America’s pastime is looking a little different every year as technological innovations, society’s shrinking attention span and big-money marketing concerns creep into Major League Baseball.
The sport, which had been virtually untouched from the turn of the 20th century, has seen a flurry of rule changes in just the past decade and a half. And there’s a strong possibility that the most significant alteration in the game’s history is just 12 months away from taking root.
Baseball diehards at Grapefruit and Cactus League games this month have seen live-action previews of the automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system, which could very well be implemented in real MLB games next year.
The potential ball-strike earthquake comes in the wake of several other major MLB rule changes. They include prescribing where defenders could position themselves to encourage more balls in play (2023), introducing rules dramatically helping base stealers (2023), awarding teams free base runners to prevent long extra-inning games (2020) and giving National League teams the designated hitter so woeful hitting pitchers don’t need to embarrass themselves at the plate anymore (2022).
MLB officials have had low-level talks about a “Golden At-Bat,” which could permit a star slugger to hit out of order once a game in a high-leverage situation.
Lower levels of baseball have long considered using a double-wide bag at first base to lessen the chances of collisions between a sprinting batter and a first basemen. The elongated bag at first base is being widely used this season across Division I college baseball.
“Rule changes were traditionally made because there’s a problem that needs addressing. In baseball, it had to do with what was happening inside the lines of the field,” said Peter Stolpe, who teaches sports business at the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Business Center. “But what’s new, what feels interesting, is that all these rule changes are not necessarily to address a question of the product on the field. The questions being addressed here are about the game in the stands and on TV. Therefore, these rule changes equal business solutions. It wasn’t that way historically.”
The rule tweaks coming into play this season seem minor compared with changes made in the recent past.
Teams on offense this year can now take free and extra bases for violations of shift rules. And now an umpire can call a trail runner out and end a rarely used but ingenious hack of running through second base to create chaos on the diamond or a tag play that would potentially lead to scoring a two-out run.
Mother of all rule changes coming in 2026?
An absolutely monumental shift in rules could be implemented next season, with players and managers possibly being allowed to challenge some ball and strike calls.
It would be a highly significant rule change on two levels: It would be yet another expansion of video replay, which was introduced in 2008, and it would be the first time balls and strikes would have a completely objective measure.
The strike zone is now rather nebulously defined as a ball pitched over home plate between a “batter’s shoulders and the top of the uniform pants — when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball — and a point just below the kneecap.”
This spring, and perhaps in 2026, the strike zone is and could be defined by a batter’s height: Over home plate, 27% above the dirt, stretching up to 53.5% high.
Get with the times or keep it traditional
Helene Stever, a New York Yankees fan from Columbia, Maryland, said she’s uncomfortable with the rash of rule changes to her beloved pastime — but nonetheless understands the need to keep up with modern tastes.
“I’d say I’m getting better at it because I really like the sport of baseball,” she told NBC News this month at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida. “Yeah, sometimes that’s rough, but then at least I feel I’m open enough to see the benefits of it as we’re growing into this sport.”
Fellow Yankees fan Dominick Albertelli, 23, said he embraces change in baseball but drew a line at using technology to call balls and strikes, for which he’s perfectly comfortable with human error.
“The sport’s advancing, but some things they should keep traditional,” he said. “As far as balls and strikes, you’re splitting hairs at that point.”
Ball-strike count means everything
A casual fan might not see the need or value of getting a handful of ball-strike calls right when an average MLB game features nearly 300 pitches. But just one call can radically change any at-bat.
For example, when the count is 2-1 and the batter doesn’t swing at a borderline pitch, his fate will be dramatically shifted by the home plate umpire’s subjective call.
If a ball is called and the batter goes ahead of the count 3-1, that hitter in 2024 went on to have a .249 batting average, a .580 on-base percentage, a .433 slugging percentage and a 1.013 OPS. Or in other words, that ordinary hitter, with a 3-1 edge, became the equivalent of all-world slugger Shohei Ohtani, who recorded a 1.036 OPS last season.
But if that umpire calls a strike and the count levels at 2-2, everything flips to the pitcher’s edge. That hitter, at 2-2 last year, went on to have a microscopic .177 batting average, a .287 on-base percentage, an anemic .291 slugging percentage and a .578 OPS that would most likely have him on the next bus to the minors.
One batter in all of MLB had a .578 OPS last season, hefty fan favorite slugger Daniel Volgebach. He was released by the Toronto Blue Jays and is now coaching with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Under the spring training rules of ABS, a team would run out of challenges after it gets two wrong.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he’ll want his players to find a balance seeking instant-replay justice and keeping appeals in their back pockets for big moments.
“We’ve kind of encouraged our guys, hey, if you feel like something’s you want to challenge, you have that freedom to do it,” said Boone, the son of longtime MLB catcher Bob Boone. “The thing we’ve asked our guys is to kind of think through situationally a little bit.
“What’s the situation? What’s the leverage in the game? Is it a 3-2 count where it’s a big difference between a walk and a strikeout?”
Boone, known to be among the biggest critics of umpire ball-strike calls, joked that implementing ABS wouldn’t lessen his harsh evaluations of the men in blue.
“I’d yell at somebody,” he quipped. “I’d find something” to argue about.
