New York- The Major League Baseball season is quickly approaching and as the end of the off-season comes, a major topic that remains is the speed of games.  The MLB believes it has a problem of slow paced play and is looking for ways to speed things up.  So far they have went with pitch clocks and signals for intentional walks that are bound to speed up games by up to a few minutes.  According to commissioner Rob Manfred though, dugout signals can now be used for more than just intentional walks.

“In an effort to increase pace of play, managers will now just need to give a dugout signal for a player to steal a base.” said commissioner Manfred.  “This will help in our goal to decrease average game time from 3 hours to 2 hours and 55 minutes.”  

This rule is bound to help base stealers as the catcher will no longer have a chance to throw out runners.  The rule is sure to gather some controversy as well, but if young fans turn to baseball due to faster games, the MLB will surely ignore any outside noise.