Of all the signs of spring, none is as exciting and as American as baseball’s Opening Day.

　　Yet recently, each new season has come with fresh complaints about the sport. It’s definitely not “dying” as some argue. But neither is its popularity rising. Many commentators and casual fans are concerned that the sport is too “boring” for modern audiences. And while more devoted fans would probably contest that description, there is a sense that something is amiss with the way the game is currently played. This has meant that for several years, a big part of the national baseball conversation has been about rule changes.

　　Playing By the Rules

　　Changing the rules of any game is a delicate business. In a very real sense, the rules are the game. They are constitutive of a game’s very essence. As a father of both a five- and seven-year-old, I have some recent experience explaining how baseball works, and it’s hard to explain the activity of baseball in a way that isn’t simply explaining the rules of the game.

　　Yet no one would say that baseball—or any game—simply is whatever the official rulebook says it is: you can’t change rules willy-nilly and still reasonably consider it the same game. Making a new rule that awarded runs for hitting the ball into a net in the outfield, for instance, would amount to creating something altogether different. In other words, games are essentially traditions—activities that we know primarily by playing them (or watching others play them) according to a set of rules.

　　We might, therefore, differentiate between two different, but not mutually exclusive, rationales for rule changes. On the one hand, they can respond to changes in the activity going on in the field, adjusting as necessary to maintain continuity with the game as we know it. On the other hand, they may try to make the game something different and “better” according to some detached sense of what that “better” means. Often, these changes are trying to achieve some goal that is extraneous to the traditional activity of the game itself (most obviously, making money).

　　A good example of the former is the banning of the infield shift in 2023. There had never been any hard-and-fast rule stating that shortstops must stand between second and third, and that second basemen must stand between first and second. But that was how the game had generally been played. As teams began to overload one side of the infield in response to advanced metrics showing where certain hitters were likely to hit the ball, it was believed that the practice had a stifling effect on offense that tended to spoil the game. Accordingly, the standard way of doing things was instantiated into a formal rule.

　　The “golden at-bat” suggestion should be like a firebell in the night: the monsters that run MLB will consider almost anything scraped off the bottom of the focus-group table.

　　An example of the latter kind of rule change—and a particularly revolting one to baseball purists—is the “ghost runner” rule that places a runner on second base at the beginning of every extra inning. In this case, something entirely foreign to the game as it has traditionally been played (a runner simply placed by fiat on base, without earning his way there) was introduced because extended extra-inning affairs were thought to be so boring that they turned away casual viewers.

　　If games are traditions, as we elaborate and alter the rules, we may be trying to maintain the continuity of that traditional activity, or be trying to meet some other purpose—money, viewers, celebrity, or even just abstract “excitement.” And in some happy situations, these two might go together.

　　Game and Spectacle

　　Professional sports are both games and money-making enterprises, of course, so there is no getting around the incentives of wealth and popularity. Some people (the present author included) enjoy the game itself and pay good money precisely to watch people play it. There is plenty of money, though, to be made off those who don’t particularly love the game, but may engage with it for some other reason. We might lump these other reasons into the category of “spectacle.” Viewers who don’t have any great love of a particular game might nevertheless enjoy the stadium experience; might be interested in following celebrity players (or celebrities’ boyfriends who happen to be players); might be impressed by some of the physical activities involved in playing the game (those who don’t like basketball can still enjoy highlights of someone getting “posterized”); might enjoy the drama attendant on playoff chases or record-breaking feats; or they might just want something to watch on TV.

　　All that, of course, is fine and good. Often, the excitement and pageantry surrounding a sport flow naturally from the actual playing of it. For those of us who love a particular game, though, the fear is always that the desire for spectacle will lead to attempts to manufacture it artificially at the expense of the integrity of the game. And that is what makes rule changes so dicey. If you recognize that the rules are the game, changing them just to get more eyeballs can easily lead you into destroy the sport in order to save it territory.

　　Enter Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Baseball. Manfred (who many fans believe hates baseball) has always been single-mindedly focused on “improving” the sport as a money-making spectacle. He dutifully declined to enforce the rules against several of the sports’ young, profitable celebrities when they were caught flagrantly and systematically cheating. Many also believe that MLB under his leadership changed the cores of the balls in an effort to generate more eye-catching home runs.

　　So likewise, most of the rule changes under his reign have been focused on improving the spectacle of the game. Working according to the “baseball-is-boring” thesis, he has established pitch clocks, universal-DH, ghost runners, an expanded playoff, and a host of ticky-tack regulations surrounding relief pitchers, pickoffs, mound visits, and more.

　　Not all of Manfred’s rule innovations have been as bad as purists predicted. The pitch clock, I thought, was an affront to the leisurely nature of baseball, but I must admit that it has not turned out to be as much of an intrusion in the game as I had thought (though I continue to doubt that delay-of-game penalties are the key to making baseball more popular). Some, like the infield shift ban, were likely undertaken for purposes of attracting casual viewers, but could be easily defended on more traditional grounds. Others, like ghost runners, were simply unconscionable.

　　This offseason, though, Manfred suggested something beyond the pale—something that could only have been conjured up in the frenzied dreams of the most vulgar of imaginations: a “golden at-bat.” This would allow teams, once per game (at least initially), to pinch-hit any player at any time, even if the player is already elsewhere in the batting order. This sort of Harlem Globetrotters (or, more precisely, Savannah Bananas) gimmick would help ensure that the biggest money-making stars are hitting in the most pivotal situations. There is almost no possible argument to be had that it is in keeping with the character of the game. It’s a video-game cheat code that erodes a defining quality of baseball that limits the ability of any single player to dominate a game. And it is an attempt to generate “viral” moments out of thin air, when the game requires patience and buildup for them.

　　Given the universally negative reaction the idea received within baseball circles, Manfred backed off—at least for now. But its very suggestion should be like a firebell in the night: the monsters that run MLB will consider almost anything scraped off the bottom of the focus-group table. There must be another way!

　　The “Boring” Problem

　　Thankfully, there is another approach to increasing the excitement of baseball—one that remains authentic to the game as it has traditionally been played. A good case can be made that what ails baseball right now is not a lack of spectacle or star power, but a shift in the way the game itself is being played.

　　The “boring” complaint about baseball is mostly just a nice way of saying that the dang kids these days have the attention span of a gnat. But there is something to it: there is less regular action in a game than there has been in the past. The key problem, though, is not the time between pitches (as the pitch clock assumes), but what is happening to those pitches: increasingly, nothing.

　　Ironically, the relative lack of action in the game right now is the result of the one thing that execs long hyped as the most exciting play: the home run. In the past several decades, strength and conditioning programs have drastically improved, while advanced metrics and tracking technologies that monitor a swing’s “launch angle” have created an environment in which “swinging for the fences” is, for most players, the most efficient way to generate runs—even though it comes with lower batting averages and fewer hits overall.

　　Could MLB tweak some rules that would make home runs slightly more difficult, and reward contact hitting?

　　Home runs, therefore, have become a dime a dozen. Players are hitting more of them than ever. And in between the long balls? Not much. The stats bear out how terrible current MLB hitters are at getting hits or even putting the ball in play. In 2024, the league batting average was .243, tied with 2022 for the lowest since 1968. That year, which set an all-time low of .237, became infamous for bad offense. Making matters worse is that batters aren’t even getting out in interesting ways; they’re just striking out. Astonishingly, the worst sixteen seasons in baseball history for balls put in play (which means the defense actually has to do something) are the seasons of 2009-2024. Correspondingly, those same years have seen strikeouts skyrocket to record highs.

　　I’d wager that most baseball fans and casual viewers alike would now say that a double, RBI single, stolen base, sac fly, and RBI single strung together is a far more exciting way to watch two runs being scored than a two-run homer bracketed by strikeouts.

　　The fact that the game is now so boom-or-bust shows that the actual playing of the game has degraded (which we purists don’t like), and means there is less regular, extended excitement to hold viewers’ attention (which the money-makers don’t like). There is a “golden” opportunity to think about tweaks to the game that might make “small-ball” hitting great again.

　　Give Me That Old-Time Baseball

　　Importantly, MLB does not have an overall offense problem—pitching isn’t dominating hitting. In 1968, paltry batting averages corresponded with a meager 3.42 runs per team game—the second lowest of all-time. By contrast, 2024 saw a comparatively robust 4.39 runs per team game, which is slightly above average historically. That just reinforces that today’s low batting averages are intentional and strategic. Players and coaches are choosing to embrace a plate approach that results in fewer hits but more home runs, because that strategy currently pays off in greater overall production and player value as measured by modern analytics. Rule changes, therefore, ought to be narrowly tailored to address that specific dynamic.

　　Could MLB tweak some rules that would make home runs slightly more difficult, and reward contact hitting? It would not need to make the home run a rare event, but at least alter the incentive structure so that a higher portion of players will find that it is more productive for them to focus on contact and average, rather than focusing on power and launch angle.

　　A more restrictive limit on infield shifts, as well as tweaks to the strike zone, the pitcher’s mound, and/or the ball could possibly help, though it’s not clear if they could be crafted specifically enough to cut down on home runs without dampening offense in general or making the strikeout problem worse.

　　Two ideas could be particularly well-targeted for the problems with today’s game, though, both involving the size of the outfield. First, MLB could consider some general restrictions (or perhaps incentives) on outfield dimensions and wall height. That outfield walls vary from stadium to stadium has always been a hallmark of baseball, and that shouldn’t change. But there could be some limits imposed that attempt to eliminate “cheap” home runs, especially down the right- and left-field lines, where many stadiums have low and shallow walls.

　　Extending the walls would create more outfield space, making dingers more difficult and hopefully increasing the incentive to take a more contact-first approach. But it might just turn a lot of home runs into flyouts. Encouraging higher walls, though, could make home runs more difficult, while turning them into off-the-wall doubles and triples, which are some of the most exciting plays of the game.

　　The other major idea that MLB should consider is expanding the outfield by widening foul lines. Rather than running straight from home plate to the outfield wall, the foul lines could be redirected outward by a few degrees starting at third/first base. This idea has actually been around for over a century, as this extensive treatment recounts. One calculation showed that for every degree shift, it would result in about 3.4 points in higher batting average. So a very subtle change could significantly impact a players hitting strategy. Not only would it create more space for hits, it would create it in the areas most likely to result in exciting and productive doubles and triples. For many players, contact and ball placement might once again be the key to maximizing their productivity.

　　Small-scale trials of the idea in the 1970s, moreover, revealed it to be remarkably unobtrusive. Many players involved barely even noticed it. It would not revolutionize baseball, but might subtly bring it back closer to the more balanced style of play that has defined the modern game.

　　The potential tension between what is good for business and what is good for the game won’t ever go away. Those of us who love the game as the game may hate that its future depends on the shifting interests of hoi polloi and the limited capacity of the youths to appreciate its beauty. But fortunately, the core complaints of those who care mainly about baseball’s commercial success can, at present at least, be addressed by rules that are authentic to baseball’s traditional identity.

　　If Rob Manfred takes his cues more from what happens on the diamond than from what’s said in the focus group, we might avoid the resort to gimmicks and cheat codes.