You guess wrong. I was a baseball fanatic for over 50 years, and wrote professionally about the game for close to a decade. I’ve become disgusted with the changes over the years, and finally felt it was something that I was supporting out of habit. I’ve done things out of habit in my life too often, and I very consciously decided to break as many of these harmful habits as I could.
Just as an aside, shifting hasn’t been banned. Just radical shifts, preventing players being completely out of position. Players are moved as far left or right as the rulle allows, and it’s still quite effective. Occasionally it still bites 'em in the ass, though. See Seager leading off the 7th in game 5.
That’s something I hadn’t really thought about. That was on a 3 and 2 pitch, and the catcher called for an intentional ball, but then he moved back behind the plate and caught the curve ball for strike three. If it happened today, would the catcher (or pitcher or manager) just tell the ump that now we want to walk the batter, after 5 (or more) pitches? I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen that situation. Has anybody?
ETA: Here’s a video of that play. Strike 3 is at about the 30-second mark. 1972 WS Gm3: Fingers fakes free pass, fans Bench - YouTube
Was just thinking that the shorter games could be a reason to push back the ghost runner to the 12 inning or so. This could help balance the desire to eliminate 19 inning marathons (which always seem to be night games with a day game the following day) but also not be the deciding factor in a tenth inning win.
Length of games was not the motivating factor for the ghost runner. Over using pitchers was. Blowing out your bullpen in a random game in June isn’t worth the one win. Pitchers are throwing harder than any time in history. Pitching injuries are way up. Anything that helps stop that trend is worth it. It’s not going away because it has the backing of both the players and the management.
Except, of course, in the postseason, because apparently the integrity of the game only matters then.
Integrity matters so much that the tournament was even expanded recently!
I don’t really mind the changes now that it’s been a little while. All sports have gone through the occasional (or sometimes frequent) rules changes and these have generally improved games for casual fans and/or for player safety. Certainly games are much more watchable now without fundamentally altering the basics of the sport, which is all to the better, especially for the kids
Post season games are slightly different than a May 5th game between the Yankees and A’s.
It’s be curious to see if the stats back up framing as being valuable. There’s already stats on missed balls and strikes by the umps, do it should be easy to cross reference by catcher.
I don’t think this had been specifically mentioned yet, but yes, steals and attempts went up dramatically this year.
- Total stolen base attempts, and total (successful) stolen bases were up 41%
- This meant that the average steals per team went from 83 in 2022, to 117 this season
Despite the dramatic increase versus the previous season, stolen base attempts are still 12% lower than they were 40 years ago (though the success rate is now substantially higher).
Also, just to note, because several posters singled out the ghost runner for scorn (and for why they weren’t watching baseball in 2023): it wasn’t a new rule for this past season, and had been in effect since the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Do we have stats on ghost runner games? How many fewer innings on average are extra inning games now?
Yes, catcher framing runs is absolutely a thing.
I found this:
While the rule may be unpopular with a large portion of fans, it has worked effectively. During the 2022 season, 223 regular season games went into extra innings, with only seven reaching the 13th inning.
In 2019, the last year in MLB before the extra runner rule, 24 extra-inning games went past 13 innings. The longest game in 2019 was a 19-inning, 413-minute affair between the Cardinals and the Diamondbacks. The longest game since the extra-runner rule was implemented was between the Dodgers and Padres on August 25, 2022, which lasted 16 innings and 349 minutes.
They decided it was a good time to implement the rule but it wasn’t invented for the COVID season. They had already been experimenting with it in the minors with the intention of bringing it to the bigs. I was at a minor league game and witnessed it several years ago.
Could someone explain the purpose of The Shift: “At the time a pitch is thrown, all four infielders are required to be on the infield dirt (or infield grass) with two on each side of second base.”
What’s does this rule do to affect the game? Why can’t the 3rd baseman step back 50 feet if he chooses? Why can’t three players be on one side of 2nd base?
Because batters couldn’t figure out how to hit to the opposite side of the shift. Or learn to bunt for a hit.
I agree that this is a bad rule.
Unless you’re Ichiro Suzuki, it’s not something a typical MLB player can do without undoing decades of grooving their swing and timing.
That’s not the shift - that’s the rule that prevents the shift. What the shift does is take an infielder from the opposite side of the infield and put them on the other (“opposite” being in relation to the handedness of the batter). So against a left-handed hitter, taking the shortstop and putting him between 1st and 2nd. Because a lefty pull hitter hits so many balls through that side of the infield, you greatly increase the chances of fielding the ball.
“But what prevents a hitter from just hitting it the other way?!”
Skill. Skill prevents the hitters that the shift is implemented against from doing so. These are professionals paid a shit-ton of money - if they could, they would. It’s not a novel idea.
Are you referring to the skill of the pitcher?
There are plenty of players that hit to all fields. As you noted, the shift is/was implemented exclusively against pull hitters. ISTM that just a couple of hits/bunts to the open side of the infield would defeat the shift.