the first new MLB rules since '96

why WHY

is the foul bunt rule meant to encourage more bunting? seems odd

also, embarrassed to not know for sure, but i thought a pitcher was already required to step off the rubber before a pickoff?

If on the rubber, the motion has to be directed entirely toward a single base. i.e. home, first, etc

i think i was confused my the rules in my childhood league - i was always required to step off the rubber. i remember vividly because i got several balks called on me and had no idea wtf was going on

i will never pay to see a "stealing first" league game

i guess some of this might somehow yield more ~action on the bases~

insofar as it does, it would also make the games longer

Yeah Karl I remember something similar. the MLB rules allow for that classic leftie pick-off move where they lift their right leg up but you don't know yet which way they're going.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27405556/yanks-boone-worth-exploring-mlb-mercy-rule

I might be in favour of a mercy rule of some sort, mainly because of the risk of someone getting hurt.

i wouldn't necessarily be against a mercy rule, but have we actually seen position players get hurt pitching? (and if so, that's on the managers -- no one's forcing them not to use real pitchers)

I guess it's more the risk of any player getting hurt in a game where the score is lopsided and the guys just want to get the hell out of there (on both sides). Much like the Buster Posey and Chase Utley rules, one serious injury could be enough to get the rules changed, e.g. Mike Trout getting injured by an errant pitch in a 15-1 game. You can't sit everybody even once the score gets out of hand.

what are the best single game comebacks in mlb history?

i assume if a game ends in, say, the 5th inning on the mercy rule, all the fans get 4 innings worth of ticket price refunded, right? RIGHT?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQmqqA_X0AI5Ia3?format=jpg&name=large

RIP loogies everywhere

Any difference between these and the three-batter/roster expansion stuff announced last year? Or is this just the formalization of it?

just the formalization, i think, although the reduction in challenge time is new. i'll be surprised if that one is actually enforced

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/new-pickoff-rule-coming-to-minors-after-indy-ball-success-in-2019

Double plays also dropped from .82 per game to .63 per game with the new rules.

With that and the upped SBs would this mean longer games?

oh my yes.

idk, i'm not really against this. lefties are pretty much balking on every throw over

saw a (maybe collegiate?) umpire praising it -- with a guy on first in two-man umpire crews, the field ump is out by second and neither he nor the HP ump have an angle to judge a lefty's balk. but if they have to step off the rubber first, that can be seen

Yeah i don’t mind it - seems like rubber should equal “locked in for home”

seems fine to me, too. those were the rules in my day (back when i manned the keystone for the san diego padres in the late 70s with my friend and doubleplay partner ozzie smith), and for a very long time i wasn't aware that the rules were any different for pros

btw (almost all of) the high-a florida state league will have robo ball/strike calls this year. mlb's current agreement with the umpires, which covers the next five years, allows for its implementation in the majors, so i think we can anticipate that happening before the deal ends, at the latest

more controversially, i think mlb will indeed soon adopt the guy-on-second extra-inning rule; i hope george will's estate is in order

that last wd be abominable

a stopped Will is right once a lifetime

a stopped Will is right once a lifetime

MLB announces experimental playing rules to be tested during 2021 minor league regular season. pic.twitter.com/oRriW7TItH

— emilycwaldon (@EmilyCWaldon) March 11, 2021

big bases and automatic balls and strikes - yes

the rest - trash

it'll be really interesting to see the effect of the larger bases on stolen bases and infield singles, etc. seems like a full AAA season's worth of that would be a large enough sample to predict the effect on MLB as well

i think they need to do various things to the rules to slow the direction of the game into exclusively being about strikeouts, walks and homers. as entertainment i don't think baseball is headed in the right direction. things like pitcher velocity and organizational philosophies about the most valuable styles of play are harder to change but i'm in favor of them curbing shifts to open the field back up and these little minute changes to try and encourage some more running

I think the instant replay is a big culprit for killing the sb, since we can now see everytime someone pops off the base by a mm for half a second.

don't understand the obsession with stolen bases. i do wish there were more again, but idk why they're the first thing brought up when people talk about the strikeout/juiced ball era - i miss "defense" in general much more than i miss SBs

the big positive in this imo is "and determine the optimal strike zone for the system." i know there was a lot of talk about ABS calling a massive strike zone so it's good if they're willing to tinker with it

if they want to avoid 1B collisions though just do the double base thing from softball

Also the drinking between innings from softball. Will help you go limp in case of a collision.

we can reinstitute beer kegs at third base to encourage balls in play

keeping infielders in place seems fine to me

I'm resistant to the idea of pickoff limitations, timers (antithetical to baseball), and any pace-of-play stuff. It's baseball! Proceed at your own pace!

agreed

i kinda thought the shift would lead to more varied, less pull-happy swings, but it never really happened

a surefire way to increase action on the basepaths is of course to deaden the ball to some unspecified degree but hahahahahaha

i think over time ... like 5-10 years ... players would adjust how they hit for the shift, forcing a counter by defenses and thus rebalancing things a bit. but i'm down with MLB being like, it's better for balls to fall in the field of play for hits and we're not going to wait on natural regression to fix this

but it would be better for the game to have hits land in all parts of the field and not just crushed for power (or be swung on and missed - which is the other thing that happens when you “cheat” on a pitch to try and wrap your bat around it) - the broadcast booth always waxes on interminably about contact hitting and inside-out swings and “going with” the pitch but i think they’re not wrong and it’s weird that wouldn’t translate into actual support in the rules for that style of play

tracer they're deadening the ball this year!

eh??!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-planning-small-changes-to-deaden-the-baseball-for-2021-season-per-report/amp/

i think over time ... like 5-10 years ... players would adjust how they hit for the shift, forcing a counter by defenses and thus rebalancing things a bit.

teams have been shifting for a decade now and i think what we're seeing *is* the adjustment. if they need a man on base, people like freddie freeman or j.d. martinez will drop a bunt down to third every once in a while, but they and their teams have concluded that when every pitcher has a 98mph fastball, it's too hard to string together three singles to score a run. better to try to hit the ball in the air and hope it goes out.

(also the way players are rewarded incentivizes dingers as opposed to inside-out swings.)

maybe a deadened ball will lead to more warning-track outs and a change in philosophy. but i think the issue is less the shift than the fact that pitchers are throwing so much harder than they were even 10-15 years ago, and even lowering the mound won't help with that. when tony gwynn was asked whether he preferred to face fastballs or off-speed stuff, he chose the latter, because it gave him more time to see the pitch.

we might soon be reaching the limits of how hard people can physically throw baseballs, but i think ultimately they're gonna have to move the rubber back, and i'm not sure anyone has the appetite for that

this feels like the key

stringing together multiple hits in an inning is so difficult

there's still no telling how much the ball is actually being "deadened", and meredith wills (who's been researching this for years now) suggested the changes might actually make the balls livelier

i don't have a BP subscription but this article apparently suggests the same thing

Since we are brainstorming here, and I do like the idea of moving back the rubber, what about reducing the size of the strike zone?

that shouldn't even be controversial, it's been getting bigger and bigger over the past decade

i guess they're paving the way with the (slightly) larger bases, but moving the rubber back would be an incredible clusterfuck. rip george will yet again

no doubt manfred sees it as an opportunity to split the union; he's probably right

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/15/22331075/pitching-mound-move-distance

The Atlantic League, a minor league hotbed for innovation in baseball, will announce plans Wednesday to move the pitcher’s mound back 12 inches from home plate this season, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement. The move represents one of the most stark rule changes proposed by baseball leadership in a generation and comes amid sweeping changes on the minor league level designed to reduce home runs and strikeouts and increase the action from batter to batter.

The eight-team Atlantic League, which has franchises along the East Coast, will enact the change during the second half of its 120-game regular season, one person familiar with the matter said. It will be the first change of mound regulations in professional baseball since 1969, when MLB lowered the mound after a season in which seven starting pitchers posted sub-2.00 ERAs.

Not sure how this would reduce home runs

I wonder what the average game time is when total runs are >20.