I think this is an awful change from an umpiring standpoint. With the entire foot being out, it would (should) be really obvious to make the call. The foot would need to be almost touching the plate or be in front of the plate to be the correct call, and it was still often miscalled. Now, you are putting even more pressure to make an already difficult judgement call when there are so many other things to look for every pitch. Combine that with crooked lines, blurred lines, or no lines at all, then there is absolutely no way an umpire can make an accurate call when you are now talking a couple of inches instead of an entire foot. The old rule wasn't popular (and misunderstood my most), but honestly you need that larger, "must be blatant", infringement to truly enforce that rule. That needs to be an easy call for an umpire, not a more difficult one. Remember, they changed the hit by pitch rule a few years ago to try and take the judgement call off of the umpires....