The word "traditionalist" gets thrown around too much in baseball. I don't know why we pretend that baseball rules have always been the same, but that isn't really the case.
Some of the early rules of baseball included...
-playing until someone scored 21 times.
-The original distance between bases was 42 paces
-Strikes weren't originally a thing. Then umpires had to warn players to swing at good pitches before calling a strike.
-Not only was a flyball an out, but also if caught on the first bounce
-No provisions for balls or walks were made
-For a 20 year period you could request a high or low pitch.
-Pitches were done underhand
-for a long time ground rule doubles of today were home runs
My wonder isn't with trying to adjust to changes in the game, it is that i swear I read somewhere that this didn't actually reduce the number of pitches thrown in extra inning games at all once all of the extra offense was factored in.