come this season
Heading into this year, the MLB game will look very similar to last season, with two minor changes. The first regards violations of the aforementioned shift rule. Previously, hitters were awarded a ball or allowed to accept the result of the pitch when said shift violation took place. Now, hitters will still be able to accept the result of the play, but if they do not, they will be awarded a base, and all other runners will be allowed to advance one base. Making the punishment more severe for the defense further de-incentivizes shifting and should help to maintain the positive trends this 2023 rule has had on batting.
The second rule change for this year involves what was perceived as a loophole on plays where runners purposely over-run second and third base. Occasionally, runners will choose to run past second or third base because it is faster than sliding. However, even if they beat the throw, the defense can tag them out if they are unable to return to the abandoned base safely.
One instance of how offenses use this tactic is when there are runners on first and third. Previously, when the ball was put in play, if the trail runner over-ran second base and beat the force-out, the lead runner would have until the other runner was tagged out to score. If the force-out at second base went to a video review, umpires would be forced to allow the trail runner to remain on second base if he beat the original throw, ignoring that he was eventually tagged out.
With the new change, umpires will be able to consider the over-run as part of a play during a review and call the trail runner out, and whether or not the lead runner’s run will count will depend on whether or not he scored before the trail runner abandoned the base.
2026 and beyond: Massive rule change to come?
There is one more change that fans are witnessing this year, but only in Spring Training. This is the ability for batters, pitchers and catchers to challenge balls and strikes. This rule change was previously implemented last year in AAA.
In this trial, challenges can only be performed immediately after a pitch, and they must be done by either the pitcher, catcher or batter. They are indicated by a player tapping his head. Once initiated, the pitch will be replayed on the big screen in the stadium, and it will be ruled whether or not the ball was in the strike zone.
If the challenge is successful, the pitch will be overturned, and play will proceed. If it is unsuccessful, the team will lose a challenge. Each team will be allowed two unsuccessful challenges per game. Upon the second, they will no longer be allowed to challenge ball and strike calls.
In last year’s trial of the rule in AAA, roughly four challenges were initiated by each team per game, and they were successful 51% of the time.
While the accountability and accuracy of the rule should give fans a better experience, questions loom about potential effects on pace of play. However, the league assures that any increases in game time should be marginal. In the aforementioned AAA trial, challenges took roughly 15-20 seconds. With an average of eight total per game, that theoretically adds just over two minutes of time.
After becoming one of the last professional sports to embrace instant replay, the MLB has slowly expanded its use from home runs to safe-out and fair-foul calls. However, balls and strikes are always a sensitive issue, given perceived subjectivity and concerns over pace of play and tradition. Bringing these calls under the purview of video review would be the next step of the MLB’s journey into a new era, where it already seems to be moving full speed ahead.
Are the changes working?
While the MLB’s new changes seem to be achieving their desired outcomes in terms of play, that is not the end goal. Manfred and co. want to re-grow the game sustainably, captivating a younger audience and even fans who did not grow up familiar with the game.
Early indications are that the changes have been effective. The 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees reeled in 50% more viewers than the previous year and the most since 2017, per Baseball Almanac.
What is perhaps a more comprehensive metric, however, is attendance, which has fully rebounded since the pandemic and in 2024 hit its highest level in six years.
The MLB feels like it is in a completely different universe than five years ago. With a fresh, revitalized and faster game, a global superstar, and buzz all around the U.S. and the world, there is optimism surrounding the game that is unfamiliar to many of the same young fans that the league is so desperately trying to captivate.
Rob Manfred went into what felt like the ninth inning down a couple of runs. As of now, he has done well to score with fans and cut that deficit, and with potential innovative changes coming, he may even well have a couple of runners on base. But he knows as well as anyone that anything can happen on the diamond, so it remains to be seen whether the MLB can keep this rally going.
