In baseball, times are a-changing for the better
MLB's new rules have so far had the desired impact and been almost universally embraced
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Change can be hard. Usually is, really.
Just about anyone who has ever used the internet has revolted against a website redesign, only to find that, in short order, the new version grows on them. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if baseball’s new rules were like that: loud, reflexive distaste followed by quiet acceptance.
But baseball’s changes — a pitch timer, pickoff limits and shift restrictions among them — have been greeted with something rare: loud acceptance. After years and years of hand-wringing, the game has absorbed the pitch timer with relative ease, embracing a guardrail that has shaved almost half an hour off the average nine-inning game. At 2 hours, 37 minutes, baseball’s average time of game hasn’t been this expedient since 1984.
If it were the exact same game as 2022, just with less dead time for deep meditative sighs and fidgety batting glove adjustments, that would be good. Yet it might have felt cosmetic, like a pathetic, “Please Like My Sport” half-measure. And as much as I, personally, would’ve loved to parse the precise effect of each tweak one by one, the multipronged shockwave has been its own positive. The changes in combination have enlivened baseball in a way that might actually inspire people to nudge their friends: Hey, watch this. There’s something new happening here.
The difference isn’t just that you might need a highlight reel to catch up on the action if you had dinner plans or snuck away to the kitchen for a snack; it’s that the highlight reels have a new (and old) variety of plays to see.
Hitters now have a fighting chance to make a splash in ways other than striking out or hitting a home run. Through 11 days of the season, they are slashing .249/.325/.410. There have been 240 attempted stolen bases (195 of them successful). At the same point last season, MLB was collectively batting .233/.313/.377, with only 179 steal attempts.
At the same time, a lot hasn’t changed. Historically high strikeout rates remain because pitchers are throwing better stuff than ever. The new spice, then, is attributable mostly to the shift restrictions that have allowed for more singles and the pickoff limits and bigger bases that have spurred on more stolen bases.
New conditions have meant new strategic questions, and teams have had some noticeably different answers. The Arizona Diamondbacks just took three of four from the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers by running laps around them. The young, athletic D-backs have an NL-leading 17 stolen bases already this season, while the Dodgers have just two. That’s not to say Arizona will steal the NL West, but different styles make for different fights. And MLB could use some different fights.
For so long — since at least the dawn of Statcast in 2015 and arguably for two decades now — baseball has been a sport in which everyone does the same things and whoever figures out how to do them 2% better wins.
There was plenty of joy and drama in there — don’t get me wrong — but the only fight was over whether the game needed to change and how. With commissioner Rob Manfred’s shakeup in full effect, there are suddenly so many more “fights” that are so much more fun to score — and, as it turns out, so much less focused on Manfred. Who’s using the timer to their advantage? Who has figured out baserunning? Who has the most agile, hit-stealing infield? Are there statistical records or thresholds back in play?
Maybe it took the many, many years of optimized baseball to get us ready for this moment. Or maybe the Band-Aid would’ve ripped right off whenever.
The distinction hardly matters now. There’s a more bountiful version of baseball. And we should remember that it all started with a willingness to change.
