MLB Changes Minor League Baseball’s Rules
Last week, MLB announced that it was implementing several rule changes throughout the minor leagues in 2021. While the hostile takeover of the minor leagues was based primarily on economic factors, the new arrangement allows the league to act unilaterally on other issues as well, including the use of affiliate teams as testing grounds for new rules experimentations. Most of these rules had been proposed at one time or another in the recent past, and the league is spreading the adjustments across the various minor league levels:
- Base sizes: In Triple-A, the sizes of each base will be increased from 15-inch squares to 18-inch squares.
- Defensive positioning: In Double-A, teams will be required to position four players in the infield: Each player must have both feet in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt. In the second half of the season, MLB may also require that teams keep two infielders on each side of second base, though that is not a requirement at the outset.
- Step-off rule: In High-A, pitchers will be required to disengage the rubber before attempting a pickoff throw; violations will result in a balk.
- Electronic strike zone: In the Low-A Southeast League, select games (it’s unclear which ones or how many) will use the electronic strike zone first tested in the Atlantic League and Arizona Fall League.
- Pitch timer: In the Low-A West League, pitchers will be placed on a 15-second pitch clock, which is five second faster than the clock currently used in Double-A and Triple-A.
- Pickoff limits: Across Low-A, pitchers will only be allowed to step off twice per plate appearance. Any subsequent throw over must result in successfully retiring the runner, or it’s a balk.
With those rules in hand, Brendan Gawlowski and Kevin Goldstein have thoughts.
Base Sizes
BG: The best rule adjustments foster desirable behavior without rocking the boat and I think we have that here. Shaving a few inches between bases won’t dramatically increase the number of stolen bases or infield hits, but any subtle alterations should flow in the right direction. And unlike some of these other ideas, which you can’t help but notice, a slightly larger base will be all but invisible to fans in Section 326.
KG: I mean, really, do you care? Does anyone? Depending on one’s interpretation of the 90 feet being from the center of the base rule, this puts bases two to four inches closer to each other, or roughly 0.2 to 0.4 percent. There’s no big impact on the game, which is likely why it’s being implemented at Triple-A. If anything, this could mitigate some injuries on plays that create traffic around the bag, especially 3-1 groundouts. This is fine.
Defensive Positioning
KG: My head is absolutely spinning on this one. I had a theory, I felt strongly about said theory, and then the data came and punched that theory in the face. My initial reaction was that if teams can’t shift, hitters can sell out for power and focus more on driving balls than making contact, so that while no shifts might increase BABIP, less contact would make it a zero sum game.
Then I found Statcast data the showed whiff rates were actually higher with teams shifted than showing a standard defensive configuration. That surprised me, but it’s also a simplistic conclusion. Left-handed hitters get shifted more and also as a group make less contact, while all power hitters get shifted more as well. Still, looking at individual mashers who are prone to being shifted, such as Joey Gallo and Cody Bellinger, showed a similar trend. Are shifted players swinging for the fences out of sheer stubbornness? Are shifted players just focusing on beating the shift by hitting balls over the fence? If non-shifting defenses really create more contact, the rule change has a chance to achieve the desired result, which is more base hits.
Still, I can’t help but feel that this is suppressing innovation. If offense or defense changes the way things are playing out on the field, I’d rather have the other side make the necessary adjustments. Organic changes in baseball are far better for the game than forced ones. I feel like I could spend a week looking at data without coming to a conclusion on this one. I think it’s fair to be skeptical, but this one actually has a chance to meet its intended purpose. Whether or not that’s a good thing might be the more apt question.
BG: I understand and broadly agree with your perspective on innovation and organic change, and that was my opinion on the shift for years as well. But nearly a decade has passed since the shift came in vogue, and I don’t really like any of the ramifications. I knew that the shift was turning singles into outs. Until reading Russell Carlton’s extremely good work and research, I did not realize that a corresponding uptick in walks more or less cancelled out those benefits.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to organic innovation here is how the offense has responded: With exceptions like Anthony Rizzo aside, few hitters reacted to the shift by learning to bunt and taking the free base until the defense adjusts back. Instead, of course, they’ve tried to hit over the shift. It’s worked, to an extent, at least in our bouncy-baseball era. But alongside, strikeouts and walks have continued to surge and the league hit .245 last season. Two-forty five!
At the end of the day, batters only have so much control over where they hit the ball, and it may just be the case that hitters are no match for modern fielding data and the note cards fielders carry in their back pocket. If that’s the case, blunt as it is, I’m open to experimenting with a rule that limits how teams can shift. I’ll admit, I’m a little more curious about the effects of limiting the number of fielders on each side of second base, but this seems like a reasonable experiment to conduct. By mandating four players stand on the dirt, you’re allowing the infield to shift in a way that still lets fielders gobble up grounders but no longer allows them to take away the low line drive single to right. I think that’s a good aesthetic tradeoff.
Step-off Requirement
BG: The obvious implication here is that lefties now have fewer tools to hold runners on with. The ability to make a snap throw to first still gives them a distinct advantage over righties — for some southpaws, the quick toss was their better move anyway — but no longer can lefties drift their front foot from the rubber at a 45 degree angle and test the outer limits of the balk rule. Joe Beimel retired just in time.
A little bit of clarity in the balk rule will certainly be nice: I’m all for shades of gray in most things, but I’ve never felt that baseball’s version of the block/charge problem has made for compelling discussion.
I also wonder if this adds a wrinkle to the chess match. Now that runners can safely run on first move from lefties, how do pitchers respond? Can they react quickly enough to pivot to a pitch out if they see someone take off? Even if they can, can catchers get on the same wavelength in time for that to be a viable strategy? And if the answer is yes to both, how can runners use that to their advantage? Perhaps this is all moot in practice, but you can dream on a little game theory here.
KG: I’m all for this, and would be fine with it being implemented in big league games from day one, if only to eliminate the cacophony of 20,000 people in the stands yelling “Balk!” at every good pickoff move.
Electronic Strike Zone
KG: This is coming to the big leagues, whether we want it to or not, and most in the game have set 2023 as the over/under mark. I get the overwhelmingly pro-robot umps movement. We want there to be standards, and we want to get things right. Those are good impulses, but there is no potential rule change that could have a greater effect on the game than this one.
Of course umpires miss some calls, and all of them have slightly idiosyncratic zones, but there is a general understanding at least of what a strike should be, and it’s important to realize that the currently agreed upon strike zone is not the one in the rule book. Balls and strikes are going to look weird for a while, and some pitchers will improve, possibly dramatically, with an enforced electronic zone. Meanwhile, the opposite will be true for those who need to change their approach in terms of location strategy. Just because balls and strikes will be called 100 percent correctly doesn’t mean it will be good for the game, or at least some individual’s games.
BG: Exactly. Certain pitches have been strikes for 100 years and it’ll look very weird if they’re suddenly called balls. I also worry that good pitchers will find a way to exploit the technology in a way we’re not prepared for yet. I’m glad that the league has at least gone slowly on this: an automated zone should be tested extensively before it ever sees a big league park. A full year’s worth of minor league data can only be helpful in assessing the efficacy of this technology. Of all the new rule proposals, this is the one to bring along slowly.
Pitch Timer
BG: The minor league pitch clock has worked so well and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Pitchers have gamed the system a bit by stepping off but if you curtail their ability to do that, it’s a very effective tool for chopping 10-15 minutes of dead time off of the game.
KG: Put this in the big leagues right now. MLB is obsessed with pace of play issues, and no rule will have a greater impact on that than a reasonable pitch clock. On the same hand, the three-batter rule for relievers has no effect on pace of play and therefore should be eliminated. We don’t need extremes here, but just a simple 30 seconds with two warnings and then an automatic ball would shave minutes off of games in an age where MLB has attempted a variety of short-sighted changes that have resulted in seconds.
Pickoffs
KG: I have a friend in the game who has pushed this for years. It seemed crazy at first, but I give MLB credit for a creative end-game solution with the balk or out rule on the third throw. Stolen bases are exciting and exciting baseball is good. I’m a middle aged person with fond memories of the power/speed days of the 1980s, but with everyone slugging these days, the value proposition of the stolen base has dropped dramatically. You’ll never change the value of a stolen base, nor the greater negative impact of getting caught, so to encourage attempts something must be done to increase the chances of success.
This is something that needs to be monitored: There is a fine line between encouraging action on the bases and making it too easy to steal. At the very least, teams will need to recalibrate how they value a catcher’s arm in this new landscape. When electronic strike zones remove the value of framing, that will receive greater emphasis in the future anyway.
BG: Agreed.
I want to finish with an observation about the process here. Baseball is not an easy game to adjust. The sport wears its history on its sleeve, and the audience is well-represented in cranky people who don’t want things to change much (to be clear, I firmly put myself in this category in many ways).
Still, all of these changes are reasonable to at least audition. After testing, perhaps we’ll decide that the pickoff rules are too strict or that the electronic strike zone isn’t quite ready for prime time. But we’ll never learn without trying, and these adjustments could legitimately enhance the pace and aesthetic quality of the game without feeling gimmicky. That’s a difficult balance to strike. I haven’t had many compliments for MLB, but credit where it’s due: These are measured ideas being tested in a sensible manner.
Totally cool for MLB to test these things out. None are out-and-out stupid on their face.
The closest to me is the lefty pick-off move. This is especially the case if umpires continue to allow righties to step off as they turn simultaneously to throw to first. All of the sudden instead of lefties maybe having an advantage, you could see righties having an advantage in pick offs.
I believe there are other defensive advantages to right handed pitchers and this advantage (the current rule) to lefties only evens those out. Not a fan of this at all. Watching Andy Pettitte pick off guys that weren’t even thinking about stealing a base was magic. No reason to dump a beautiful part of the game.
But these are just tests and hopefully MLB can find less intrusive ways of getting their desired results. It seems pitch clocks would by far be the most effective way of reducing dead time.
I have mixed feelings regarding the lefty pick-off move. On one hand, it think it is fair that they get a little bit of an advantage. But, I have seen far to many umpires let lefties get away with basically striding all the way to the plate and still throwing to first.
I think my preference would be a line or marking on the mound, between 2 to 4 feet in front of the rubber. once the pitcher’s glove side foot passes that line, they have to go home with the pitch, or it is a balk.
Regardless of the specifics of the rules – MLB should not have the power to determine the rules of the sport. Baseball needs a governing body for the sport itself – and for the anti-trust exemption to be killed so that that is not yet one more part of the sport taken over by MLB team owners
The only rule I really heavily dislike is defensive configuration. I lean on the side of it taking some innovation away from the game. One of the things I love about baseball is there’s not this fast and hard rule about where defenders need to be. If a batter seemingly can only hit the ball in one direction and a team can prepare for that, why not let them? If a hitter can only hit fastballs up and in, as a pitcher, do you throw them that if you can help it? I get that’s not one-to-one, but it just feels sort of unfair as a concept. But as the piece notes, yeah, it will help with base hits.
And yes, hitters haven’t proven able to necessarily adjust, indicating it’s a very difficult problem to tackle. Maybe it is just an aesthetic trade off, but I don’t personally love it. It’s like in any sport, you strategize based on probabilities. People always groan about outfielders having cards in their pocket or something…who cares? I guess it’s not an outrageous change because they can still shift a bit in the dirt. I’d just like MLB to keep their hands off some of the strategizing things teams do. If you want to try an electronic strike zone or making the bases a little bigger, power to you. But…meh to stuff like banning shifts and forcing pitchers to face a certain number of batters, and things like that.
While I don’t necessarily want this rule, I can understand trying it in the minors. It reminds me of some of David Ortiz hitting 240 foot one hoppers right to the 2nd baseman. I hated that, but I understand why teams would want to position guys right there. What I haven’t gotten from this rule, is are they allowed to change on of the infielders to an outfielder? I.e now just use 4 outfielders instead?
We’re going to see the grounds crew in Los Angeles extending the infield dirt out to 200 feet in right field.
Do you really *need* outfield grass at all? Is there a rule that you have to have it? Or that it has to be a certain size?
Consider the reverse case: in Toronto, until a few years ago, there was no dirt on the infield except the mound and small cutouts around each base. Even so, they still had a curved line painted on the turf that represents the traditional “dirt cutoff”: by rule, this arc follows the fair-territory portion of a 95-foot circle around the center of the mound.
I feel really strongly about this too. If hitters are vulnerable to the shift they shouldn’t hit the dang ball in the same place so much!
I am really going to miss arguments between managers and umpires
There will still be arguments. The most likely system is an electronically enhanced umpiring approach, since umpires will be there to judge balks, hit by pitches, and all the other non-strikezone refereeing.
Will umps be able to intentionally disregard the automated call if they feel it is wrong? And if they do, will fans see or hear the automated call and know that the ump overruled it or will only the ump hear the auto call?
I hope that either the umps can overrule or that ball/strike calls can be challenged for obvious error. I’m not talking about borderline calls, the whole point is to stop having controversies there. But sooner or later, the system is going to glitch and call a fastball down the middle a ball, and I’d like MLB to have an answer other than bowing down to our robot overlords.
Yes, let’s give Angel Hernandez the power to override (what is surely) millions of dollars of technology.
Millions of dollars of tech can make errors really fast and really consistently.
I’ve been told my whole life that it doesn’t matter if the strike zone is correct as long as it’s called consistently, so the Ump shouldn’t override on a weird zone unless it’s an obviously inconsistent weird zone. But IIRC there have been throws so bad that the automated strike zones used for broadcasts failed to identify them as pitches.
The Ump should be able to overrule on things like that, and will absolutely need to be able to overrule on things like foul or no contact and HBP.
When they tested this in the Atlantic League, the home plate umpire had an earbud through which the robot ump instantaneously communicated whether it was a ball or strike (i.e., whether it touched the 3D space being monitored by the cameras). The umpire was the only one who could hear the call and still officially made the call on the field. The ump also had the ability to change the call if it was blatantly wrong, but the one case where this was cited as ever happening was when a ball was spiked in the dirt and then bounced up and into the zone. Of course, the camera can’t know the ball first hit the ground before crossing through the zone, so it called it a strike.
Interestingly, players continued to argue with the umps about ball and strike calls and umps had to repeatedly remind players that they had to take it up with the robot.
And from the games we went to, it actually dramatically cut down on the time spent watching complaints from batters. The ump just pointed to the cameras and that was that.
Estimating electronic strikeouts arrive in MLB in 2023 and “the currently agreed upon strike zone is not the one in the rule book”, which pitchers & pitch types would moving to a rule book strike zone help/hurt? Granted pitchers will adapt to the robot rulebook strike zone and try to throw pitches that are strikes not balls (adapt or die) but accurately predicting which pitchers/pitches will benefit could provide a profit opportunity. Is there something that could be done with overlaying pitch heat maps, current idiosyncratic umpire zones, & rulebook strike zone to identify those profit opportunities? As well as those that would be negatively impacted? (I can’t help but think back to the slightly wider zone of the 90’s & pitchers it benefitted).
The first thing would be to look at who throws breaking balls with big vertical break at the bottom of the zone. Tons of pitches that a catcher catches low actually crossed knee-high over the front of the plate but are called balls, so that would be my first place to start.
Another classic is that curveballs and changeups that are meant to be low but are accidentally hung right at the top of the zone (oftentimes dropping into the top of the zone when they were supposed to have dropped out of the bottom of the zone) are almost never called strikes either, and both pitchers and batters expect them to be called balls. On the rare occasions that they do get called strikes, you usually see a good deal of consternation, but a robot will call them strikes every time.
I think the electronic strike zone needs to be paired with rules that make stealing bases easier (which MLB seems to be thinking too). Teams will be selecting catchers almost exclusively for their throwing ability at that point, since receiving will no longer matter, and that requires a corresponding edge to runners. Not totally sure that these exact rule changes will work, but I think this is the right kind of move if you want to maintain (or even raise) stolen base attempts moving forward.
One change I never hear about but would love to see is not allowing any warm-up pitches to a pitcher entering mid-inning, unless the pitcher is entering to replace an injured pitcher. Relievers have warmed up for 20 minutes in the bullpen; why do we have to watch them practice pitch for two+ minutes in the middle of the game? Place kickers do not get to come out on the football field and take a few practice kicks before attempting a field goal, nor do basketball players get to take a few warm-up free throws on the court before attempting the real thing, so why do we all have to watch a pitcher throw eight practice pitches when he’s just thrown 30 in the bullpen?
Because the game mound is different than in the bullpen, and we don’t want relievers to get hurt or slip.
Exactly. I’m all for speeding up the game. But Player safety has to still factor in to a degree.
Ahhh . . . got it, thanks. I did not know that the bullpen mounds were substantially different from the on-field mounds. If they are, then a reliever would need to warm up on the “real” mound. But that begs the question–why are the bullpen mounds such poor approximations of the on-field mounds?
Because the risk of injury is significantly less for kickers and basketball players.
Because with kickers and free throwers, you have just one player engaging an inanimate object, but pitchers have to throw to human catchers, who are different, so it’s important for both success and safety that the pitcher be in sync with the actual catcher they’re throwing to in the game and not just the bullpen catcher.
I’d be fine with sub-optimal pitcher/catcher wavelength alignment being part of the cost built into changing pitchers mid-inning.
At the least, the first reliever of the game should be allowed on-field warmup pitches even if it’s a mid-inning replacement, otherwise a starter who goes 5⅓ would leave the team worse off than pulling him after 5 (beyond the fact that probably got into a jam to require the call to the bullpen)
I’m not a fan of an electronic strike zone, among other things catchers “stealing strikes” will become a lost art.
I prefer pitches to be balls or strikes based on whether or not they pass through the strike zone, not based on whether the catcher can trick the umpire.
I think the real question is whether it will be more accurate. If it is, then that’s fine. But it’s not at all clear that an electronic strike zone will be more accurate than an umpire.
I suppose that’s what this test is for, though? I generally agree that it is coming, the question is when the technology is good enough.
I think the electronic system is already much better than a human at tracking where the ball is in space. To me, the question is how you define the strike zone. The rule book, to my knowledge, is a bit ambiguous. It depends a lot on the size of the batter, and perhaps his stance. Mostly the working definition of the strike zone has been “whatever the umpire thinks is a strike.” Removing the umpire, I think we will need a more concrete definition of what constitutes a strike.
I don’t need more accurate, just more consistent.
Kevin makes some pretty silly statements above. No photographic or electronic system can ever become 100 per cent accurate. Pitch fx has stated many times that it has a standard deviation of error no less than 1/2 inch. Radar based systems used by statcast never presented any test results that showed they could do any better. New technology will certainly make the error smaller but it can never reach 100 per cent. Added to the measurement error is the uncertainty of determining a batter’s upper and lower strike boundaries and the end result may be less consistent strike calling than we have now.
The break even point for stolen base attempts varies by several important factors that have never been considered in any analysis that I have seen published. Bad sabermetrics is one of the main causes of inefficient use of the stolen base.
Changes that are fine and could/should just move right to MLB if they like it are the base sizes and pitch timer.
Defensive positioning has good reasoning for doing it, just not sure I like the execution of this rule. Maybe they try this, tweak it and find a better outcome.
The step off requirement and pickoff limit is not needed. Not a fan of the balk rule in general, but the step off just seems unnecessary. The pickoff limit is a horrible idea. Once they reach the limit there will be no fear in taking off.
I don’t even want to discuss the electronic strike zone…..
“I also worry that good pitchers will find a way to exploit the technology in a way we’re not prepared for yet.”
As apposed to Maddux and Glavine who for close to two decades enjoyed a strikezone 4 to 6 inches wider than most of their contemporaries, due to their ability to continuously nibble farther and farther on the edges as a game progressed.
Or, perhaps you would prefer to return to the days of the left-handed strikezone being 15% wider than the other side of the plate.
Given the damn near game breaking disparities we have already witnessed for decades due to players learning to exploit Umpire judgement, all this hand-ringing at the thought of good pitchers being able to exploit a 100% accurate strike zone sounds increasingly silly.
Maddux and Glavine were masters at having the edge of the baseball just skim the black of the plate. Perfectly good strike right there.
I’ll go to my grave convinced that everyone who says this is a whiny Mets fan. Nothing will convince me otherwise.
“Given the damn near game breaking disparities we have already witnessed for decades due to players learning to exploit Umpire judgement, all this hand-ringing at the thought of good pitchers being able to exploit a 100% accurate strike zone sounds increasingly silly.”
Oh please. Game breaking? Unless I’m mistaken, nobody — certainly not *baseball fans* — started calling baseball “unwatchable” until the last few years, when we can’t watch a single pitch go by without having to know whether or not the umpire ‘got it right’.
There is no such thing as a device that calls balls and strikes with 100% accuracy. Robots will probably reduce variance, but how can we even know? If there were a system that could even gauge the robot accuracy, we’d just use that system as the robot.
So almost by definition, we’ll never even know the accuracy of robot umps, at least not on a given pitch.
Love MLB trying new things to see if they make the product more compelling. As a 24 year old baseball fanatic, I have no argument with friends who say baseball is boring to watch. They’re right. The current product is borderline unwatchable for the casual fan. The onus is on the players for realizing their stubbornness in the upcoming CBA could jeopardize the future of the sport.
Kevin, maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment, but as far as “non-shifting defenses … create more contact” goes, it makes far more sense to me that batters for whom you would not implement a shift would be the more contact oriented hitters. In other words, more contact creates non-shifting defenses.
It seems especially likely that this is the case since it is much easier to adjust a defense to a batter’s trend than to adjust a hitting approach to react to the defensive alignment, even without considering that a pitcher’s approach to a batter can also be adjusted in tandem with the defensive alignment.
Not shown: Manfred tweaking the baseball to new, undisclosed specs for the nth time.
*nods in agreement*
Deaden the ball, and you will solve most of the problems most of these rules are intending to solve.
Deaden the ball, and the ubiquity of the shift will eventually go away, because most players will not be able to evade the shift simply by lifting a deadened ball over it and into the seats for a homer. Once batters realize that, they will have to adjust to get hard contact to open parts of the field instead, and the defenses will quickly respond. Only the Joey Gallos and Carlos Santanas of the game will continue to be shifted on in a deadened-ball era.
Deaden the ball, and steal attempts will go up without making the bases bigger, because runners will see more benefit in taking more of a chance advancing a base. After all, why risk getting caught stealing today when you can just wait for your teammate to jack a bomb? Although I do see the safety advantage of the bigger base, too.
Deaden the ball, and you won’t need automated strike zones as much as we do now (although I am in favor of them). The reason pitchers are doing everything they can to avoid throwing anything near the strike zone is because literally every major leaguer can take them out of the park on any given pitch thrown within the zone. With a deadened ball, the pitcher can serve up strikes directly to most hitters, particularly the bottom part of the order, saying, “Here you go: hit it and get yourself out.” More pitches in the zone should mean more contact, more action, fewer pitches thrown overall, shorter time in between pitches, longer starting pitcher outings, fewer interminable mid-inning pitching changes, and probably a few other things I could think of.
Deaden the ball, and you won’t need a pitch timer. Here in the live ball era, where the #1 objective of pitchers is avoiding giving up a jack, pitchers put everything they have on every pitch from the very first pitch of the game to induce swing and miss. That eventually takes a lot out of a pitcher, so to conserve energy, the pitcher takes more time in between pitches. Jordan Hicks averaged nearly 30 seconds in between pitches during that 22-pitch at bat the other day. Thirty seconds. Average. DURING A SPRING TRAINING GAME. Why? Because he was trying desperately to induce swing-and-miss. Why would he need to do that? Because even Luis Guillorme, a so-so utility player with almost the least home run power in the majors, can still take any given pitch in the strike zone out of the ballpark. Deaden the ball, and Hicks won’t have to worry about that. Well, not from Guillorme, anyway.
Deaden the ball, and most of these problems will be solved.
“Deaden the ball, and you won’t need a pitch timer.”
I don’t know why that would be the case. Look in, step off, look in, check runner, look in, shake off sign, adjust cap, set, step off…meanwhile the batter adjusts their batting gloves between EVERY. SINGLE. PITCH. Those didn’t shift while you stood there with the bat on your shoulders, chief.
What about the strikeouts? That’s easily the biggest problem in the game. And it isn’t the players trying to hit home runs, it’s how good the pitchers are.
I think banning the shift or limiting where players can be will result in fielders in motion as the pitch is being delivered. That sounds awful.
“MLB is obsessed with pace of play issues, and no rule will have a greater impact on that than a reasonable pitch clock.”
I think that reducing commercial breaks between half innings and during pitching changes to 60 seconds (from 120 or 180?) would shave 20 to 40 minutes of the length of games.
As for between innings, the commercial breaks really don’t take significantly longer than the time already required to switch sides and warm up the arms. This is irreducible downtime.
As for pitching changes, I’m all for no warmups on the game mound. Does this disadvantage the relief pitcher? Feature not a bug.