MLB Rule Changes Include Modified Pitch Clock For 2024 Season

Image credit: Pitch Clock (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Major League Baseball announced on Thursday that the pitch clock with runners on base will be reduced from 20 to 18 seconds for the 2024 season.

The Competition Committee made up of six owners, four players and an umpire voted to approve a series of rules changes, including the reduction of the pitch clock with runners on base. Pitchers will still have 15 seconds to deliver a pitch with no one on base.

MLB introduced the pitch clock in 2023 and saw the average time of a nine-inning game decrease 24 minutes to 2:40, the fastest average game time in 40 years. However, the average time of a nine-inning game increased seven minutes from April to September over the course of the season. The new rules modification is an attempt to continue speeding up the game.

MLB cited the fact that pitchers began their deliveries with an average of 7.3 seconds remaining on the clock with runners on base in explaining the vote to reduce the time on the clock with runners on. The league also experimented with a 17-second pitch clock during the final month of the Triple-A season and said it saw no increase in the amount of violations.

The MLB Players Association issued a statement by executive director Tony Clark saying the players voted against the rules modification.

“This afternoon, player representatives voted against the 2024 rules changes proposed by the Commissioner’s Office,” Clark said in the statement. “As they made clear in the Competition Committee, players feel strongly that, following last season’s profound changes to the fundamental rules of the game, immediate additional changes are unnecessary and offer no meaningful benefit to fans, players or the competition on the field.”

In addition to reducing the time on the pitch clock with runners on base, MLB also announced a series of other modifications for the 2024 season:

• Runner’s Lane: Batters will now have a wider lane to run down to first base. Previously, batters had to run on the dirt in order to avoid a violation. Now, the lane has been widened to include the cut of the infield grass. The distance between the foul line and the infield grass will be between 18 and 24 inches.
• Mound Visits: The number of mound visits allowed will be reduced from five to four. An extra mound visit will be awarded in the ninth inning if the defensive team has zero remaining at the end of the eighth inning. According to MLB, teams averaged only 2.3 mound visits per game last season and 98% of games would not have exceeded a limit of four mound visits. 
• Pitch Clock Start Time: The pitch clock will now restart after a dead ball when the pitcher receives the ball and play is ready to resume. Previously, the clock began only when the pitcher was on the mound. The change removes the pitcher’s ability to delay the start of the timer by walking around the edge of the mound.
• Warmup Requirement: A pitcher who warms up at the start of an inning must face at least one batter. According to MLB, there were 24 instances last season where a pitcher warmed up between innings and was replaced before throwing a pitch, adding approximately three minutes of dead time. There were two such instances during the 2023 World Series.