Major League Baseball will not implement a pitch clock for the 2018 season. However, MLB announced Monday that there will be other rule changes designed to improve the pace of play.
Here’s the complete release, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand:
Basically, MLB is limiting the number of non-pitching change mound visits (six per team, per nine innings — and one additional visit per team, per inning for any extra-inning games) while also trying to reduce the time required for inning breaks and pitching changes.
We’ll see if this results in any noticeable difference, but it’s at least a step toward speeding up games, which lasted an average of three hours, eight minutes during the 2017 season, according to Baseball-Reference.
