Baseball Has Changed – The New York Times

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America’s oldest professional sport looks different this year.

For the first time in MLB’s 148-year history, the clock in the stadium now counts down between each pitch, forcing pitchers and batters to take action. It’s a radical change for a sport defined by its leisurely pace – but one that league executives believe is necessary to grow baseball’s popularity.

The sport has gradually become less important to American culture over the past 50 years, as football’s popularity has grown and other sources of entertainment — like video games and on-demand television — have become more available. Even dedicated fans have grumbled in recent years about the game becoming longer and less exciting. To some extent, MLB executives said they agree, and they believe that this year’s rule changes will help.

So far, he’s been right. The changes — including pitch clocks and other things to add to the action — have led to a faster game with more runs, stolen bases and less time. Whether the change will increase interest in baseball is another question.

Today’s newsletter will explore how different this new version of baseball really is, with some charts from my colleague Ashley Wu.

When it comes to game duration — the amount of time between the first and last pitch — MLB’s new rules have been very successful.

For decades, outings at the ballpark have gotten longer and longer. When Babe Ruth played in the 1920s, nine innings played in less than two hours. Over time, as it became more common for at-bats to last longer, the average game time ticked up. It finally reached 3 hours and 11 minutes in 2021.

The trend has changed dramatically this year.

During the first three weeks of the season, games averaged 2 hours 39 minutes – 29 minutes less than in the same period last year. That means in a typical game that starts at 7:05 p.m., fans go home around 9:45 p.m. instead of 10:15 a.m. making the game feel more action-packed.

The time reduction can largely be credited to the implementation of the pitch clock. Here’s how it works: After the pitcher receives the ball on the mound, 15 seconds on the clock begin to count (20 if runners are on base). If the pitcher waits too long, the umpire calls the ball as a penalty; if the batter is late, the umpire calls a strike. The timer means that at-bats are now faster – although fans scrolling through social media or in line for hot dogs are now more likely to miss something.

“I felt like I was at warp speed,” New York Mets pitcher David Robertson said after his first appearance of the year.

The second, and more important, goal that baseball is trying to achieve with the new rules is to make the game more fun.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told my friend Michael Schmidt that baseball’s problems are at least partly due to the sport’s new obsession with analytics. Teams over the past two decades have raced to the edge of statistics: They use more pitchers, and pitchers who throw faster, while batters have adjusted the swing to hit the long ball – leading to more strikeouts and more home runs, but the ball is less. toy.

“Baseball is changing,” Manfred said. “Fans want the game to look like it used to.”

The new rules of the sport, including requirements about where certain defensive players can stand, are designed to increase the action of the game – and entertainment value – with more hits, more steals and more impressive defensive plays. Through the first three weeks of the year, MLB has achieved the desired results: Runners stole more bases, runs scored increased and batting average increased slightly compared to the same season.

The leaguewide batting average increased, to .247 from last year’s .231, meaning at-bats more often end with hits now. Statistically, it is a significant jump from last year’s low history, although hits are still less common than in the mid-2000s.

Although these changes have had an impact, they may not be enough to solve baseball’s problems. Hitting a professionally thrown baseball is always tough. In the modern era, when pitchers are stronger and more data-savvy, it’s only gotten harder.

“That’s one thing that can really derail this,” his colleague Tyler Kepner, who covers baseball, told me. “Pitchers are just getting better, and I don’t know how they can limit their strikeouts.”

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Read the full issue.

  • House Republicans plan to vote this week on the debt ceiling bill, which would raise the cap but cut IRS funding and impose strict food stamp requirements.

  • A civil trial will begin on Tuesday for the lawsuit of author E. Jean Carroll, who accuses Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s.

  • President Biden is expected to announce his re-election bid on Tuesday.

  • The NFL draft begins on Thursday. The Carolina Panthers have the first pick.

  • The annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner will be held on Saturday.

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