ATLANTA — A major shift in how Major League Baseball is played has arrived. About time, too.
Opening day is Thursday and the Atlanta Braves are in the nation's capital to ring in the 2023 season.
The new seasons comes with several new rules - including, for the first time, a clock to speed up the time between pitches.
Below is an overview of the new rules, with a little bit on how they might specifically impact the Braves:
New MLB rules and Braves impact
- Pitch clock
Manny Machado drew the first pitch clock violation in spring training and it was a nuisance. A game between the Braves and Red Sox ended on a clock call and it was a novelty.
Chances are, if Max Scherzer or Nolan Arenado or some other intense star gets timed out in a key spot, it could go nuclear.
But MLB realized it had to do something to cut all the dead periods when absolutely nothing was happening. Well, except for hitters adjusting their batting gloves or pitchers pawing at the rubber. So with games routinely dragging on for more than three hours, the slowdown is getting sped up.
The sport that never had a clock suddenly has them all over the park. Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and the rest of the pitchers get 15 seconds to throw with nobody on base, 20 seconds with runners on. Vladimir Guerero Jr., Mookie Betts and the hitters need to be ready.
The early returns were good, spring training games lasted nearly a half-hour less this year. But remember, that was in Clearwater, Tempe and Lakeland — it might be a lot different, especially early in the season, when umpires begin pointing to their wrists at Busch Stadium, Camden Yards and Petco Park.
The Braves angle
This seems like, if anything, the early indication is it'll help Fried. He picked up a strikeout in the spring when a batter took to long, and seemed to be experimenting with how long he could wait out the clock as a means of messing with the batter.
Spencer Strider, meanwhile, reportedly was already gameplanning for the clock and what might happen when it's running out.
The Braves seem to be exploring how to use this new rule to their advantage.
- Ban on shifts
NL home run champ Kyle Schwarber, 2020 World Series MVP Corey Seager and a bevy of left-handed boppers should benefit hugely by this rule change. Because from now on, those pull hitters won't face a wall of three infielders on the right side.
Defensive shifts dominated the game in recent years, a big reason why batting averages plummeted so sharply. José Ramírez, Cody Bellinger and other lefties increasingly found themselves being thrown out from shallow-to-medium right field.
No longer. Realizing that shifts were a winning strategy on the field but a losing proposition with fans, MLB banned them. These days, two infielders must be standing on each side of second base. And no playing deep on the grass to rob hits, either — Dansby Swanson, Jeremy Peña and other infielders need to be on the dirt.
One likely effect: With more grounders sneaking through for singles, look for the number of no-hitters and near-gems to drop.
The Braves angle
This one's easy.
Matt Olson has been one of the greatest victims of the shift - a strong-pull lefty hitter who's lost countless singles to the shift covering the gap between first and second.
Even more than just turning some groundouts back into singles, the ban on the shift could also free him up to take his most natural approach at the plate, instead of having to account for the shift.
Olson had a massive spring, and hopes are high that he's in for a huge year.
- Larger bases
In a move that's been billed to improve safety, MLB expanded the base from 15 square inches to 18 square inches.
Four players on the 11-person competition committee voted for the larger bases in September, even as that grouping was against the pitch clock and shift ban.
The new size will cut the distance between bases by 4 1/2 inches. That may not seem like a whole lot, but baseball is known as a game of inches - and that can be especially true for the stolen base.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was among those earlier in Spring Training who said "the stolen-base attempt should increase a good bit" as a result of the rule changes.
The Braves angle
This would also seem to be a bit of a boost to the Braves.
They have some of the league's base base-stealers in Ronald Acuña Jr., Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies.
And now those speedsters have a 4 1/2 inch head start on a steal.
- Pickoff attempt limits
MLB is reining in pickoff attempts. The league changed it so that a pitcher has a maximum of three they can attempt per plate appearance.
The additional wrinkle in there is that you only get two of those attempts for free - if you try a third pickoff attempt and don't record the out, it will be counted as an automatic balk and players will advance a base.
That creates a new tension if a pitcher does indeed attempt two pickoffs - will a baserunner be extra daring for a steal attempt knowing a pitcher will give up a base if he throws over one more time and it fails?
It also raises the question of how willing are pitchers going to be to make the second pickoff attempt, knowing it sets up the above scenario? And again, conversely, if baserunners know pitchers are hesitant to use their second pickoff, will that make them more daring on the base paths?
The Braves angle
As noted in the previous section, anything that helps baserunners stands to benefit Acuña, Harris and Albies.
The flipside is that it could mess with pitchers who keep a nice pickoff move in their arsenal - and Max Fried has one of the better pickoff moves in baseball, a tool that might not quite be as readily available to him anymore.