As MLB’s community awaits Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s free agency decision, several rule changes went into effect for the 2024 season on Thursday.
The changes are all fan-friendly and include reducing the pitch clock from 20 seconds to 18 seconds with runners on base. Other changes feature reducing mound visits from five to four, widening the running lane to first base by six inches, and one unique pitching change.
Now, when a pitcher comes out onto the mound to warm up before an inning begins, they must stay in the game and face at least one batter before being removed. This happened 24 times during the 2023 season, where a pitcher left the game before facing any hitters.
Smaller differences include cutting 15 seconds off a reliever’s warm-up clock if they’re late leaving the bullpen after a mid-inning pitching swap and starting the pitch clock sooner after foul balls.
Ultimately, MLB estimates that these changes could reduce the average game time by about five minutes. Yet, while all these changes are intended to continue speeding up the game by reducing downtime, the MLB Players Association isn’t on board. In fact, the MLBPA voted against the rule changes going into effect for the 2024 season.
“This afternoon, Player Representatives voted against the 2024 rule changes proposed by the Commissioner’s Office. As they made clear in the Competition Committee, Players strongly feel that, following last season’s profound changes to the fundamental rules of the game, immediate additional changes are unnecessary and offer no meaningful benefits to fans, Players, or the competition on the field. This season should be used to gather additional data and fully examine the health, safety, and injury impacts of reduced recovery time; that is where our focus will be.”
MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark
The MLB Players Association argues that they’d prefer to have more time — more data, to process how last year’s changes impacted the game of baseball. Yet, as we can see, MLB felt differently.