MLB adapts to a new era, new rules
In the first inning of his major league career, 58 years ago at Fenway Park in Boston, Jim Palmer struck out Tony Conigliaro on a high fastball. On Thursday, from the Baltimore Orioles’ broadcast booth, Palmer looked down at the same mound and saw a pitcher get a third strike without even throwing a pitch.
In the eighth inning on opening day, the Orioles’ Bryan Baker fanned the Red Sox’ Rafael Devers for the first strikeout in baseball history to end on a pitch-clock violation. Baker had come set with a 1-2 count, but Devers was not looking at him when the pitch clock — new for 2023 — reached the eight-second mark. Strike three.
“It kind of left an empty feeling, and I’m not even for the Red Sox,” said Palmer, a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Orioles. “I mean, you’re in the stands, you paid all that money and your best hitter is called out because he’s looking at the pitcher a second or two too late. I understand why we’re doing it, but boy, it was disappointing.”
Baseball is doing it because the modern game had gotten longer and longer, with less and less action. In the very early going of the season, a batch of changes — a pitch clock, a ban on the infield shift, bigger bases and limits on pickoff throws — is accomplishing what Major League Baseball hoped: a return of the game to its natural rhythms.
Through 35 total games over three days, the games are faster, more batted balls are turning into hits and stolen bases are up. The average game time was 2 hours, 41 minutes — 23 minutes faster than the average nine-inning game last season. Batters are hitting .310 on balls in play, up from .292 last season. Stolen base attempts have risen a bit (to 1.6 per game from 1.3), but the success rate has jumped to 87.5% from 74.
“It’s a different game — you have to go on instinct and your brain has to move like this,” said the New York Mets’ Mark Canha, snapping his fingers in Miami on Saturday after a 2 hour, 9 minute game, the Mets’ quickest in nearly four years. “You’re going to look back at 2023 and say the game changed in a big way.”
The new rules, collectively, mark the most significant changes to baseball in generations. In 1969, MLB shaved 5 inches off the height of the mound, lowering it to 10 inches. Four years later — with offense still sluggish — the American League introduced the designated hitter to bat for the pitcher.
In recent years, as pace of play came to be viewed as a critical issue to baseball’s long-term appeal, the league tried smaller measures to move games along. Mound visits were limited, pitching changes were restricted, intentional walks were streamlined — but nothing seemed to work.
“I remember back when they implemented the rule that you couldn’t step out of the batter’s box,” said Nelson Cruz, the San Diego Padres’ designated hitter, referring to a 2015 edict imploring hitters to keep one foot in the batter’s box between pitches. “Everyone was complaining. And then they ended it.”
This time — in Commissioner Rob Manfred’s ninth season on the job — the league is finally serious. The new rules were tested on minor leaguers in recent seasons, and all were in play for exhibition games at spring training this year. There are no surprises anymore.
“I think that we’ll make the adjustments, and I do think it’ll be a good game,” said Cleveland Guardians Manager Terry Francona during spring training. “I just think there’s going to be growing pains, because these are bigger changes than we’ve ever had before and you’re asking people to do something they’ve never done. So it’s going to take a minute to do that.”
Sure enough, in the eighth inning of Cleveland’s opener in Seattle, reliever James Karinchak came undone after a pitch-clock violation. Karinchak, who is notoriously fidgety on the mound, was charged with a ball on an 0-2 count to the Mariners’ J.P. Crawford. Karinchak then fired his next pitch to the backstop, and after a walk, an out and a hit batter, he gave up a three-run homer for the only runs of the game in his team’s 3-0 loss.
“He has a routine, a very lengthy routine,” Mariners manager Scott Servais told reporters later. “He’s had to try to make adjustments with that — the things he does with the ball, flipping it and everything else. He was a little bit out of whack.”