MLB’s New Rules Have Baseball in Overdrive
“If there was a way to deliver the pace without the clock, we would have done it 20 years ago,” said Morgan Sword, M.L.B.’s executive vice president of baseball operations.
“We started Day 1 of spring training with rigid enforcement of all these new rules, and we felt that that was the best way to help players through that adjustment period and to get to the other side,” Sword continued. “And as we saw in the minor leagues, once you’re on the other side, violations occur in less than half of games and are not a big part of the competition — but you feel the benefit of the clock every single pitch all night.”
The rule changes, Sword said, have worked as M.L.B. intended. With bigger bases and a limit on pickoff attempts per plate appearance, stolen-base attempts are up to 1.8 per game, the most since 2012, and the 78.7 percent success rate is the highest in history. With a ban on defensive shifts that positioned more than two infielders on one side of the diamond, batting average on balls in play is up to .298, an increase of six points from last year — and fielding is back in style.
“You can’t hide the second baseman on the shift anymore,” Red Sox shortstop Kiké Hernández said. “I feel like there were a lot of really offensive second basemen that didn’t necessarily field their position that well, but they could get away with playing second base because they got hidden in the shift. Now you’ve got to be a little more athletic again.”
Source: The New York Times
