Baseball to experiment in Atlantic League with moving mound back a foot

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

Baseball notebook

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 onehundreth 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.

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 past 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.

Braves

Atlanta star left-hander Max Fried was placed on the 10-day injured list with a strained right hamstring after injuring himself while running the bases. Fried is off to a rocky start on the mound after coming off a stellar 2020 season, and now he’s sidelined by a fluke injury in Tuesday night’s loss to the Miami Marlins. He tweaked his hamstring running from second to third on a wild pitch. The Braves also placed rookie outfielder Cristian Pache on the IL with a strained left groin.

Reds

Right-hander Sonny Gray is set to make his first start of the season Saturday at Cleveland, a welcome boost for a Reds staff that’s struggled at times. Gray began spring training as the Reds’ possible opening day starter. But he experienced back spasms, made just one Cactus League start and opened the regular season on the 10day injured list.