MIAMI — I’m a traditionalist, but change can be good, especially when it comes once every generation or so. I’m old. But I’m not 1,000 years old (not quite). Baseball — at least the version currently being played at the highest level, the one in which each game takes more than three hours, .250 hitters are heroes and the average pitcher has a higher strikeout rate than Bob Gibson — needed work. 

If anything, with its allegedly huge changes announced Friday, I’m actually not sure Major League Baseball went quite far enough. 

The alterations sound sweeping enough. After pouring through data from more than 8,000 minor league games, MLB is adapting a pitch clock (15 seconds when no one’s on base, 20 when someone is), banning shifts and enlarging bases. 

The first reaction is to go nuts because that’s what we baseball lovers always do. We can’t stand change. We hated the wild card, the expanded playoffs and anything else new, yet none of those changes hurt the game one iota. 

I’m just wondering how many iotas these changes are going to help. I’m going to put this at a two-iota (on a five-iota scale) change. Which is something. But is it enough? 

Thanks to the clock, the games will be shorter, which is great for newspaper deadlines and possibly even for normal souls who don’t have to write an early, a running and a sub. The data from three years of minor league experimentation shows 26 minutes per game were eliminated — from 3:04 to 2:38 — which might allow reporters to make two out of three deadlines. 

Thanks to the bigger bag, and also fewer pickoff tosses allowed, there will be more stolen bases. Oh yes, the devil is in the details: Only three pickoff throws will be permitted, which really means two, because once you’re at three, second base is basically gift wrapped. There also will be two “disengagements” (step-offs) by pitchers per plate appearance and one timeout per plate appearance by batters. 

Thanks to the bigger bases, there will be somewhat fewer injuries around the three bags (home plate remains the same size, much to the dismay of Aroldis Chapman). 

Numbers galore were all generously shared by MLB, but one number stood out, at least to me, and that is that total runs didn’t change. Well, it actually went down slightly, from 5.14 to 5.13 per team per game. And batting average rose only barely, from .247 to .249. Let’s hope that’s because there’s less shifting in the minors. And that the difference will be much more dramatic in the majors, in which the .243 average is the lowest since the dead ball year of 1968, and in which hitter tendencies are much better established and shifting more commonplace. 

The goal is more action, and more athleticism. Let’s hope so. On the scale of big baseball changes (breaking the color barrier) to small ones (the three-batter minimum), this strikes me as closer to the latter. 

One thing I will say: MLB’s heart is in the right place, as it is responding to what fans want. They crave more action in less time. They will get shorter games, but could this mean that the games will be just as dull, but end more quickly. I guess that’s a good thing. Maybe. 

Even if it’s not entirely altruistic — the fans are the paying customers and thus where the money is — that’s the constituency to please. Even though the game is about the players, there was no way to satisfy all the players, most of the players or even very many of them. Think about it, the guys in the majors have thrived under the status quo. Even the worst of them is a huge success the way things are. 

Thus, it is really no surprise that the four players on the newly formed, management-heavy Competition Committee all voted no on both the pitch clock and shift ban. No matter, the deck was rightfully stacked as MLB won the right to unilaterally impose rules in negotiations. 

The powers that be did listen to the players and made a few adjustments, and answered a couple of concerns. For instance, in the minors the pitch clock is 14 seconds with no one on base, and 18 or 19 seconds with men on base. I can just hear the players saying, “Can I please have a second?” and MLB giving them exactly that. MLB also agreed to add an extra mound visit in the ninth inning, when the situation is most tense. 

Players never made their own full proposal. How could they? Hitters and pitchers aren’t going to agree, home-run hitters and singles hitters (if there are any left) won’t agree and the naturally speedy pitchers (Brent Suter, Brady Singer, Wade Miley) won’t see eye to eye with the deliberative among us (Kenley Jansen, me). 

MLB did the right thing by including players in the process, as the game is ultimately about them, but if they actually had a real say, you can imagine nothing would ever get done about rules changes. And like it or not, something needed to be done.