HOUSTON (AP) – Limiting pitching changes, restricting defensive shifts, altering the strike zone and installing pitch clocks are among the ideas Major League Baseball may consider as it undertakes a multiyear review of the game that could include the sport’s most radical changes in decades.
Baseball owners were given a lengthy presentation Thursday during their quarterly meeting of how the sport has changed in the past 40 to 50 years.
“Sometimes baseball fans think about what should happen with the game sort of with an artificial construct, that the choice is between preserving ‘The Game,’ as it came down originally from the mountain, and making some changes to that game,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said.
“The point of the conversation today was that the game has changed dramatically. It’s changed organically. It kind of has flowed where the competitive juices of managerial and general managerial decisions have taken it. And the question is, you take a snapshot after 40 years of that and you say, wow, here’s what it looks like, here’s what it used to look like and should we be thinking about what has occurred and whether we want to allow it to continue to go on on the path it’s on?”
If implemented, some of the changes could be the most revolutionary since the AL adopted the designated hitter in 1973 or perhaps even since the number of balls for a walk was reduced from five to four in 1889.