MLB Is Completely Different Under New Rules

With one week of MLB games in the books, baseball looks a lot differently this year than it has in the past. It might not be immediately obvious to the naked eye, but numbers show that a lot has changed.

It’s too early at this point to make too many sweeping judgments about how the suite of new rules introduced this season has impacted the game, but it’s still worth taking a look at a few stats that are indications of interesting trends.

Offense is up

Early returns suggest offense is on the rise—perhaps significantly so.

Offense is typically depressed during the first month of the season (the leaguewide batting average during March and April last season, for example, was 11 points lower than the full-season average). But thus far, offense is up compared to last season. The league batting average is .248—slightly higher than last year’s .243, but significantly higher than last season’s .232 average for March and April. It makes sense. With restrictions on defensive shifts, hitters are having an easier time finding holes to pick up base hits. Scoring is also up. Teams are scoring 4.53 runs per game—again, a relatively modest increase over last season’s 4.28, but a big leap compared to the 4.03 runs per game teams scored last March and April.

Now, the sample size is extremely small. We’re talking about 97 games played so far this season, compared to 2,430 over the course of a full season, so those numbers are very much subject to change. But still, they suggest that offensive output, once the weather warms up, could be even higher.

Steals galore

One trend that might be more likely to continue is the increase in the number of stolen bases, since it’s based on decision-making rather than the more unpredictable outcome of a pitcher-hitter matchup.

There has been an average of 1.32 steals per game this season, compared to 1.02 last season. (Steal attempts have increased at the same rate.) MLB introduced larger bases this season with two goals in mind: improving player safety and increasing stolen base attempts. The new bases are three inches wider than the old ones, which means the distance between bases has been decreased by 4.5 inches. That’s a tiny distance over the course of 90 feet, but so many steals are bang-bang plays, so those can be valuable inches. That, coupled with the limit on pickoff moves that comes along with the pitch clock, means it’s easier to steal bases now than in recent years. This season, 81% of steal attempts have been successful, while over the previous decade the stolen base success rate hovered between 70% and 75%.

Perhaps no player illustrates this new baserunning reality better than Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres. In his first five seasons, Torres stole 36 bases, or 10.1 per 162 games. This year, he’s tied for the MLB lead with five in six games. He’s not going to keep up that pace and steal 135 bases this season, but the point is players who might not have previously been eager to swipe a bag are now empowered to.

Tom Verducci wrote earlier this week about how speed is becoming an increasingly valuable skill and how teams that are aggressive on the base paths have gotten out to hot starts. The most interesting point Verducci makes is steals are up in the most crucial moments of games. In recent years the game has trended toward “lumbering, hard-throwing relievers who took a long time between pitches and a long time in their deliveries to max out on velocity,” Verducci writes. “Those guys are getting exposed by the timer and the stolen base environment.”

The length of games

The main goal of the pitch clock was to cut down on the length of games—and it’s really working. The average length of all games this season is two hours and 38 minutes. Last year, games took an average of 3:03 after game length rose to a record 3:10 in 2021. The average game this year is more than a half hour shorter than two years ago. The Astros have played the longest games this season, on average, at 2:52. That’s still six minutes faster than the team with the shortest average game time last season (the Tigers at 2:58). There have been only four games this season, out of 97 played, that have exceeded last season’s average length. On Tuesday, Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara threw a complete game shutout against the Twins that took just 1:57 to play. It was just the sixth nine-inning game in the past 10 years that took less than two hours.