There are extensive excerpts below from a well thought out recent article on the subject. It's conclusions are close enough to what I have advocated for several years:
Eliminate the mound.
Move the pitcher from 60 feet, six inches (measured to the BACK of home plate) to the middle of the diamond, which is where the average fan thinks it is: about 63 feet six inches from home plate. Home to second is 127 feet measured ... somehow.
Have pitchers release from that point, not start their motion.
Also, ...
Imaginary strike zone. Saturday, August 8, 2009
Change the stupid strike zone from an imaginary three dimensional rectangle to a circle, eliminating the ridiculous "corners", which no batter can adequately cover.
Have balls and strikes determined by the low tech method of hitting a physical object, such as a round bull's eye (17 inches in diameter, the width of the plate), mounted behind home plate. Move the plate umpire behind the pitcher and move the catcher ... either behind the bull's eye or into the playing area, maybe near the pitcher to actually field balls. But move both out of harm's way. Base runners may not leave the base until the ball is batted: so no stealing. No wild pitches or passed balls.
Restore the old rule of batter's deciding if they want high or low strikes. For a plate appearance, they may position the bull's eye: top at their shoulders or bottom at their knees or somewhere in between.
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The Mound Is Too Damn Close
For nearly 130 years, the distance between pitchers and batters has remained the same. But as pitchers get better and bigger—and balls in play become increasingly rare—MLB could benefit from giving hitters some space.
By Ben Lindbergh Mar 15, 2021, 10:04am EDT https://www.theringer.com/
The current pitching distance was set less than a decade after full overhand deliveries were first permitted and hitters lost the right to specify whether they wanted pitches high or low...
MLB pitchers from 2017 to 2020 released the ball 6.15 feet in front of the rubber ...
moving the rubber back by, say, 2 feet would have a meaningful effect on pitches’ perceived speeds ...
In 1881, the minimum pitching distance was pushed from 45 feet—where it had stayed since a convention of New York clubs codified many of the game’s foundational laws in 1857—to 50 feet, in an attempt to “increase the batting.” As of 1887, the pitcher was required to keep his back foot on the border of the “pitcher’s box” 55.5 feet from home when delivering the ball. And in 1893, the box was replaced by a slab positioned another 5 feet farther back: 60 feet, 6 inches. (A persistent story about that pesky 6 inches resulting from a surveyor’s mistake is a myth.) It’s impossible to isolate the effects of the changes in distance, because baseball was more malleable in those days, multiple rules were often in flux, and the data is full of confounding factors. However, each season that featured a major move back coincided with the strikeout rate sinking and offense rebounding significantly, especially after full overhand pitching was approved in 1884.
Previous MLB Pitching Distance Changes
| Year | Effective Distance | Distance Change | K% | BA | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1881 | 50 ft | 5 feet | -11% | .023 | .041 |
| 1887 | 55.5 ft | 5.5 feet | -37% | .025 | .071 |
| 1893 | 60.5 ft | 5 feet | -38% | .035 | .092 |
“Dropping the mound, to me, is not as radical an idea, but our study showed it might not give the advantages you’d think it would,” Fleisig says. Although it’s commonly believed that lowering the mound from 15 inches to its current 10-inch height played a part in reviving offense after the anemic 1968 season, the more robust offensive environment of 1969 may have had more to do with the strike zone returning to its smaller 1961 size.
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