If you’re worried about baseball’s rules changing faster than you can keep up with them, you need not fret about the college game. At least not now.
New standards for the 2025 season have already been set and college baseball operates in two-year cycles for alterations, meaning the next time major changes could be seen is in 2027.
However, talks about future tweaks are already underway, according to American Baseball Coaches Association executive director Craig Keilitz, who shared plans with Baseball America to bring certain matters to the table during next month’s ABCA convention in Washington D.C.
“We’re still in the phase of discussion,” Keilitz said. “But we need to see if there’s an appetite for some of these changes so that we can start the process of bringing them forward. If there is an appetite, we’ll formally survey our coaches, and if they feel like that’s something we should move in the right direction with, we would.”
Here are five rules Keilitz anticipates being at the forefront of that dialogue from Jan. 2-6.
Expanding Usage Of The Runner’s Base
When Southeastern Conference hitters broke from the batter’s box and dashed to first base in last season’s conference tournament, they took a slightly different path than in years past.
Why? Because of a then-experimental rule which placed what the NCAA dubbed a “runner’s base” right next to the traditional bag in foul territory.
The purpose of the extra base, which was green instead of the traditional white, was simple: reduce collisions between the defense and runner. And it was successful. So much so, Keilitz pointed out, that it will be available to teams that choose to use it in any game in 2025, including during the NCAA Tournament.
Discussions about making the double bag a permanent college fixture are now expected to take place.
“I love it because it brings more safety to the first baseman and the batter coming to first base,” Keilitz said. “I think there’s too many needless injuries at first base, and all of the teams that have used it, their players think it’s a fantastic rule.”
It wouldn’t come as a shock to see the measure used more widely. Most teams already employ it in training for injury prevention, the NCAA would like to see in games and coaches are hardly opposed to it.
Keilitz said one anonymous prominent program heavily endorsed the extra precaution, a sentiment he believes is widespread.
“I asked them, ‘Hey, what did your first baseman say,’” Keilitz recounted. “The only question from him was, ‘Why hasn’t this always been the rule?’ I love that.”
While safety is front-of-mind in these considerations, Keilitz foresees it also having a positive impact on the cleanliness of play with the potential to “phase out” certain runner interference calls.
“I think it’s one of the weirdest plays in baseball when you’re running down to first base and have to be in the 45-foot runner’s lane but then you have to zag over at the last minute to touch the base,” he said. “As a player and then an administrator and now as the executive director of the ABCA, I’ve always thought that it’s a flawed rule if you get hit while running directly to the bag and then called out for interference. It’s just strange.”
Implementation of the runner’s bag has garnered steadily-increasing support as a result.
Keilitz believes coaches are unlikely to regret it.
“Time will tell, but I’m confident we’ll see that our rule, once it plays out, will be safer and will certainly take out that runner’s interference call because the second bag is directing the runner to run right through it. I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
Checking For Foreign Substances
While the NCAA has been adamant that it will not adopt every change major league baseball institutes, there are some it views as critical to ensuring the sport’s continued positive trajectory.
Perhaps chief among them is MLB’s crackdown on foreign substances, which includes regular checks of pitchers’ hands, hats and gloves to identify the presence of too much tack.
While college baseball doesn’t utilize regular checks—coaches can request them and did so successfully on a handful of occasions in 2024—it does have a reasonably-strict policy for players who are caught violating the rules. Starting in 2025, any offender and his team’s head coach will receive immediate ejections from the contest. Four-game suspensions for starting pitchers and two-game suspensions for relievers will subsequently be levied.
Heightened sticky substance inspections could be on the horizon, too. Keilitz called looming discussions about the matter “one of the more major” topics on his agenda.
“Maintaining the integrity of our sport is critical,” he said. “You can count on the foreign substance conversation to continue at the convention.”
Several coaches expressed that stricter enforcement of the NCAA’s zero-tolerance policy regarding illegal substances is long overdue.
One coach told Baseball America that he encountered “no fewer than a dozen” scenarios in 2024 in which opposing pitchers seemed to grab more velocity on fastballs or break on offspeed pitches than pregame data indicated they had in the tank. But all seemingly “just got away with it.”
Several other leaders of Division I programs voiced similar concerns, including one coach who will be in attendance for the upcoming ABCA convention.
“It’s probably the most important thing to me,” he said. “Zero tolerance should mean zero tolerance. Not, ‘We’ll check when we’re told to and do something if necessary.’
A Runner At Second In Extras
The 2024 MLB season was one of the quickest in recent history, with game times shrinking to just 2:36. Progress in the pace of play category can be credited, in large part, to the implementation of a pitch clock prior to the 2023 campaign. That much already exists in, and helped, college baseball.
MLB’s decision to utilize a designated runner on second base to begin extra innings played a role, too, but college baseball didn’t follow suit, instead opting to keep traditional rules.
However, with rosters set to be capped at 34 players starting in 2026 plus a similar push for shorter game lengths, the NCAA is starting to reconsider its initial stance.
Dialogue about a required ghost runner in college is once again open.
“I don’t know if anybody wants a 15-inning game,” Keilitz said. “Not the fans, television or administration. That and teams might not have the pitching depth to do that without it hurting subsequent games, so we’re looking at ways to fix it and the runner on second to begin extras could be a possible solution.”
Keilitz emphasized that mandated ghost runner talks are still in their preliminary stages, though he added that early feedback from coaches had indicated some warmth toward the idea.
“With us reducing our squad size down to 34 next year, I think that coaches have an idea that it might not be a bad idea to start a runner at second base,” Keilitz said. “But time will tell on this.”
10-Run Mercy Rule
If agreed upon by coaches prior to first pitch, there already exists a run rule of sorts in college baseball, which stipulates that if a team leads by 10 or more after the seventh inning, the contest would be ruled official and ended.
Keilitz said the NCAA could look to further expand the measure so that games would not need to reach the seventh to trigger the mercy rule or make it so the existing format is not optional.
Similar to the aforementioned ghost runner proposition, a quicker mercy rule is another potential change aimed at preventing overuse and lessening game lengths, especially after roster sizes shrink.
“It’s still too early to tell on this one, but we’ll see where the conversation takes us,” Keilitz said. “I want to bring as many things to the table for coaches to look at so we can make good, sound decisions.”
Tech In The Dugout
Pending necessary approval from individual conferences, college players might now have more access to information during games than ever before.
In November, the NCAA approved experimental rules that allow teams to utilize tablets, which would provide “analytic information and scouting information in the dugout during conference games in 2025.”
The usage of in-dugout tech will be a part of ABCA discussions.
“We really need to explore that,” Keilit said.
There are undeniable benefits to having more information at players’ fingertips, according to Keilitz, who said that teams should be able to study the game as it’s happening the same way their major league counterparts can.
However, policing exactly what information is made available is still up for debate, and the challenges of finding a uniform system for all teams will come under the microscope.
“I think it’s a good idea, but there needs to be a lot more discussions about how that works,” Keilitz said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we’re looking at the missed strikes or missed balls by the umpires. They take that out in major league baseball, but I don’t know if we’ll have the technology to do that right away in each one of the leagues.”
The NCAA, in its statement about making technology more readily available to players, also pointed out its developmental benefits.
“In the absence of in-game data, the player development opportunities are incomplete,” the NCAA said. “Player swings will change with the task and the environment, and capturing the in-game data can be measured to compare with practice data to provide the most value in player development efforts.”
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