One of the things that amazes me about this job is I learn things about baseball that, I feel like I should have known, but I didn’t. For example, of course I knew the basepaths were 90 feet, but I didn’t realize it was 90 feet to the far side of the bag — that is, the basepath is 90 feet from the top right corner of the plate to the back line of the first base bag. That’s the crux of MLB’s bet on bigger bases.
The base used to be a 15” square, but for the 2022 season, we’re moving to an 18” square, with the idea being that a larger base incentivizes contact and motion on the basepaths; a runner has less distance to travel to advance safely to the next base, so they’re more likely to do it.