Major League Baseball announces rule change to prevent risky takeout slides

On Thursday, the Major League Baseball release a series of rule changes to hopefully improve the game in 2016. The breaks between innings also will be reduced.

The big change is eliminating the baseball “tradition” of endless conferences at the mound between managers, coaches, and pitchers – often created to give a pitcher in the bullpen more time to warm up.

So on one hand, you’ve got a new rule declaring runners have to be safer when sliding into second on a double play ball, but on the other hand, fielders will be forced to actually be in contact with second, likely resulting in more contact with runners coming into that base. But the new rule is created to take the judgment of umpires out of the equation, and make it more black and white.

Takeout slides and neighborhood plays – when a fielder is given credit for a force out for being in close proximity to the base when turning a double play – will be reviewable. “I’ve never understood the neighborhood play”. The rules stem from an incident in last year’s postseason in which Utley, then with the Dodgers, slid hard into an unsuspecting Ruben Tejada at second, breaking Tejada’s leg.

A runner may still make contact in the course of a permissible slide, but are specifically prohibited from using a roll block or intentionally initiating (or attempting to initiate) contact with the fielder by elevating and kicking his leg above the fielder’s knee, throwing arm or upper body. Slides on potential double plays will require runners to make a “bona fide” attempt to reach and remain on the base.

They will include a 30-second clock for mound visits and shortening the time between half-innings from two minutes and 25 seconds to two minutes and five seconds, Yahoo Sports reports. While the middle infielders in the game will adjust to the rule change accordingly, what would happen if a star middle infielder isn’t able to get out of the way of an impeding runner coming at them full speed at the second base bag?

The second change has to do with continuing baseball’s pace-of-play initiative. If the runner violates the new rule, both he and the runner going to first are called out.

“We’ll have to see how it all plays out”. Kudos to the league for realizing that they needed to remedy that situation immediately, and doing so.