Baseball is reborn for 2020
Handful of key rule changes will alter traditional game
The Pirates could have signed freeagent outfielder Yasiel Puig a few minutes past noon Friday, once the roster freeze ended, and it still might not have qualified as the most insane thing we’ll see this season.
Pittsburgh’s 60-game sprint will feature 40 games within the National League Central Division and 20 against the American League Central, with expanded rosters to start, a three-batter minimum for relief pitchers and a slew of health and safety protocols to follow.
Oh, don’t forget about the NL adopting the designated hitter and extra innings beginning with a runner on second base.
“We kind of knew coming in that no matter what happened with this season, it wasn’t going to be normal with spring training being shut down and everything that’s happened since then,” Jameson Taillon said. “We knew it was going to look different. We weren’t sure to what extent.”
We could spend hours talking about how different baseball will be this season — for anyone scoring at home, the official operations manual checks total 101 pages — but we’ll try to concentrate this on a few specific areas that were addressed recently by Taillon and manager Derek Shelton in two Zoom calls.
Some extra fun
The wackiest — and thus the perfect place to start — is likely the extra-innings rule. It’s functional because it aims to eliminate lengthy games, a necessity when trying to cram 60 games into 66 days.
Also, envision this: Weekend series
against the Kansas City Royals. Saturday night. Final time the teams meet. Day game Sunday. Need to play because both clubs play Monday and travel Sunday — meaning a doubleheader would be really, really hard.
If the Saturday night game is delayed three hours because of rain and tied after nine, do they really want to risk playing 15 innings in the middle of the night, only to have a quick turnaround the next day? Likely not.
It’s weird, but it’s functional. Especially when you consider the COVID-19 implications of it all, with risks of transmission only increasing over time.
“Being around the park for a long time, we’re trying to avoid and limit that and the exposure,” Taillon said. “But also if we’re going to try and play 60 games in 66 days, it would be tough to be playing 15inning games and stuff.”
Shelton said the first he had paid any serious attention to the implementation of the rule was Sunday, when he realized it likely was going to be a big part of his first managerial season.
The next step was for Shelton to consult with assistant hitting coach Mike Rabelo, who managed with the rule in the minors with the Class AA Erie SeaWolves.
“I told him the pressure is on him to educate us on how to do it,” Shelton said.
Aside from that, Shelton did not have a huge take on the strategy implications here — on offense, whether to immediately bunt the runner over and score on a sacrifice fly or let guys hit away; and on defense, what to do defensively with an open base, gambling to coax a better matchup.
He said that, more than anything, it should evolve over time as teams figure out what works and what doesn’t.
DH breakdown
It seems Shelton has talked the most about the designated hitter over the past few weeks and months, because this was the rule change everybody saw coming.
And Shelton’s answers, for the most part, haven’t changed over time. First, he is more comfortable with having a DH than not because of his past coaching experience in the American League. Second, he does not feel the Pirates will use one player as the full-time DH. Rather, they’ll rotate that responsibility to a group of players.
“We’ll be able to, instead of maybe rest someone that we were going to play in our regular lineup that day, they’ll have the ability to get four or five [at-bats], and I think that’s extremely important for us,” Shelton said. “We won’t go with one person there.”
Last week, Shelton was on 93.7 The Fan for his weekly Wednesday appearance with Pittsburgh PostGazette columnists Joe Starkey and Ron Cook, and he specifically listed some of the options at DH.
Third baseman Colin Moran, right fielder Gregory Polanco and first baseman Josh Bell were the first — and perhaps the most obvious — three. Infielders JT Riddle and Jose Osuna also were named, along with Phillip Evans, a third baseman who was signed by the Pirates this past offseason.
However the Pirates choose to deploy that slot in the lineup, Shelton sees it as a necessary rule change for this year, not necessarily for the sake of lineup flexibility, but more for the sake of pitchers.
“It doesn’t put our pitchers in a position, coming back in a quick spring training situation, where they have to worry about being multifaceted,” Shelton said. “They can worry about doing what they’re paid to do, and that’s pitch. And hopefully by having this, we’re eliminating injuries of a pitcher maybe being on the bases or something happening on a swing, because of the fact that we’ve had a shortened spring training.”
Next man up
The health and safety stuff is not to be ignored, even though it has been written and talked about a ton.
None of the guidelines are particularly onerous by themselves — wearing masks, keeping distance, wiping down equipment, no high-fives or hugs, remembering not to spit or lick your fingers then touch the ball, staggering workouts, etc.
But will they impact what players are thinking about on the field, just the awkwardness of it all?
“We all know it’s going to be different,” Shelton said. “It’s different for everybody, and it’s an adjustment for everybody.”
And that’s without potentially losing someone.
Accounting for an injured/sick player is normal. It happens all the time. Even if it’s COVID19, there will be a special list for that, and teams simply need to have someone else step up.
But it could get really intriguing if it happens to a coach, especially someone like the third-base coach, pitching coach or hitting coach — someone in an important position whose tendencies, institutional knowledge and voice are not easily replicated.
Shelton said the Pirates already have worked through some of these scenarios, figuring out contingency plans. But amid the season of Weird Baseball, it figures that even the coaching staff might have to function under a variety of configurations.
“I think, number one, everyone’s coming into it on equal footing,” Shelton said. “Number two, obviously everyone is coming into it with different rule changes, and I like where we’re at.
“I think it’s going to be a fun sprint. I think everybody is going to enjoy it and I think you’re going to see a lot of good, competitive baseball.”