Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr. hit his 40th homer last night, becoming the 5th player to join the 40 home run, 40 stolen base club. He’s also the only player in the 40-50 and 40-60 club.
He might end up winning the MVP award unanimously, one would think, especially given Atlanta’s record.
With the season about over, and seeing Acuna with 60+ steals, I thought I’d take a look at what impact the rule changes for this season have had on play.
Pace: It looks like the average length of a game is going to come in at around 2:45, which is about 20 minutes shorter than last year. Big win for the game, IMO.
Batting Average: .249, up a few percentage points over last year’s .243. I’d expected (or at least hoped) for a bit more of an increase.
Runs Per Game: up quite a bit; teams are averaging 4.63 runs per game this season, compared to 4.28 last year.
Base Stealing: currently at 3303 stolen bases, compared to 2486 last year – an increase of 33%, with a week left to play this year, so the final number will go up a bit. Total steal attempts are up 25%, so the success rate is a bit better, too: 80% this year, versus 77% last year. Acuna is leading MLB with 68 steals; there are two other players at 50+, and a total of thirteen with 30+ steals. Last year, Jon Berti led with 41 steals, and only six players had 30+.
Balks: 201 so far this year, versus 122 this year, an increase of 65%, which is undoubtedly due to pitch clock violations. However, it still boils down to the average MLB team having committed only 6.7 balks over the course of the season, compared to 4.0 last year
Count me in as one who supports the rule changes except for the dumb runner on 2nd rule.
If it must stay, just delay implementing it until a couple more extra innings. I get not wanting to have 18 inning games using every pitcher and it always seems there’s a day game scheduled after one of those marathons, but maybe wait until three extra innings have been played.
Agreed, though that’s technically an “old-new” rule; it’s been around since 2020, when it was originally implemented with an eye towards player health during the COVID season.
I could agree with that.
I agree. The other changes are fine. I don’t even notice the “no shift” rule. I don’t see any problem with the larger bases. I like the pitch clock.
The guy on second in extra innings bothers me more on theoretical grounds than practical. It doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of watching, but I’d rather it not exist.
Quite true, although it should be noted that the 122 balks in 2022 was the lowest number since 1973. So it’s also possible that MLB asked for stricter enforcement of the balk rules. JMO.
There’s a chance that the Astros don’t make the playoffs and I find this absolutely acceptable.
Freddie Freeman finally has a 200 hit season.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider blew another one.
Bottom of the ninth, tie game. Closer Jordan Romano has pitched badly. He also pitched the day before. A lefthanded batter is at the plate, one who hits righties well (Romano is a righty) but doesn’t hit lefties well at all. A very good lefthander reliever is warm and ready to go.
Schneider left Romano in. Single, run scores, game over.
IT was just bizarre. Why? Why was Mayza warmed up at all if not for that situation?
Miami Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara, last year’s NL Cy Young Award winner (though he struggled this year), is out for the season with arm issues, and there’s questions about whether he’ll be ready for next season.
The Blue Jays won again today, so they beat the Rays two out of three.
For the second weekend in a row, what happened to the teams they are competing with is perfectly what they needed. Texas and Seattle squared off and the best thing that could have happened was one or the other sweeping - and Texas swept Seattle. Houston played KC, and the best thing that could have happened for the Jays was the Royals sweeping, but what’re the odds of that, huh? Well, it happened.
So Toronto now sits two ahead of Houston and 2.5 ahead of Seattle, and those two teams play each other for three games now. Texas owns the division lead again. One of Seattle or Houston can catch up by Thursday if Toronto eats shit against the Yankees, but they can’t both catch up - and then after that Texas and Seattle play again.
Seattle has the worst playoff odds according to the predictors, but they control their own destiny; they’re playing the teams they gotta beat.
Meanwhile in the NL, here are Fangraphs’ playoff odds
99-100 percent - Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee
Arizona - 85%
Chicago 55%
Miami - 52%
Cincinnati - 7%
So barring a miracle by the Reds or collapse by the Snakes, it now comes down to a coin flip between the Cubs and Marlins for the sixth seed.
Interesting stats since the Diamondbacks only have a .5 game lead over the Cubs. Cubs are +1 over the Marlins.
Cubs have 3 game sets against the Braves and Brewers on the road remaining. Marlins have the Mets and the Pirates on the road. D-backs have 1 left with Yanks, 3 on the road against the ChiSox and 3 at home against the Astros. I thought they were in the NL! 
The Snakes must have the tie-breaker over both the Cubs and the Marlins.
Yet they’re not doing enough to win. Sigh.
The Oakland A’s don’t have a shot at the worst MLB record since 2000 any longer, more’s the pity–they’ve already won more games than the 2018 Orioles and a couple of Tigers teams–but if they can manage to be outscored by twelve or more runs the rest of the way, they will be the team with the worst run differential this millennium. Right now they sit at an impressive -326, almost exactly the same as losing every game of the season–by two runs.
C’mon, A’s! We know you can do it!
jeeze even the expos werent that bad…well I don’t think so anyways
In their very first season they went 52-110, which is very bad indeed, but you can hardly blame a first year expansion team for being crappy.
I plan to tackle the Connie Mack trilogy this winter but I do know the Philadelphia A’s had some high highs but also a lot of very low lows.
I assume the Philadelphia A’s never sank quite so low as they probably benefited from hometown bias and probably facing bench players at times who were probably still drunk at 6 AM that morning.
Oh, they sank lower. Once they went 36-117.
Miguel Rojas interrupts his on-field interview to make the putout. Good stuff.
But there’s plenty of blame to go around for every year after that. 
It took them a full decade to pass .500, and their 95-65 mark that year was the best they would ever do, and it didn’t even get them into the playoffs.