Introduction to the 2020 Edition of

The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated

For a number of years after the original version of this book appeared in 1994, the lone revision in the playing rules occurred in 1995, when the lower level of the strike zone became a line at the hollow beneath the batter’s kneecap rather than a line at the top of his knees. However, in the past decade alone, not only have we had a welter of new rules appear (pertaining to runner interference, home plate collisions, pitching changes, and other less momentous on-field events) but the entire rule book has also been reorganized to a degree that makes its antecedents hopelessly outdated, as the game itself has changed significantly.

As early as the mid-1990s, largely due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), the complexion of baseball irretrievably transformed—particularly those features of it that required fans to trust in the legitimacy of statistical achievements produced by marquee players. Too, there began to be incidents almost every season where video replay demonstrated that umpires’ decisions were often enough mistaken in crucial situations that baseball had to follow the lead of other major sports and introduce video replay to overturn decisions that were clearly faulty. Moreover, team officials, players, and managers alike have increasingly come to rely on analytics and Statcast metrics like WAR, launch angle, and average exit velocity rather than traditional statistics such as batting average, fielding average, and ERA to measure a player’s worth. Some of these metrics are so arcane that they are nearly unintelligible to the average fan. Others seem designed only to promote the invention of new and even more attenuated metrics.

But all this leads to the observation that the game has evolved into an unparelleled pursuit of power, whether it be at the plate or on the mound. It is now conceivable that a batter will face a different pitcher in every plate appearance in the course of a game, with each one not only fresher but throwing harder than his forerunner. It is also now the norm that practically every batter will be swinging to hit a game-winning home run in the late innings of a tie game, no matter who the pitcher is or what the defensive alignment he faces. In 2018, for the first time in major-league history, there were more strikeouts than base hits (and it occurred again in 2019). Yet, on the positive side, the 2018 season also brought the longest extra-inning game in World Series history, the first player since Babe Ruth to pitch more than 50 innings and hit more than 20 home runs in the same season (Shohei Ohtani), and a starting pitcher—Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets—that deservedly bagged the National League Cy Young Award despite winning only 10 games. On another front, contrarily innovative of late in their surrepitiously successful approach to the game have been the Tampa Bay Rays, so reliant on their bullpen that they arrived at the All-Star break in 2019 without having produced a complete game from their pitching staff since 2016, and in Ryne Stanek featured the first hurler ever to start as many as 25 games in a season while logging fewer than 50 innings pitched. In all, the Rays used 33 different pitchers in 2019 while squirming their way to an LDS appearance. Equally innovative are the Houston Astros who totally abandoned issuing intentional walks in 2019 because batters are hitting fewer ground balls, which create the double plays that intentional walks are meant to induce. Rather, batters are launching home runs at a record rate (6,671 in 2019, 671 more than the previous MLB mark of 6,105 set in 2017) turning the intentional walk into an invitation to surrender even more runs via the long ball. After hitting a record 260 homers as a team in 2018, the New York Yankees tacked on 36 more dingers in 2019 but nonetheless lost their team record when the Minnesota Twins outhomered them, 307 to 306.

This completely updated and expanded edition of The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated explores many such far-reaching developments in the game’s never-ending evolution, including some, like umpire Joe West’s contentious ruling on Jose Altuve’s drive that landed in the right-field stands in Game Three of the 2018 ALCS, which demonstrated that all the technological advances in the world cannot completely eliminate the human element in the decision-making process. In addition, earlier controversial moments in the game’s long and rich history, such as the Merkle incident in 1908, the notorious “Pine Tar” game, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding the first batter not to be credited with the run that scored on his own home run are examined in greater depth as new information has emerged. With its new layout, altered rules, and many added anecdotes, The Official Rules of Baseball Illustrated is a book no baseball lover should be without.