New Rules and Guidelines for Baseball Mlb

Baseball mlb is a team sport played on a field (typically grass) that is divided into an infield and an outfield. Players use wood, aluminum or metal bats to hit a ball into fair territory—between the bases, which are 90 feet apart. The goal of a team at bat is to score more runs than the opposing team by touching all four bases in order without being tagged out.

The sport’s influx of data-driven eggheads has given rise to a genre of baseball literature (Moneyball) and fun movies (Brad Pitt as Beane). But the analytics revolution is threatening the game’s unwritten rules, which have long shaped the culture of MLB: the game is slow, pitching dominates, and the ball is hardly ever in play.

To change that, the league recently instituted new rules and guidelines intended to speed things up—most notably, a pitch clock that gives pitchers only 15 seconds to begin their delivery motion with runners on base, and eight seconds when nobody is on. This is a small but meaningful change that should put more urgency into the game, which is often criticized as boring and slow.

The league also has introduced new guidance asking umpires to call obstruction when a fielder positions himself to impede the progress of a runner, as long as the fielder is not in possession of the ball or in the act of attempting to field it. Previously, the umpires would make this call on their own discretion.