Proceed with caution when changing baseball

Evolution is inevitable, and good, and that can even apply to baseball.

Change once came in drips, but two decades of innovation on the back fields and batting cages and boardrooms has flooded the diamond.

And now MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wants to blow up the dam.

A bevy of significant rule changes — oft discussed but often not long for the negotiating table — are being batted about by MLB and the players’ association, a list of bullet points that go far beyond limiting mound visits or telling pitchers to hurry it up a bit.

No, what’s on the table right now would, to borrow a turn of phrase from Manfred, render extinct significant elements of baseball as we know it.

Pitchers hitting? Not in the universal designated hitter era.

Lefty-on-lefty matchups? Not if pitchers are required to face at least three batters.

A timeless game without a clock? Nope — you better release that pitch in 20 seconds or less.

There’s a fine line between innovation and change for change’s sake, of evolution and overreach based on current conditions.

There’s a lot of smarts in these proposals, which were first reported by The Athletic. And there’s also a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences. Let’s try to parse them out:

The universal DH

Unless you’re 55 or older, you have no solid recollection of a world without the designated hitter. If this sounds like a gentler way of saying the most strident opponents of the DH are dying off, well, you’re probably correct.

It would certainly be a drag to see what we’ve come to know as the National League style of play vanish. And the universal DH will almost assuredly tack time onto the game, as one more Three True Outcomes slugger will grind out lengthy at-bats where a pitcher once quietly and quickly flailed.

Still, it’s not like the National League has lapped the American League in time of game; in the past four seasons, just 19 of the 37 teams whose games ran the longest hailed from the AL. Length of game seems to correlate more strongly with whether a team is in contention — and thus, more deliberate in its actions.

The union will certainly not object to a bevy of higher-paying jobs getting created, and it would enable guys like Mark Reynolds to sign actual, major-league deals rather than the boilerplate (collusive?) minorleague deal with a $1 million guarantee should he make the team.

So, the double switch will die. There will also be more home runs, and a slot in the lineup for marquee players who might otherwise take the day off altogether. We can live with that.

The three-batter minimum

Sure, nobody has enjoyed the Creeping La Russaism that has infected baseball since the legendary manager revolutionized the use of lefty specialists and exhaustive matching up.

Yet, it’s also undeniably been part of the game going on four decades. Like the DH, it has created a specialized line of work for a largely decent bunch of human beings.

And, much like the talk of limiting shifts that has gotten many up in arms, it goes against everything baseball stands for to legislate legitimate strategy out of the game.

Then again, if nobody’s still up at 12:30 a.m. when the ninth pitcher of the night records the final out, perhaps baseball does have a problem.

The pitch clock

Certainly, pitchers can work more quickly. Not surprisingly, the 26 slowest workers in 2018 were all relievers — they pitch in the tensest moments of the game and throw harder, requiring more recovery time between pitches.

But you also can’t expect pitchers merely to catch and release. Of the 336 pitchers who threw at least 50 innings last season, just three — Brent Suter, Steven Matz and Wade Miley — averaged less than 20 seconds per pitch. At the very middle of that group, the average pitch time was 24 seconds.

Not everyone is Pedro Baez or Bud Norris. So rather than punish everybody, throw the book at the most chronic offenders — those who average 27 or more seconds between pitches.