The Big Loss: Pitchers Are Dropping Like Flies Watching this year's quicker, more action-packed brand of ball thus feels like waking up from a bad dream. Every pitch has dozens of potential outcomes, yet the only ones that ever seemed to happen were walks, strikeouts and home runs. Heck, even the half-second itself lost some of its magic. (Side note: It was only later that I realized that I had inadvertently ripped off Captain Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.)īut while that half-second never failed to keep me coming back, the ballooning pace between pitches and length of games turned the daily intake into a chore that could have detrimental effects on my mental and physical health and personal relationships. I wrote at Medium about how it's all in that moment between when the ball leaves the pitcher's hand and when it crosses the plate, during which both time and the heart stop and give way to pure, uncut anticipation of what will happen next. I used to get a creeping sense of dread when I sat down to watch games, and now I don't.Ī few years ago, I was feeling frisky in a Huge Nerd sort of way and sought to drill down to what exactly it is about baseball that I find not just enjoyable, but addictive. And as such, I'm going to drop the "we" and tell you the reason I'm loving this "everything old is new again" brand of baseball. Polls also come in handy in matters of objectivity, so we'll point to a YouGov poll that found support for the new rules coming into the year and a more recent B/R poll on the pitch timer in which only 13.8 percent of respondents wanted to get rid of it.īut watchability is, of course, ultimately subjective. Though attendance is technically down from 2022, Maury Brown of Forbes clarified that it's up relative to the time of year and that television viewership is also trending positively. 2: Baseball Really Is More WatchableĪs to how to prove this objectively, let's put it this way: Fans probably wouldn't be watching in increased numbers if they didn't dig the new rules. There you have numbers that confirm, drop in balls in play aside, Major League Baseball is getting what it wanted out of its new rules. Bigger Bases: The leaguewide mark of 0.7 stolen bases per team game is the highest since 1999.Shift Ban: Pulled ground balls from left-handed batters are going for hits way more often than they did in 2022, helping to drive a five-point improvement in the leaguewide batting average.Pitch Timer: The average time of game is down 27 minutes from 2022, by far the biggest year-to-year change in MLB history. We were promised more balls in play, yet balls in play are down from 2022. 5yWZFwSbpFĬut to now, and there is one area where the concept is not bearing fruit. MLB #SpringTraining gets into full swing this week, let's revisit the new on-field rules beginning this season.
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