How Have the New Rules Changed the Game?
This is a big year for the MLB rulebook. After decades of tiny incremental changes, the league made three huge ones in 2023. They instituted a pitch timer, changed the size of the bases, and restricted defensive positioning for the first time in modern history. But how have these new rules changed how the game looks on the field? I broke down each one to find out.
Games Are Shorter
The biggest change to the game this year was the introduction of a pitch timer, and it’s had a huge impact on game length. Per Baseball Reference, the average nine-inning game has lasted two hours and 37 minutes this year, down from three hours and three minutes last year. You have to go back to 1985 to find a shorter average game length.
Despite that drastic change, the amount of action in a game hasn’t changed much. Plate appearances per game are roughly unchanged: there are 75.6 this year, quite close to the 76.4 average in the 21st century. Pitcher per plate appearance are stable: 3.9 this year, 3.9 for the last 10 years on average.
The difference is all pace. Per Statcast, pitchers are taking three fewer seconds to throw with the bases empty and 4.5 fewer seconds to throw with a runner on base. The bases-empty change is welcome but only gets us back to the numbers that prevailed 15 years ago or so. The change with runners on base is far more important; we’ve likely never seen a faster pace when pitchers are holding runners, though the data only goes back to 2010.
This faster pace matters for more than just time of game. It also matters for opposing baserunners, who now face fewer throws, fewer long freezes, and fewer intentional changes of tempo. There’s only so much you can do to disrupt a baserunner’s timing these days. Speaking of which…
Stolen Bases Are Up
You already knew this one. The larger bases and new limit on pickoff throws have combined to unleash a torrent of stolen bases not seen since the 1990s:
That graph tells a lot of the story, but the details are interesting as well. It’s not just a story of rampant running in the game; more importantly, runners are getting caught far less often. This year’s 79.6% stolen base success rate would be the highest mark on record, and a huge jump from the previous best rates in history. Note: a previous version of this article incorrectly characterized the late 1940’s as having high stolen base success rates. This was due to a data issue around caught stealing reporting and has been corrected in the chart below.
If you put two and two together, that means that the increase in stolen bases has handily outstripped the increase in stolen base attempts. Teams aren’t running at an unprecedented rate; they’re merely succeeding like never before. There are 1.78 stolen base attempts per game this year, a mark that has been eclipsed as recently as 2012. Every year from 1981 through 1997 featured more than two stolen base attempts per game.
As you’d expect, these steals are coming because of better leads, not worse throwing by catchers. Statcast calculates pop time for every stolen base attempt, so we can compare past years to the current one. It’s barely budged. In 2022, the aggregate league pop time on throws to second base was 1.98 seconds; this year, it’s 1.97 seconds. Catchers are getting the ball to second just as quickly, but that time simply isn’t enough anymore, thanks to the increased leads that runners can take.
What does that mean for run scoring? To a rough approximation, almost nothing. I tallied up how many runs were created by successful stolen base attempts, as well as how many were lost by unsuccessful attempts, by comparing the base/out situations before and after each attempt. This year, teams are adding roughly 0.07 runs to their per-game run totals thanks to steals. That isn’t much, and it’s an even smaller change from last year, when teams added roughly 0.035 runs per game thanks to the running game.
How much of a change is that? Run scoring is up by roughly 0.3 runs per game this year; teams scored 4.283 runs per game last year and 4.581 per game this year. Steals have accounted for 10% of that. The extra steals might make the game look different than it did in the past, but they haven’t done much to change the way it’s played at a fundamental level.
Pitch Violations Haven’t Mattered Much
While the pitch timer has had a huge effect on stealing, it hasn’t had much effect on balls and strikes. Pitchers and batters have both adapted to the new regime quickly, as you can see from our handy pitch violation leaderboards. Joe Musgrove leads baseball in pitch timer violations with six. That’s six pitches that automatically count as balls. Turned into run value, that works out to 0.2 runs he’s cost himself by holding the ball too long. That works out to roughly 0.06 points of ERA — and remember, that’s the pitcher who has been the worst at it.
If that effect sounds miniscule, it is. The Yankees have racked up 20 timer violations on their pitchers, the most in baseball. That’s 1.5 runs worth of free balls for their opponents. They’ve even gotten some of those runs back: opposing hitters have been called for five violations of their own, leading to free strikes. That’s just not much effect, even for the most frequent violators.
On the other side of the ledger, the Mariners have received 24 free balls while batting and been called for only four automatic strikes on their hitters. We calculate that difference as worth 1.3 runs of additional offense. They’ve scored 246 runs this year. The timer hasn’t done much to change teams’ fortunes; it’s merely kept the game moving.
BABIP Is Up, But Not Much
The shift is dead; long live the shift. One of 2023’s noisiest rule changes was a ban on infield shifting. Teams now have to place two infielders on either side of second base and with both feet starting on the infield dirt. The rule change was a counter to years of increasing overshifts; in 2022, lefties hit more batted balls into a shift than into a “normal” defensive alignment.
This year, lefties have hit exactly zero batted balls into an overshift. That’s been a tailwind when it comes to batting average on grounders. Last year, lefties hit .226 when they hit a ball on the ground. This year, that number is up to .236. They’re hitting their grounders slightly harder, but the main change is in defensive alignment. That said, the change also isn’t particularly impactful. As recently as 2017, lefties were batting .241 on grounders in a world of legal shifts. In 2021, lefties batted .232 on grounders. This isn’t much of a change.
Shifts help on more than just grounders, to be fair. Lefties have posted a .643 BABIP on line drives this year, up from an average of .619 from 2015 through ’22. That’s an extra handful of hits — 250 or so for the full season if line drive rates stay the same as last year. Every little bit helps, but we’re truly talking about little bits here. There’s not much chance of a huge, weather-based improvement, either. BABIP on grounders hit by lefties has ticked up slightly in summer months of recent years, but only by a few points:
| Month | BABIP |
|---|---|
| Mar/Apr | .233 |
| May | .229 |
| Jun | .238 |
| Jul | .234 |
| Aug | .236 |
| Sep/Oct | .238 |
Meanwhile, righties have barely been affected. As Tom Tango frequently notes, shifting against right-handed batters never made much sense. Now that teams can’t do it, not much has changed. Righties are batting .251 on grounders this year, as compared to .252 in that 2015–22 span. In other words, getting rid of the shift didn’t change anything when it comes to their balls in play.
The odds of things betting better for the offense don’t seem high. Teams are getting more data on how their new modified shifts work with every batted ball. Worst of all, the hits that the shift ban was supposed to resuscitate haven’t been happening. Grounders up the middle were hits since time immemorial before the shift got to them. From 2008 through ’14, which I roughly think of as the era before shifts went wild (my data starts in 2008), lefties hit .284 on grounders up the middle. From 2015 through ’22, they hit .239 on those balls; there was suddenly a defender standing there. This year, they’re hitting .243, because the shift restrictions just mean opposing shortstops stand behind second base.
If the league hoped to revive production on grounders, this set of shift restrictions looks like a failure. A wedge of space behind second base where no one can stand might do the trick, but merely requiring two infielders on each side doesn’t change the fact that teams now know that they can align their defenders based on hitter tendencies. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube; those singles up the middle always made sense to defend, and teams are now doing so even without the benefit of a full shift.
For the most part, I think MLB’s rule changes have been a success. The main observable change is tempo; games are lasting less time despite a similar amount of action. That’s a big change, and as measured by pitch violations, it hasn’t excessively affected any particular team or player. Instead, the game is just moving faster, which was the stated goal of the changes.
Changing the rules to increase stolen bases seems to have worked roughly as expected: Teams are running more frequently and with more success. Those steals aren’t making the game unrecognizable, though; we’re talking about an extra half a steal per game, give or take. I think there was reason to worry whether steals would become undefendable, but the evidence suggests that hasn’t happened. Catchers who control the running game are more valuable than in recent years, but that’s also hardly an unwelcome change. For the most part, I think that the extra steals leave the game looking like a slightly faster version of itself, just like the pitch timer changes.
On the downside, the new restrictions on infield shifts haven’t accomplished much of anything. Lefties are reaching base more frequently when they put the ball on the ground, but not at pre-shift rates. Defensive positioning is still taking hits away, particularly in the middle of the field. Righty batters still have a slight BABIP advantage on lefties thanks to infield positioning. If the league wants to fix that disparity, there will have to be stricter shift restrictions, probably centered around keeping the area behind second base empty.
If you were hoping for mostly the same baseball, congratulations: you’ve got it. If you were hoping for teams to start prioritizing speedy lefty singles hitters, or for batters to start trying to keep the ball on the ground to take advantage of the new defensive restrictions, that hasn’t panned out. Teams are scoring more this year, but that’s mostly unrelated to rules changes. I think that’s great; from my perspective, the league has threaded the needle by affecting how games look without putting their thumb on the scale of offensive and defensive balance.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
“On the
downsideupside, the new restrictions on infield shifts haven’t accomplished much of anything.”(fixed that for you)
Seriously, this is a massive win for MLB, even if Manfred doesn’t know it. Improved pace of play all around, few pitch clock violations, lots more stolen bases, but basically no effect on the scoring environment. If there was an effect on the scoring environment, then there would be a ton of concern that the game was unrecognizable, and that more things needed to be changed to fix all the additional run scoring.
The purpose of limiting defensive shifts was to increase action via more balls in play. If that isn’t happening (i haven’t been watching enough to know but it sounds like that’s what the early results show), then this rule change has not been effective.
Speeding up games by reducing dead time between pitches is a win… I’m not sure who would disagree with that, other than those who have a financial interest in concession sales.
But, the content of games needs to be nudged toward fewer strikeouts and more balls in play. If these changes aren’t delivering that, then there will need to be other tweaks.
How would banning the shift increase balls in play? The defence has no impact on whether the batter hits the ball or not.
You could have 0 defenders or 50. neither has any impact on if the ball is put in play or not.
Defensive alignment should have a direct effect on hitter behavior. We were told for a long time that hitters would not adjust to ‘go the other way’ to counter shifts… they would just try to hit harder or over shifts… now the hope is that many of those balls will fall as base hits resulting in more base runners…
I mean, sure, i guess? But that still doesn’t explain how banning the shift would result in more balls in play. The defensive alignment doesn’t have any effect on if the hitter makes contact or not.
You know that a ball in play is simply any fair ball that isn’t a sacrifice or HR, right? Its not the same as a hit.
I think it could, but it’s indirect. If ground balls are more likely to be hits, players who hit more of them will be more productive and so should get more playing time and that will result in more balls in play. IDK, but that’s the only way the claim makes sense to me.
Exactly – I’m a little nonplussed by confusion at how the shift ban aims to reincentivize balls in play.
The shift meant that shallow liners and hard grounders that got past the 2B on the glove side were routine outs, and liners in the gap were singles…which meant that the only way to consistently be successful on the pull side was to swing at max effort and try to jack one.
If you don’t have to gear up every time, it’s a lot easier to “hit the ball where it’s pitched.”
The last time LHH had a BABIP this high through the end of May, Eugenio Suarez, Alex Bregman, and Gleyber Torres combined for 128 HR.
The time before that was 2016.
This is their highest wRC+ through May in the last 15 years!
The foundational problem of high K rates is that there are guys that can’t crack MLB rosters throwing 99 with 90 mph sliders. It’s just simply much harder to make contact today than it was when guys were throwing fastballs 70% of the time and topping out at 91.
Unless they can find a way to legislate that pitchers aren’t allowed to throw nasty pitches anymore, I don’t see where increased contact is coming from. They’ve tinkered with making the mound farther from home plate, but there’s so much risk of unindented consequences there
Bally Sports made a TV ad to explain the new rules and for their defensive shift one, the voiceover also says the shift restriction will result in “more balls in play.” However, it’s obvious that the shift restriction isn’t going to directly reduce the total of the Three True Outcomes we see on a daily basis.
Dooduh says that the shift restrictions were a result of hitters trying to hit the ball over the shift. However, the shift restriction encourages hitters to keep pulling and lifting the ball, as there’s less of a penalty if they pull a grounder now.
The intended incentive is there’s far less of a penalty for hitting a hard line drive over the 2B’s head.
Now that’s a potential double, rather than a potential double play ball.
I think Bryz has more or less has the right idea. Proponents of the shift ban had talked themselves into the idea that this would magically remove Gallos from the game and introduce more Arraezes. But reducing shifts in this way was never going to realign incentives like that. Hitting a baseball is hard; it would take an entire generation of new guys who learn a new way of hitting to replace the old ones to see a difference, and only then if there were material advantage for doing so.
And had I said that limiting shifts was intended to result in more base runners (I’m presuming it has),… more action in between all the whiffs and dingers… then what’s your reaction?
I agree that more has to be done to raise contact and reduce strikeouts. I’d like to see experimentation of moving the rubber back for example.
ewww. no!
Until we get to a point where pitching is dominating the game like it was in the 60s, there’s no need to mess with the mound or the rubber. Despite the lack of balls in play, the overall scoring envoronment is just fine as it is.
agreed. Rule changes are necessary evolutions for all sports, but I’d be lying if I said wasn’t rooting for the shift ban to fail. I hate penalizing smart baseball, and putting defenders where the batter is most likely to hit the ball is simply smart baseball
Yup – and fielding positions have changed as the game had evolved. Wasn’t shortstop originally there to relay throws from the outfield to the infield – only gradually becoming the 4th infielder.
I want teams to be able to position their 7 defenders (pitchers and catchers have their set positions) wherever they want. I like it when you get diverse strategies. So if one team gets a 5 man outfield to work – great, go for it!
So what you’re saying is that if you really want to increase grounders you should ban shortstops…that would get very interesting.
Now what are the Padres supposed to do with 3, 4 of them?!
That would actually make it way more important to have multiple guys with huge ranges, although it is going to be tough when all of them are healthy.
If banning shifts has amounted to little if anything, then by nature it logically follows that shifts themselves were never very “smart” to begin with. Much ado about nothing.
The overshift was still useful, just not as much as some people thought it was.
Besides, there’s a difference in going from slight shifts to full overshifts compared to going from overshifts to still heavy shifts. When you’re still heavily shifting with the shortstop nearly behind the second base bag, that’s still quite a bit different than the infield fielding alignments teams were using 15+ years ago, and so it’s only natural that we’ve only seen a partial recovery in left-handed BABIP compared to what they did in the pre-overshift era.
… and, frankly, allowing shifts makes for a more fun, strategic and interesting game. You get the surprise bunts by sluggers, some really novel defensive plays when a fielder gets to a ball at a spot he would not under a traditional alignment, and some really fun baserunning plays, e.g. when the sole fielder on one side of the field gets pulled out of position by the action and a smart baserunners sees an opportunity to take advantage.
It also gives fans a better experience in the park as opposed to watching on television, as they can see all the shifts and the defensive strategy playing out before them.
In short, baseball made itself a less fun, dumber and less interesting game when it banned shifts, in exchange for … apparently nothing.
Wait, so you’re saying that watching IFers move around the field is exciting to you?
I much prefer watching second basemen having to actually use their athleticism to field a grounder again, instead of watching them stroll into position before the play and then field a ball hit right at them.
Optimization without stewardship is the problem. It’s all about where you set your key metrics to incentivize behaviors. The shift helped win games (competition focus) and is “smart baseball”. But the shift also contributes to less exciting baseball which is bad for the product and thus the business of baseball (customer focus).
Smart baseball can exist with any ruleset. Smart business cannot.
Eh, what if someone thinks that hitters that do nothing but pull the ball to the same spot are boring and unexciting?
Then you should love the shift ban, because it allows LHH to actually hit the ball where it’s pitched!
MLB published a great article today about how the biggest impact is losing the 4th OF…which Ben all but ignores, here.
Most teams will be successful defending that batter.
This. I hate the idea of rewarding hitters for being unable to adjust.
What I hate even more though is the “that’s been a hit for 100 years” line. Well, it shouldn’t have been. It shouldn’t have taken teams 100 years to realize that most LH batters pull the ball to the right side, and that maybe it was a waste of time to have a fielder standing near 3rd base in those spots
They “[couldn’t] adjust” because the only way to get a hit on an inside pitch was to yank it over the RF’s head…on an RF playing deep, because they had a Rover to handle any shallow liners or grounders that hit the outfield grass.
But hey – maybe it’s a coincidence that LHH have put up their highest wRC+ through May over the last 15 seasons, haha.
I’m not arguing for or against the shift, but a distinction that MLB is not trying to prevent smart teams from optimizing, and is changing the guidelines within which the optimization/smart people can work.
Not at all surprised that the ban on overshifting is proving to have minimal impact.
The other thing to consider re:effects of rule changes, is how it’s going to affect the player population and managerial tactics going forward year over year. Right now we’re only something like 55 games into the first season with a substantially different base-stealing environment. Wait until the league has had a few full seasons in which to optimize strategies. Wait until there have been a few classes of prospects to come up through MiLB developed in this environment. THEN we’ll see what’s really going to happen.
This works both ways though. Teams will want speedier, more athletic hitters who can steal, and catchers who better control the run game. It might net to zero.
If you are pro-stolen base’s, should you be anti-robo umps? With robot umps, framing becomes less important (or completely irrelevant depending on how it is implemented). Which means throwing out base stealers is a much bigger part of the catchers remit.
It might! I’m not suggesting things go all pear-shaped, I’m saying that assessing the impact of the new rules using players and strategies devised for the old rules isn’t very meaningful.
If the totally open left side of the infield didn’t encourage teams to increase small ball players why would the concurrent shift banning and base size increasing do that?
Besides the fact that the increased base size only impacts folks who are actually a threat to steal…and the fact that the change recreates a premium on 2B range…
Have you ever tried to go the other way on an inside pitch in slow-pitch softball?
It’s a great way to roll an easy grounder to exactly where the 3B stands in the shift.
Meanwhile, if you gear up to pull a ball as hard as you can on an outside pitch…it’s a lazy flyball to center.
Tbf pop time isn’t down really, I just think it is much harder on all catchers.
Could the rule changes be affecting the run environment in subtler ways? The league-wide walk rate is up from 8.2% last year to 8.8% this year. I wonder if pitchers’ could be losing a bit of command due to the pitch clock.
Yeah, the blanket declaration that the rule changes aren’t causing the increased offense doesn’t seem befitting of a Ben Clemens article. He generally thinks rigorously about what’s left unknown.
Off the top of my head, a possible effect of the rule changes that might be contributing to the increased run scoring is added pitcher fatigue from decreased recovery time between pitches. It seems like cutting nearly half an hour from each game by forcing pitchers to throw at shorter intervals might contribute to higher ERA’s, league-wide.
Great minds, haha
Yeah, I think the best possible second-order effect of the pitch clock would be disincentivizing max-effort pitching.
This is the lowest K-BB% since 2018.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have described it as “fatigue”, necessarily, though that could be a factor. Having less time to compose oneself before a key pitch might affect concentration and therefore execution. That’s not really fatigue, per se, but it would be an effect.
I’ve been thinking about this too. It may take a few seasons of data to see what’s actually a result of the clock vs player dev continuing to turn human arms into actual cannons, but I do think it’s worth being curious about everything stamina related pre/post rule change.
I just made a comment about this. We should check to see the percentage of ‘grooved pitches’ like middle middle, down and in to lefties, middle away quadrant for righties.
> This is the lowest K-BB% since 2018.
True. And also…
Non-pitcher K-BB% through May
2017: 12.1%
2018: 12.9%
2019: 13.3%
2021: 14.5%
2022: 13.8%
2023: 13.9%
This season is the second highest K-BB% ever for non-pitchers through May.
To be clear, I don’t disagree with your hypothesis, but there is a caveat to comparing leaguewide K-BB% across seasons with and without universal DH.
My related idea is that Coors might be even tougher for pitchers with the pitch clock. Usually, the main reasons I see put forth on why Coors is a hitters’ heaven is about how ball travels further and the ball breaks different. Feels like not enough attention has been paid to how pitching requires endurance in ways that hitting does not and high altitude can mess up with that. Pitch clock will serve to amplify pitchers’ struggles.
a 0.6% difference over thousands of bats feels statistically insignificant. Especially if you are trying to attribute it to a single factor like pitcher fatigue.
probably also worth noting that you have to go back to 2016 to find a league wide walk rate as low as 8.2%. Every other year its been 8.5% or higher. In 2021 it was 8.7%. So really, its more that in 2022 walks were abnormally low more than this year they are up.
I was the one who mentioned “fatigue”, and I addressed the imprecision of that description shortly after posting the comment. Not sure if you meant to reply to my post, instead.
I believe this is true!
Seems possible, but probably just noise? Most of the change in the offensive environment (around 85% explained iirc) is from the different ball from what I’ve read.
Everyone’s playing with the same ball, and LHH have their highest wRC+ through May in the last 15 seasons.
Call me crazy, but I think only having to face 3 OF might be a factor.
It will be interesting to see the impact (if any) of the reduced recovery time on pitchers’ velocity over the course of the season.
As is, we’re back up to rocket-ball level BABIP (pre-June!) without the game-warping effects we saw in 2019.
If I recall correctly, last April/May was a historically abysmal offensive stretch — more so than early 2021 and perhaps also early 2017-2018 — so one could argue that even the modest year-over-year gains seen thus far in 2023 are the result of natural regression and have nothing to do with the rule changes.
Since MLB’s big picture hope is to decrease TTO, I’m curious if there’s been any effect on leaguewide strikeout rate (sorry if I missed it).
To be fair, increasing stolen bases wasn’t a priority of MLB in the first place. It’s merely a side effect of limiting pickoff throws, which was done alongside the pitch timer and the limit on batter timeouts to increase the pace of the game.
You sure about that? They have marketed stolen bases quite a bit on MLB TV all spring training up til today still.
No, they definitely wanted to see more stolen base attempts.
Stolen base attempts = action, and the people in charge of baseball most definitely want more action in the game.
Maybe, but it wasn’t a priority compared to increasing the pace of the game. Even the change to the larger bases was done primarily for safety concerns. They weren’t and aren’t going to make any rule changes focused primarily on increasing action on the bases.
Considering there was a lot of research that suggested that the shift really didnt do that much in the first place its not super surprising that banning it has not done much either. It was always largely a pointless change to make and done more for optics than anything.
I recall Correa stating his approval for the shift ban in order to allow defenders to make more athletic plays more often. I don’t have the stats on the number of diving plays this year, but I gotta say it passes the eyeball test. More diving plays certainly makes for better optics in my book, even if the numbers don’t show the shift ban having a huge effect.
This 100%… the shift ban may not be having a statistical impact on scoring, but qualitatively and aesthetically it sure is more fun and entertaining to watch infielders be infielders again.
Dear god is it hard to remember such a stark, unqualified success from any recent rule tinkering in the major sports leagues. And for those that grumbled about “less baseball” – as Ben makes clear, it’s not! Same plate appearances, same pitches per plate appearance – it’s that you can now enjoy it in under six hours! You don’t have to take off work the day of, the day after, and maybe the next day too! Like the way I’m talking right now, I would put an exclamation points at the end of all these sentences! On this one! And on that one!
Slight exaggerations aside, a real effect of the pitch clock (especially with slower workers prior to this year) is that I can no longer run to grab a beer or snack in between pitches, and miss no action. Heck, I used to be able to run and pee quickly between offerings when Pedro Baez was on the mound.
You may be only half kidding… I wonder what the response from teams will be when they find they’ve sold 10% less beer & food concessions because of the shorter games.
I heard somewhere that some clubs are continuing to sell alcohol after the stretch, in order to make as much as possible with the shorter games now. I can’t say I know that’s true for certain.
Brewers announced plans to extend beer sales past the 7th inning and then backtracked after intensely negative reaction, I believe.
Yea I mean I love my beer as much as the next guy, and would prefer it extended, but I also would never drive to a baseball game. But I am not the majority…so I would think current rules are still right. While I never had an issue with the longer games, I do think this change has been a net positive. I do wonder if the for lack of a better word “chubby” pitchers are being hurt a lot more than the others. Guys like Lynn and Manoah have been pretty brutal. While Lynn’s underlying stats at least have some promise, they still aren’t approaching front of the rotation type that he has been in the past. Manoah looks like one of the worst pitchers in the MLB. I don’t really think this is a negative however, as I mean they are pro athletes, and making players have to remain in better condition shouldn’t be something that is discouraged.
One thing I find odd is most teams (not sure if it’s all?) moving start times up to 6:40 in conjunction with the pitch clock.
It’s led from games being over at around 10:10-10:15 on average to being done around 9:10-9:15. I’ll admit that 1st 2-3 weeks of the year I was turning games on at 9 PM (which used to be about the 6th/7th inning) & found them to be in the 9th.
I’ve adjusted, but, the earlier start time makes it tougher for those working/living in the suburbs to catch a 30 minute earlier start.
Seems like they could have done one of those 2 changes, but, not both?
Subscribe to mlb.tv and watch the beginnings of games on your phone on the way home from work. Pay a couple more bucks for a VPN and you don’t even have to worry about blackout restrictions.
(while someone else drives. lol)
We should put the games on the buses and subway cars so everyone can watch the game and cheer together. This is the only way to rebuild our communities.
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The VPN workaround only applies to desktop; it doesn’t work on the MLB mobile app.
It’s definitely a situation where someone loses. I have found it great since I have to get up and go to bed early. I might even go to a game on a weeknight this year! (Although probably not, I feel so old)
I live in Europe – this combo is a gift!
More seriously tho. What it eats up in commuters missing first pitch it makes up for in kids being able to watch the end of the game on a school night. And we East Coasters can actually watch a bit of those West Coast night games.
Moar early baseball!
Maybe it’s a little harder for a commuter to catch the start of a game. But it’s a hell of lot more likely that a kid will be able to stay up to watch the end of a game. To me that’s a big win in the long run.
They started doing that, because they wanted kids to either be able to watch more of the games before bed (or watch the whole thing without falling asleep in class the next day) on weeknights during the school year.
Looking at the schedule now, though, the start times for night games are all over the place as to whether or not they start earlier than 7:00 PM local time, so I don’t know what’s going on with that anymore.
Great stuff.
I would love to know what effect the following changes have had –
1 – How has the Manfred runner in extra innings impacted the relative winning percentages of the home/away teams in those games? My gut feeling is that it improves the chance of the home teams because they bat last and know – in a way more useful than previously – exactly what they need to do. In particular, if they’re fortunate enough to prevent the visiting team from scoring, they know all they need to do is to move a runner over twice. The visiting team never has that luxury.
2 – What impact have instant replay and challenges had on close tag plays, like steals, or even force plays. It seems to me that umpires often used to call players out on these close plays, but replay has changed that, making players more likely to end up being safe on close plays than in the past. (BTW, I suspect the same thing would happen if we ever get around to robo-umps calling balls and strikes.
One more thing – I would love to see a rule change whereby a play over-sliding 2nd or 3rd cannot be called out. Why not let them slide past the base as long as they show no intent to move on to the next base? This would put an end to those ridiculous replays identifying a player losing contact with the base for a fraction of a second.
That last suggestion could be a safety issue for the fielders by encouraging runners to slide at late as possible
I don’t want to see any analysis of the zombie runner phenomenon that doesn’t show it to be a miserable failure and a blight on the game of baseball. This is the rare situation where I would support suppressing any evidence that isn’t consistent with my preferred narrative.
Best baseball viewing I have had in a long time. MLB TV more used and fun than ever to flip around each team.
“Pitcher per plate appearance are stable: 3.9 this year, 3.9 for the last 10 years on average.” Is that supposed to be Pitches per plate appearance?
No, pitchers! Those damned extended rosters…
You mentioned teams are scoring more, but it’s unrelated to rule changes. You don’t think pitchers not getting extra time in high leveraged situations, has been adding extra runs? Just observing it in games, it seems to be the case. But was interested in any data that might be out there regarding it.
It seems there is a decent amount of untapped value in base stealing if the success rate is 80 percent. There certainly wasn’t a change from April to May, but I wonder if as runners get more used to the advantages they have if they will start to run more.
I’ve watched many situations where a fast runner gets a throw over on 0-0. That should be almost automatic to steal. Is the pitcher really going to throw over again and run out of pickoff throws before a single pitch to the batter? Has that happened even once this season across baseball? I wonder if some runners and sitting around waiting for two disengagements and then end up not running because pitchers just don’t want to end up in that situation.
If I had to guess, at this time next year there will have been at least 10% more stolen base attempts as this year. While it might not matter that much, as the data show, it seems like an easy way to make your offense better and is being wasted right now.
The goal of the pitch clock wasn’t to shorten games though. It was to shorten games to attract more fans. Has it? Is attendance up? TV ratings? This is an important part of it being a success or not. I am not trying to be sarcastic but this question deserves more attention in analyzing the “success” of these changes to the rules.
Early reports have TV ratings up about 10%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2023/04/27/one-month-in-mlb-viewership-and-attendance-are-up-likely-fueled-by-rule-changes-and-schedule/?sh=108165851b84
You’re right in that the success of these changes will be their ultimate impact on fan engagement and interest. Those won’t automatically change overnight though (even though early returns appear positive as linked above). It’s a long-term, cumulative play for younger generations’ interest – it’s really hard to attract and keep those eyes on the games when a playoff game starts at 8 PM and ends at 12:45 AM.
As long as there are 4 infielders standing on the dirt before the pitch is thrown then the alignment looks like baseball looked when I was watching Yaz face Whitey Ford. The wedge is a terrible idea. I certainly don’t want the SS and 2nd baseman placed on a spot. The part of the shift that was objectionable was the beer league short fielder, 30 yards in RF, catching the pure liners that had always been hits. The percentage of line drives hit by left-handed batters to RF is up .024 and that is the number that is significant. The numbers aren’t going to be altered until the 9 of the 27 outs that are recorded by the interaction between the pitcher and catcher is lowered. Of the 18 outs, plus hits, minus HR’s, and a 2023 BABIP of .297, the batting average of the game is.248. There are only two variables that can raise the batting average. This year’s rule changes are an attempt to raise the BABIP and there has been a rise from .290 in 2022 to the .297 of this year. The other variable is the number of balls in play and that is the real culprit. Two fewer K’s per game per team with a .297 BABIP equals 1.2 hits per game. This results in a fairly well-balanced batting average of .261. Automated balls and strikes couldn’t hurt but K’s will not drop until velocity is reined in.
Moving the rubber back is eventually where this is going to land. I get it that they are going to exhaust other ideas first but as the average ML pitcher is now the size of an NFL defensive tackle, increased velocity is simply the national evolution of the sport. But there is no magic to 60’6… going to 62’ for example should be experimented to understand how it could affect the game.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to pitchers as we get into the dog days.
*natural evolution
Well stated. At this time the 60’6″ distance, which was last changed in 1893, is considered sacrosanct by The Lords of Baseball, but it has come time to move the mound back. The human being has undergone an amazing transformation in just my 81 years on planet Earth. The 1965-66 Kentucky basketball team reached the NCAA finals without a player over 6’5: Today, I would be willing to bet that every single one of the 362 schools that field a Division 1 team has several players taller than that. When this huge growth spurt is applied to baseball it assists pitchers much more favorably than hitters. The Laws of Physics are clear. It starts with leverage and longer levers provide the pitcher with multiple mechanical advantages. The extension the tall pitcher gets enables him to get more velocity from equal effort and also allows him to release the ball closer to the plate. When better understanding of delivery mechanics, conditioning and diet are included it is obvious that the median pitcher of today is better than those of just a couple of decades ago.
So what answers does the hitter have to counter these dramatic improvements that pitchers have made in so many elements of pitching? Sadly the answer is not many. Just as with all athletes, the players, who are called upon to hit this awesome stuff that is hurled their way, are much better than those of yesteryear, but there isn’t the same new bag of tools for the hitter that there is for the pitcher. The key to hitting is quickness, not size, and quickness is a talent that the player is born with and cannot be improved upon by more than a small amount. Today’s big men can hit longer HR’s but the split second less time that today’s hitters have to react prevents an increasing number of players from being able to catch up to 95+ heat. Is the game of 2023 better than 2022, most certainly! The pace is wonderful but all it really is, is the same TTO game condensed by 33 minutes. The balance is still stuck much too far in favor of the pitching aspect of the game.
Before such a thing can ever be considered, it needs thorough testing on how it would affect the scoring environment. A relative lack of balls in play is still preferable to most teams scoring 5+ runs per game.
Went to Yankee Stadium this past Sunday, watched a 10-7 game, 2:42 time, and I appreciated the faster tempo. Fewer mound visits, fewer timeouts, fewer throws over, more “game”. Not earth-shattering, but last year that would have been 3:10
3:10? I’d take the over on that in a 10-7 game, probably more like 3:40 in prior years.
Great article.
From my observations, I think they juiced the ball again and that seems to have had a way more profound effect on scoring than any of the rule changes. I am too lazy and ignorant to back up this claim with data, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it seems on brand for MLB to make very public minor changes to the rules and very private major changes to the ball and pretend it’s all the new rules.
HR/FB numbers are stable with the last couple years, even as BABIP is back up to juiced ball levels.
I know I’m on an island with this one, but they still haven’t attempted to solve the Three True Outcomes, which reduces baseball’s entertainment value. It’s also a lot harder to solve the harder pitchers throw (the pitch clock has reduced velocity a bit, so that’s a good thing).
Again, it seems to me that this has to end with the rubber moving back.
A 5-year window to assess the impact of a rule change?! Look for that change to be implemented in roughly 2140!
You know, cricketers don’t wear gloves at all while trying to catch the ball. The fastest way to increase BABIP would be to just ban gloves!
That would mostly increase the number of errors, which technically doesn’t actually affect BABIP.
I wonder if evaluating stolen bases by total runs added is the best way to do it. Maybe stolen bases are just doomed to be cosmetic in today’s game, but because they are a very situation specific event it might be harder to find that they are important. The running game largely stops if the score gets lopsided, but hitters still try just as hard to hit the ball out of the park or get base hits. But teams do stop running as aggressively. Even prime Billy Hamilton isn’t stealing second while up 6 runs in the seventh, but he almost certainly is when down one in the ninth. Maybe the effect of the expanded running game shows up more in “close and late” situations or maybe looking at WPA might give a better idea as to whether or not it is affecting games.
Exactly!
You also won’t ever see attempted steals of home as more than a rare event, so no matter how many times speedsters manage to steal 2nd or 3rd base, they will still almost always need someone else to at least make good enough contact to allow them to score a run.
I would like to see a “subtle lean” by the Commissioners office on all 30 ball clubs to move back some or all of their fences a bit. Raise a few walls. This would be to cut down on the number of homeruns hit and increase the frequency of doubles and triples which to me, are much more exciting than a home run any day. A larger outfield area might also lead to a few more base hits dropping in as well. Balls in Play.
That would mean removing seats
I have always looked at the late 50’s-early 60’s as baseball at its best. The batting average was locked in at .258 with the pitcher batting. Home runs were slightly less than 2 per game, 8.8 H/9 and 5.5 K/9. To achieve this balance the mound could be moved back and the fences also would need to be moved back or raised, which is a good idea.
I, for one, kinda miss tuning into a game an hour late and it being in the 3rd of 4th inning. Now it feels like an hour in is the 5-6th.
I will say this: they seemed to have fixed the interminable games at Fenway. It’s like they constructed their rosters with pitchers who work slow on the mound and batters who take their sweetass time in the box.