The Pitch-Clock Era: How the 2023 Rules Changed the Game
What the 2023 pitch clock, shift limits and larger bases did, with league totals from the historical record comparing 2022 with 2023 through 2025 on stolen bases, scoring, strikeouts and attendance.
Before 2023, the rulebook already told pitchers to throw within 12 seconds with the bases empty, but the rule was almost never enforced. In the 2023 season the majors added three real changes at once: a pitch timer, limits on where fielders can stand and larger bases. Each one changed something the others did not, and the combined effect is easy to see in the league totals. Stolen bases rose from 2,486 in 2022 to 3,503 in 2023, and the success rate on those attempts rose from 75.4 percent to 80.2 percent. Scoring per team game went from 4.28 runs to 4.62. MLB reported that the average game fell by roughly 24 minutes, from just over three hours to about two hours and forty minutes.
Some of what people expected did not happen. Strikeouts did not collapse, home runs did not vanish, and the number of innings in a game stayed essentially flat. The clock changed how fast the game was played far more than it changed what the game was. This article goes through each rule, sets out what the historical record shows for 2022 and the years since, and flags the questions the database cannot answer.
The comparisons here use league totals for the American and National Leagues, computed from the historical record through the 2025 season. Time-of-game figures are not in the historical record, so those come from MLB's published averages and should be checked against the league's own records. The history of earlier rule changes, such as the lowering of the mound in 1969, is worth keeping in mind because the league has always adjusted the balance between hitters and pitchers when it felt the game had drifted. For a longer view of how the sport reacts to change, see the analytics era and the home run surge of the late 1990s and 2000s.
Why the league acted: the game before 2023
The 2022 season is the baseline, and it explains why the changes arrived. League batting average was .243, the lowest in the majors since 1968. Teams scored 4.28 runs per game, hit 1.07 home runs per game and struck out 8.40 times per game. Those numbers followed a pattern that had been building for a decade: strikeouts rose from 8.03 per team game in 2016 to 8.81 in 2019, and the share of plate appearances that ended in a walk, a strikeout or a home run grew while the number of balls in play fell. A game with fewer balls in play has fewer moments of action, even if it lasts as long.
There was a pace problem as well. Pitchers took longer between pitches, hitters stepped out between pitches, and pickoff throws to first base had become a routine way to use time without a cost. Attendance in 2022 was 64,556,658, below the 68,494,865 of 2019, though some of that gap reflected the lingering pandemic. League officials therefore tested ideas in the minor leagues for several seasons, including a pitch timer, then packaged the successful ones for the majors.
The result was a set of rules announced in 2022 for the 2023 season. The changes fell into three groups, each of which is worth taking in turn.
The pitch timer: 15 and 20 seconds
The headline change was the pitch clock. With the bases empty, a pitcher must start his delivery within 15 seconds of receiving the ball from the catcher. With a runner on base, the limit was 20 seconds in 2023. The league shortened that limit to 18 seconds with runners on base starting in 2024, a change that left the bases-empty clock at 15 seconds.
If the pitcher goes over the limit, the umpire calls an automatic ball. The batter faces his own deadline: he must be in the batter's box and ready to hit with at least eight seconds left on the timer. If he is not, the umpire calls an automatic strike. A batter is allowed one timeout per plate appearance. The system is easiest to understand as a way of making both players do what they were already supposed to do, on a schedule.
The penalties are small in terms of the count. An automatic ball is one ball, an automatic strike is one strike. What matters is how they affect decisions. A pitcher with a 3-2 count who is about to run out of time must choose between a quick pitch and giving up a free walk. A batter with two strikes who is not set faces a strikeout. In practice, players adjusted quickly, and the dramatic automatic calls were the exception rather than the rule.
The cumulative time effect is simple. If a typical pitch is delivered a few seconds faster and hundreds of pitches are thrown in a game, the savings add up quickly. That is where most of the 24 minutes came from, not from any change in the number of innings. The historical record shows that teams recorded about 26.6 outs per team game in 2022 and again in 2023, so the games were not shorter because they ended sooner. They were shorter because the same number of outs were recorded in less time.
Limited pickoffs and the balk
The third piece of the timer package restricts a pitcher's disengagements: pickoff throws and step-offs. A pitcher gets two per plate appearance. If he makes a third and does not retire the runner, the umpire calls a balk and every runner advances a base. The count resets if a runner advances during the plate appearance, which means the rule does not penalize a pitcher for a runner who moves up on his own.
This rule changes the geometry of stealing a base. Before 2023, a runner on first had to worry about an unlimited number of throws. Afterward, a runner who has seen two throws knows that the pitcher is limited, and can take a larger lead. If the pitcher throws again and misses, the cost is a free base. Pitchers must now choose when to spend their two disengagements.
The historical record provides an indirect measure of this. Balks in the American and National Leagues combined rose from 122 in 2022 to 208 in 2023, then 197 in 2024 and 181 in 2025. Balks are not a perfect measure, because the new rule created new ways to commit one, but the rise is consistent with pitchers adjusting to a new limit.
Shift limits: the infield and the ball in play
The second package of rules restricted defensive positioning. Before every pitch, four infielders must have both feet on the infield dirt, two on each side of second base. A second baseman cannot stand in short right field, and a shortstop cannot take up residence behind the bag on the first-base side. Infielders also cannot switch sides to move into a pull-heavy lane.
The rule targets the shift, which had become one of the clearest products of the analytics era. Teams used spray charts to put three infielders on one side of the diamond against left-handed pull hitters, converting ground-ball hits into outs. The shift was legal, effective and unpopular, since it made some of the best-struck balls into routine outs.
The historical totals suggest, but cannot prove, that the rule worked in the intended direction. Batting average on balls in play, which can be computed from totals as hits minus home runs, divided by at-bats minus strikeouts minus home runs plus sacrifice flies, rose from .290 in 2022 to .297 in 2023. League batting average rose from .243 to .248, and on-base percentage from .312 to .320. Those are modest changes, about five points of batting average, but over a full league they represent several hundred extra hits.
The caveat is real: BABIP also moves with weather, baseballs, fielding quality and the quality of contact. In 2024 it fell back to .291, and batting average returned to .243. The shift limits probably helped hitters who pulled the ball, but the league-wide numbers cannot isolate that effect from everything else that changed.
Bigger bases and the stolen-base boom
The third change was physical. The bases grew from 15 inches square to 18 inches square, and the distance between first and second and between second and third shrank by about 4.5 inches. The intent was partly safety, since a bigger bag gives a fielder and a runner more room, and partly to encourage more action on the bases.
Combined with the pickoff limit and the pitch clock, the larger bases transformed base running. Stolen bases per team game rose from 0.51 in 2022 to 0.72 in 2023, a 41 percent jump. Total stolen bases hit 3,503 in 2023 and went up again to 3,617 in 2024, then settled at 3,440 in 2025. Caught-stealing numbers did not rise in proportion: 811 in 2022, 866 in 2023, 961 in 2024 and 989 in 2025.
| Season | Stolen bases | Caught stealing | Success rate | Steals per team game |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2,280 | 832 | 73.3% | 0.47 |
| 2022 | 2,486 | 811 | 75.4% | 0.51 |
| 2023 | 3,503 | 866 | 80.2% | 0.72 |
| 2024 | 3,617 | 961 | 79.0% | 0.74 |
| 2025 | 3,440 | 989 | 77.7% | 0.71 |
The success rate matters because stealing is only worth doing if runners succeed often enough. The exact break-even depends on the base-out state, but a commonly cited figure is around 70 percent, because a caught runner costs roughly twice what a successful steal gains. At 75 percent, stealing was marginally profitable. At 80 percent, it was clearly worth trying more often, and managers did so.
The leaders show the change at the top end. In 2022 the major-league leader was Jon Berti with 41 steals, and no one else had more than 35. In 2023, Ronald Acuña led with 73, and Esteury Ruiz had 67 and Corbin Carroll 54. Acuña also won the National League MVP award that year. By 2025 the league success rate had slipped to 77.7 percent. The totals cannot show why, but this is how equilibrium usually works in baseball: pitchers and catchers work out how to hold runners, then runners work out how to beat that.
The scoring picture: 2022 versus 2023 and after
| Measure per team game | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs | 4.28 | 4.62 | 4.39 | 4.45 |
| Home runs | 1.07 | 1.21 | 1.12 | 1.16 |
| Strikeouts | 8.40 | 8.61 | 8.48 | 8.36 |
| Walks | 3.06 | 3.25 | 3.07 | 3.16 |
The 2023 numbers look like a step up in offense, and in some respects they were. Teams scored about a third of a run more per game than in 2022 and hit about 0.14 more home runs. But the 2024 season fell back toward the 2022 levels, which suggests that the pitch clock was not the only factor. The ball, the weather and the way teams used their pitchers all play a part, and the 2023 numbers may have included a short-run overshoot as pitchers adjusted.
What did not change much is revealing. Strikeouts rose slightly in 2023 and fell back in 2024 and 2025, ending at 8.36 per team game, the lowest of the four seasons. The clock did not meaningfully cut the strikeout rate. Walks also rose in 2023, from 3.06 to 3.25 per team game, before falling back to 3.07 in 2024.
The 2023 postseason offers a footnote on how competitive balance fared. The Texas Rangers, who play at Globe Life Field, beat the Arizona Diamondbacks four games to one for the title. Both clubs reached the playoffs as wild cards. Rule changes do not change the fact that a short series can go to almost anyone.
What fans and the box office saw
Attendance is the crude but useful measure of whether the product improved. Total attendance rose from 64,556,658 in 2022 to 70,747,365 in 2023, and reached 71,348,405 in 2024 and 71,409,421 in 2025. Per game, the average was 26,567 in 2022 and 29,114 in 2023. Part of the 2023 increase was the continuing recovery from the pandemic and part may have been the new rules. The historical data cannot separate them, but the higher level has held through 2025.
Television and streaming audiences are not in the database, and neither are surveys of fan satisfaction. The most that can be said is that the league's own interpretation, that shorter games improve the experience, is plausible and consistent with attendance.
What the database cannot tell you
Several of the most important questions about the pitch clock lie outside any historical database. Pitchers and their representatives raised concerns about whether the faster pace affects arm health. That is a medical and biomechanical question, and the historical record does not carry injury data, so nothing in this article can settle it.
Another open question is how much of the stolen-base increase came from each rule. The bigger base, the pickoff limit and the clock all reached the majors at the same time, so the data cannot separate them. Minor-league experiments, which introduced the rules in different combinations, offered some guidance, but MLB's own analysis is the source for those findings.
A third limit is that league totals hide individual differences. A slow-working starter faced a bigger adjustment than a pitcher who already moved quickly, and some hitters had been stepping out as a habit. The totals show the average, not the winners and losers.
Common questions
When did the pitch clock start? In the majors, with the 2023 season. The league had used timers at various levels of the minor leagues before that.
How long is the clock? Fifteen seconds with the bases empty. With runners on base it was 20 seconds in 2023 and 18 seconds beginning in 2024.
What happens if a pitcher violates the clock? The umpire calls an automatic ball. If the batter is not ready with eight seconds left, the umpire calls an automatic strike.
How many pickoff attempts are allowed? Two disengagements per plate appearance. A third that does not retire the runner is a balk.
Did the shift disappear? The extreme versions did. Teams can still shade their fielders, but all four infielders must be on the dirt, two on each side of second base, when the pitch is released.
Where to go next
For the full-season picture, see the league standings and the leaders pages, which show how stolen bases and other categories have moved since 2022. To follow how pennant races are counted down in a new era, read magic numbers explained, and for a look at how rules shaped older eras, try the first modern World Series and the Black Sox scandal of 1919.