The prelude to the 2025 regular season in South Korean baseball will begin Saturday, with the pitch clock, the most prominent new feature of the year, set to take effect.
All 10 teams in the Korea Baseball Organization are scheduled to play 10 preseason games each from Saturday to March 18. All games were initially scheduled for 1 p.m., but some teams have already asked the league to move their games to the evening hours so that their players can get used to playing under lights before the regular season.
There will be no extra innings in the exhibition season, and rained-out games will not be made up.
Pitchers will have to get accustomed to the new pitch timer. They must start their delivery within 20 seconds with the bases empty, and 25 seconds with runners on. A violation will result in a ball call for pitchers.
The KBO sought to put the clock in play in 2024 in order to speed up the game, but was met with opposition from teams. Last year, KBO games on average went for three hours and 13 minutes, including extra-inning games, and the average game length has not been under three hours since 1998.
The KBO hopes the pitch clock will have a similar effect that it did in Major League Baseball, which adopted the timer in 2023 and saw its game time cut by 24 minutes that year.
Batters must get into the box within 33 seconds, and they only have two timeouts per plate appearance. A violation will cost the batter a strike.
Also during the preseason, the new strike zone under the automated ball-strike (ABS) system will apply.
In the first year under the ABS in 2024, the top of the strike zone was set at 56.35 percent of a hitter's height, and the bottom was at 27.64 percent. For 2025, those numbers will be 55.75 percent at the top and 27.04 percent at the bottom, meaning the zone will be lowered as a whole without changes to the size.
The KBO also adjusted the contentious "three-foot rule" and widened the runner's lane for this year, following the change implemented by MLB last year.
Previously, a batter had to run the last half of the distance between home plate and first base between the foul line and a three-foot line drawn on the right side of the dirt. Under the rule change, instead of being forced to be in foul territory, the runner will be deemed in compliance with the rule as long as he keeps both feet on the dirt between home plate and first base.
The Hanwha Eagles will play their first official game at their new stadium, Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark, on March 17 against the Samsung Lions.
The Daejeon-based club moved out of Hanwha Life Eagles Park, the oldest and the smallest stadium in the KBO, and will now play at the brand new venue with 20,000 seats, asymmetrical outfield dimensions, and an 8-meter-tall fence, dubbed the "Monster Wall," in right field.
During the preseason, teams will each have two challenges per game for video reviews. If they are successful on two consecutive challenges, they will receive an extra challenge.
The regular season will start on March 22, the earliest start in league history. (Yonhap)
