Dramatic changes to baseball rules should thrill, not horrify, traditionalists

When major league baseball announced a series of rules changes that will be implemented this year, traditionalists were outraged.

How could they change the game? A pitch clock for the pitcher and hitter? Bigger bases? Only two throws to first base by a pitcher to hold a runner? No infield shifts? Outrageous!

Four major changes, four major reactions, all wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. A grand slam of wrong reactions, because the changes in baseball this spring are long overdue.

Over the past few decades, the game has gotten . . . boring. Oh, sure, there's still strategy. It's still a six-month season in which the best teams win (at least in the regular season). But games have gotten much longer with much less action. Analytics revealed that the most effective hitters go for home runs and walks and that strikeouts don't matter. The most effective pitchers strike out the most hitters.

The result? Fewer hits. More standing around. Meanwhile, batters and pitchers slowed way, way down. Games in 2022 took an average of three hours, three minutes to complete. In 1980, games took two hours, 33 minutes on average. Over 40-plus years, baseball added 30 minutes to the game – while having fewer hits and less action spread over the period.

Finally – after watching the NFL change its rules constantly to create more offense and allow more scoring and more excitement and watching the NBA and the NHL change rules to permit more freedom of movement and more scoring and more excitement, baseball finally, finally, finally moved.

I don't expect the traditionalists to agree with the changes because of that. Most baseball traditionalists probably don't like that other sports change their rules to make it more exciting.

But . . . shouldn't traditionalists to agree with the changes because this brings the game back to what it was for more than 100 years? What's more traditional than pitchers working quickly, infielders playing their assigned positions and baserunners having a chance to steal? Baseball this year will look a lot more like 1940 and 1960 and 1980 and 2000 than the 2022 version of the sport.

There will undoubtedly be some chaos early this season (the first real game is March 30) when pitchers take too much time or a team gets penalized for trying to sneak a shift or a pitcher throws to first base too many times. But by midseason, players and managers will adjust. The games will have more action and will move along faster. The traditionalists will go back to complaining about replay reviews and the designated hitter and starting pitchers not going deep into games.

But baseball will finally start being like baseball again. This is the equivalent of finding a way to watch your favorite TV show without commercials.

This is as if baseball invented streaming in an effort to return to its roots.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.