{"id":7975,"date":"2023-11-19T02:21:37","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T07:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/sport\/whole-new-ballgame-mlbs-new-rules-changed-everything\/19\/11\/2023\/"},"modified":"2023-11-19T02:21:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T07:21:37","slug":"whole-new-ballgame-mlbs-new-rules-changed-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/sport\/whole-new-ballgame-mlbs-new-rules-changed-everything\/19\/11\/2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Whole new ballgame: MLB\u2019s new rules changed everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You know your sport has issues when even its own Hall of Famers say they can barely watch it. But that\u2019s where baseball was \u2014 until 2023, when Rule Change Baseball arrived to change everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tough watching the game,\u201d Hall of Fame slugger Andre Dawson admitted last July in Cooperstown, surrounded by a significant number of baseball legends who felt just like he did.<\/p>\n

But that was in the Before Times. Suddenly, Dawson found himself watching a sport with true rhythm again, where athleticism was valued again, where ground balls were actually hits again, where runners motored from first to third again. So suddenly, Andre Dawson was interested again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes the game a little bit more exciting,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the best way, I think, to get the fan interest back. So that is starting to return. It\u2019s a good sign \u2013 and you\u2019re slowly starting to really enjoy the game again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rule Change Baseball. We\u2019ve experienced a full year of it now. So let\u2019s just say this: These were the most important rule changes of modern times, possibly in any sport.<\/p>\n

Sure, we still hear the grumbling from the holdouts who think baseball didn\u2019t need fixing. But frankly, what sport were they watching? When the dead time in your sport has begun to overwhelm the action, it\u2019s time to do something already.\u00a0<\/em>Baseball did something. And one year in, it\u2019s astounding to look back at how well it all worked.<\/p>\n

The pitch clocks never stop ticking now \u2014 and the games no longer drag toward midnight and beyond.<\/p>\n

The Shift, which overloaded one side of the infield and swallowed up hundreds of hits, is history now \u2014 and nobody misses those fly balls to right field that got caught by the third baseman<\/a> (<\/em>seriously).\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Those pitchers can\u2019t make 12 pickoff throws to first base anymore \u2014 and we just finished a season with more stolen bases per game than any year since 1997.<\/p>\n

Rule Change Baseball. It has brought us back much of what we love most about this sport \u2014 but without getting gimmicky enough to where it felt, said one club official, like \u201cyou were creating a game show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game is faster now, and more athletic, and it drives forward with a momentum that maintains your attention,\u201d said Morgan Sword, Major League Baseball<\/a>\u2019s executive vice president of baseball operations, whose department has overseen and driven these changes. \u201cAnd because of that, I think the best elements of the game really shine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the best part of it is that those elements have always been there. We haven\u2019t introduced something novel to baseball. We\u2019ve really just chipped away at some of the delays and the dead time around what\u2019s always been a wonderful game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here we\u2019ll lay out the dramatic contrast between the home-run-or-bust slog that baseball had become and the streamlined, back-to-the-future rendition these rule changes produced. As you ponder it, maybe you\u2019ll have the same reaction as Theo Epstein, the onetime curse-busting team-builder in Boston and Chicago who is now a special consultant for MLB and working to restore the beauty of the game.<\/p>\n

How, he wondered, had this sport veered so far off-course?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody realized quite how far it had gotten away from us,\u201d Epstein said, \u201cbecause that\u2019s the nature of creep. When it happens a little bit each year, for 10-plus years, you kind of just get used to it. And then, when it moves back all of a sudden to the way it\u2019s supposed to be, then you realize how abnormal it had gotten. So it was a welcome correction, and certainly, much more fun watching games.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was far more than just a TheoWorks production, of course. The commissioner, Rob Manfred, has lobbied for many of these changes for years. Sword\u2019s Baseball Operations Department did the heavy lifting that brought this effort to life.<\/p>\n

The umpires had to buy in and take on responsibilities that were never part of any umpire\u2019s job before 2023. And, especially, the players had to take a crash course in New Rules Baseball 101 and then adapt to a whole new, clock-ified game on the fly.<\/p>\n

But somehow, all of them figured it out. Somehow, it still looked like baseball, not a rule-adaptation workshop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the best part,\u201d Epstein said, \u201cwas how the rule changes themselves faded into the background so quickly \u2014 and what came to the fore was the best part of the game itself, the action and the players showing their athleticism. That all came to the fore, and what disappeared was some dead time.\u201d<\/p>\n

So just how much dead time vanished? And what did the game look like on the field?<\/p>\n

Like clockwork<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Does anyone miss getting home from the ballpark at 12:45 a.m.? Does anyone miss watching those batting gloves get adjusted after all 300 pitches, every night?<\/p>\n

If you do, you have way too much time on your hands. If you don\u2019t, you can thank the pitch clock \u2014 15 seconds between pitches with no one on base, 20 seconds with runners on. After watching the clock tick away for a season, do we even have to ask: Does the pitch clock work? In truth, it\u2019s hard to think of any rule change in recent memory that accomplished exactly what it was designed to accomplish as well as this one did.<\/p>\n

Average game time:\u00a0<\/strong>Who knew it would be this easy to chop a half-hour\u2019s worth of dead time off\u00a0every\u00a0<\/em>game? But that\u2019s the exact magic trick the clock has pulled off. Check out the time of the average nine-inning game over the last three seasons:<\/p>\n