By Noah Gould
For decades baseball was the most popular sport in America, but since the 1994 world series was canceled due to a strike ratings and ticket sales have plummeted. From when the rating system was first used in 1968 to 1994 the series got a rating of under 20 only 3 times. Since the strike the series hasn’t broken a 20 one time. 2004 was the last time that the series got a 15. Of course this doesn’t all have to do with the strike season. In the era of social media no one has the attention span to watch the slowest sport in the country. Roughly half of last year’s world series viewer were 55 or older. Only 6 percent were under the age of 18 according to data gathered by Sport Media. The average age of views of nationally televised games last year was 54. Many are looking to Rob Manfred, MLB’s new commissioner, to make radical changes to spend up the games.
Several new rules will be implemented during the upcoming season. None of them are big changes and the penalties aren’t very harsh. The first change is when a pitching change happens the stadium clock will count down from 2 minutes and 25 seconds. This will speed up the later and longer innings of the games. Many nights it is difficult to sit through a game that seems decided and is dragging through its lating innings.
The requirement probably won’t affect the actual play of the game that much. The second change is more drastic. Batters must keep one foot in the box for the entire at bat. This might make hitters uncomfortable and hurt offenses for the first portion of the season. The rule doesn’t specify when the batters actually have to get back into the box, so a batter can go through his whole 60 second routine of readjusting both gloves and his helmet and taking 13 practice swings as long as one foot is in the box. The fine for the penalty is $500 per offense. Many have said that the fine isn’t steep enough.
Yes, to an MLB player $500 is like a quarter is to a teen, but think about how many pitches each batter faces a season. Last year Ian Kinsler had 726 regular season plate appearances. if he faces 4 pitches per appearance which is a conservative estimate that’s 2904 pitches. If he dares to step out of the box once every 100 pitches that would be $14,500 in fines. These penalties will add up quickly. For many players the actual receiving of the fine 10 times might be a bigger deterrent than the dollar amount itself.
These new rules affect offenses more than pitchers. They actually won’t really speed the game up that much. These are simply baby steps in the right directions. Eventually(hopefully before the 2016 season) there will have to be rules against batters being outside the box for too long and limits on time between pitches. These changes will in the long run be good for the league. For this season they will at least provide an interesting talking point and speed up the later innings slightly.
