Santa Barbara, CA (Periodical News) – With scientific training and the evolution of nutrition, fastball pitchers in this era are getting faster and faster, which has caused the strikeout rate to continue to rise.
According to statistics, the average ball speed of the four-seam straight ball in Major League Baseball (MLB) in 2020 is 93.4mph. Today the major league announced that it will work with its partner Atlantic League to test move the pitcher rubber back 1 foot, hoping to give players more chances to hit the ball.
The Atlantic League restarted the second half of the season to try to extend the pitcher rubber to home plate distance by 1 foot. If the distance from the pitcher rubber to home plate is extended, the 93.3-mile fastball, the player’s reaction time will be the same as the current 91.6-mile fastball. Since 2005, the strikeout rate in each season has been increasing. Although the strikeouts are exciting, too many strikeouts make the pitcher and batter’s competition out of balance, which is detrimental to the game’s entertainment value.
According to the official website of MLB, the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball will experiment with two revolutionary rule changes in the 2021 season, limiting teams’ use of the designated-batter position to when their starting pitcher is in the game and lengthening the distance between home plate and the pitcher’s rubber by one foot. The current distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate is 60 feet, 6 inches. MLB will test to increase to 61 feet, 6 inches.
The original baseball rules did not specify the distance from home plate to pitcher’s mound. When the National League of the United States was established in the 1870s, it required pitchers to be within a square 45 feet from home plate. This distance was too competitive for the pitcher, who dominated the game at that time. In 1881, the league changed its rules to move the pitching area back 5 feet, increasing the pitching distance to 50 feet. In 1887, to limit overhand throw power, the pitching area was limited to 4 feet wide and 5.5 feet long. The leading edge was 50 feet from the home plate, but the back foot was to stand on a 55.5-foot line when pitching. In 1893, the pitching area was replaced with a pitching board, and the pitching distance became 60.5 feet.
In recent years, due to the fine division of labor and the complexity of tactics, the average game time of MLB is close to 3 hours. Appreciating the game is fun, but too long time makes the fans lose their enthusiasm. The general audience likes to see evenly matched attacks and defenses and does not like too strong strike ability or too monotonous pitching battle.
The distance of the mound moves during the second half of the Atlantic League season, and doing so will provide a control group. The data in the first half of the year will be compared with the data in the second half of the year to determine the actual effect of the changes.
The strong suppressing power of fastball pitchers has gradually increased the game’s average number of strikes, but there are still many leading strong batters each year. Many pitchers can throw up to 100 miles of fastball, and top batters’ bats can still knock the ball out of the home run wall. Push the pitcher’s rubber farther away from home plate so that the batter has a chance to fight. For the players, these changes only affect the data, and solid training still determines the performance on the sports field.
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