On Tuesday, the major leagues unanimously adopted two new rules in the competition committee on Tuesday, athletics reports. The changes are more like minor adjustments, and the product on the field won’t really look any different in 2025 compared to 2024 as a result.
Let’s take a look.
Tighten the change rule
As most baseball fans know by now, the extreme changes we saw a few years ago are now off-limits. Teams must have no more than two infielders on either side of second base when the pitch is thrown. Teams will go as far as they can when scouting calls, but the days of stacking three infielders on the right side against weak-kneed lefties are over.
If a player was judged to have violated the rule – it would be a second baseman or shortstop second too early – the penalty in the past was accepting the outcome of the play or getting an automatic ball for the batter. The new rule is much more difficult for the defense.
The rule change now states that a team violating the change rule will have the batter awarded to first base for free and any Baserunners will move up one base. The defensive player would be charged an error while the batter would not get a plate appearance.
Obviously, this is quite a deterrent.
Exaggerated on purpose a base
The next change is to combat a play that had been used by a few teams in 2024, notably the Yankees. The scenario here to consider is when there are runners on first and third with two outs and there is a ground ball that causes the defense to grab the force play at second to end the inning. If there is a tight play on second, teams taught runners not to slow down and run in front of the base as if it were first.
The theory was that if the player batted the throw to second and was ruled safe, the runner on third base would then score a run before the third out. Inevitably the runner going through the bag to second would then be out of the baseline and third, but the run still counts.
Setting the rule here gives the replay manager the ability to rule whether the runner heading to second base in this scenario has abandoned the baseline before the runner scores. If so, the race wouldn’t count.
Again, it’s a small adjustment, but it eliminates the ability for teams to try to game the system here and sneak in at every level. Instead of just sprinting through the bag as if it were first base, runners will have to go back and deal with the play as they normally would at second and hold the bag or spin it toward the next base.