July 10 (Bloomberg) -- David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox often steps out of the batter's box after a pitch, spitting in his hands and slapping them together before returning to face the next throw. Doing so next season will cost him a strike.

Major League Baseball will implement a rule in 2009 to help speed up games by requiring the hitter to keep one foot in the batter's box at all times unless granted time out by the home plate umpire. The penalty for stepping out without permission is a strike. The policy has been used in the minor leagues for the last three seasons.

``They are developing a routine in the box, but it's a shorter routine,'' said Jimmie Lee Solomon, baseball's executive vice president of baseball operations. ``The time of game is not really the most important thing, it's the pace of game, how much time it takes between actual delivered pitchers.''

Baseball told umpires at the end of May to enforce other rules aimed at making games shorter, including requiring managers and coaches to jog to the mound to make a pitching change, and pitchers delivering a pitch within 12 seconds of the batter getting set. The efforts have shaved about four or five minutes off the average game, Solomon said in an interview.

The average major-league game in 2007 lasted 2 hours, 52 minutes, while the average minor-league game was 2:43, according to Solomon.

Baseball's playing rules committee proposed the policy to the players' union in December during the winter meetings. The union rejected it, forcing the committee to wait 12 months before instituting the new rule.

Minor League Rules

Baseball is also experimenting with rules in the minor league's Northwest and New York-Penn divisions that limit the number of times a manager, coach or players can visit the pitcher's mound.

A coach or manager can only have three conversations with a pitcher before the subsequent visits mandate that the pitcher, even if it's a different one, be removed from the game. Only one player can visit the mound and the meeting can only happen once an inning.

``We are not trying to speed up the actual play of the players but we thought we needed to get rid of all of the down time,'' Solomon said. ``We need to continue to play.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Sessa in New York at dsessa@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 10, 2008 16:10 EDT