This past season Major League Baseball saw tremendous improvement in pace of play thanks to the introduction of the pitch clock. Now with a season’s worth of data, the league is set to implement additional tweaks it hopes can speed things up even more.

Thursday afternoon MLB announced numerous rule changes had been approved by the league’s joint Competition Committee, the most notable being a shortened pitch clock for when runners are on base. Now, instead of pitchers having 20 seconds to deliver a pitch with men on, pitchers must start their delivery within 18 seconds.

In addition, umpires will now restart the pitch clock after a dead ball when the pitcher has the ball and play is ready to resume. Previously the clock didn’t start until the pitcher was back on the mound, but the rule change was made to prevent pitchers from delaying the start by walking around the edge of the mound.

Along with the pitch clock tweaks, teams will now have one fewer mound visit starting in 2024, with each club getting four instead of five. The time between innings during a pitching change will be more constrained, with the inning break clock reseting to two minutes rather than 2:15 if a new pitcher stepped onto the warning track with less than two minutes remaining.

Pitchers who are sent out to warm up for an inning must now face at least one batter, in addition to any requirements under the three-batter minimum rule. The idea here is to prevent teams from sending out a pitcher, only to immediately make a change in response to an opposing team’s substitution. MLB said this happened on 24 occasions last season, including twice in the World Series, and on average each instance added three minutes of dead time.

Lastly, the league announced the runner’s lane will be widened to include the dirt area between the foul line and infield grass, which will allow batters to take a more direct path to first base while retaining protection from interference.

MLB says it proposed the changes in response to an increase in game time as the season went along, claiming the average nine-inning game time increased seven minutes from April to September. The competition committee is comprised of six owners, four players and one umpire, and MLB Players Association president Tony Clark said in a statement that all four player representatives voted against the changes.

“Players strongly feel that, following last season’s profound changes to the fundamental rules of the game, immediate additional changes are unnecessary and offer no meaningful benefits to fans, players or the competition on the field,” Clark said in a statement. “This season should be used to gather additional data and fully examine the health, safety and injury impacts of reduced recovery time; that is where our focus will be.”