MLB to experiment with moving mound
NEW YORK — Major League Baseball wants to see if moving back the pitcher’s mound will increase offense.
MLB will experiment with a 12-inch greater distance between the mound and home plate during a portion of the Atlantic League season in an effort to decrease strikeouts and increase offense.
The pitching rubber will be moved back to 61 feet, 6 inches starting Aug. 3 during the second half of the independent minor league’s season.
“It’s a direct response to the escalating strikeout rate, where you’re giving the hitter approximately one one-hundredth of a second of additional time to decide whether to swing at a pitch, which has the effect just in terms of reaction time of reducing the effective velocity of a pitch by roughly 1.5 mph,” said Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations. “The purpose of the test and hope is giving hitters even that tiny additional piece of time will allow them to make more contact and reduce the strikeout rate.”
In 2019, the last full season, strikeouts set a record for the 12th consecutive year at 42,823, up 33% from 32,189 in 2007. Strikeouts exceeded hits the last three seasons after never occurring before in major-league history.
MLB calculated the average fastball velocity last year at 93.3 mph and estimated the increased distance would decrease the equivalent to 91.6 mph.
The mound has been at its current distance since 1893, when the National League moved the rubber back 5 feet. Strikeouts declined from 8.5% in 1892 to 5.2% in 1893, and the batting average increased from .245 in 1892 to .280.
“We’ve got to do something to get more offense in the game, whether you want to talk about the mound being moved back a foot, whether you want to talk about different ways of getting rid of the shift, whether you want to talk about substances on the ball,” Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “I love baseball, but I don’t believe the rules are written on stone tablets.”
In addition, the MLB partner league will have an experimental “double-hook DH” rule in which a team would lose its designated hitter when its starting pitcher leaves the game. That will be in effect the entire season, which starts May 27, and the goal is to encourage managers to leave their starting pitchers in games longer.
Other experimental minor-league rules this year require infielders at Class AA to keep both feet in the infield at the start of every play; the use of 18-by-18-inch bases at Class AAA rather than 15-by-15; and a limit of two step off or pickoff attempts per plate appearance at Low A with at least one runner on base.