Most sports fans have a love-hate relationship with new rules.
Old-school baseball fans tend to have a hate-hate approach to change.
Baseball is a great sport. Major League Baseball isn’t always a great game.
With that in mind, MLB passed a set of rules that will make the 2023 season unlike any we have seen. That the league is willing to take serious steps to improve the game will not ruin the sport.
It will be better.
Progress is often messy. So, there will be confusion when the rules start to be enforced when spring training games begin next week.
I’m not sure the changes are all that drastic, but the baseball world will act as if the world is ending when a rule change leads to a game-winning run.
Tightening up the pitcher movement rules will affect only a handful of players, including the Astros’ Luis Garcia.
Taking the dance steps out of a handful of pitchers’ windups won’t grow the game, just take some of the personality out of it.
Not that we need more balks in baseball, but there is not much there to complain about. Umpires will just enforce the rules that are in place.
The rule says a pitcher is allowed to take a single step back and one forward, not do the Griddy before a pitch.
It’s incredible for a game that has changed so little in its basic form to have stretched so drastically in length over the years.
MLB games averaged three hours, 11 minutes in 2021. They took only 2:33 in 1981.
Much of the added time is due to the amount of time taken (wasted) between pitches. Spitting, scratching, thinking, walking, rubbing, thinking … it takes forever. Then the batter steps out of the box and the maddening process starts all over again.
The pitch clock will fix that.
It could be problematic for some. Creatures of habit will find it difficult to adjust.
But the next generation of players will play like their grandfathers did. In a reasonable amount of time.