As we near the halfway point of the 2023 MLB season, our first with a host of rule changes that dominated baseball news through spring training and over the opening weeks of the regular season, it's time to ask: Who is benefitting most -- and least -- from these new rules?
As with most changes in a zero-sum enterprise like baseball, it has worked out better for some than others. The effects, where they exist, can be subsumed by the innumerable factors that determine the outcome of a game, play or season. Players age, they get hurt, and good, old fashioned luck plays havoc with short-term results. Even with a half-season of numbers now available for us to pour through, in some instances it's difficult to assign credit or blame for variances in individual performance to the new rules and we don't always know if a league-level change is a product of them.
Still, three months into baseball's new reality, we can take a snapshot of some of the apparent winners and losers in the sport's evolution. Let's run through some of the most notable outcomes from the opening months, ones that at least dovetail with the changes to the rulebook.
New rule: Shift ban
Result: Averages on balls in play are up
Winners: Lefty pull hitters
Losers: Second basemen who liked the view from shallow right field
The aggregate average on balls in play has jumped from .290 to .297, bringing it back into the range of normal variance from the pre-shift era. The improvement stemming from the ban of extreme shifts is entirely responsible for the overall uptick in batting average.
This change might or might not have helped righty hitters. Their collective BABIP has gone up from .296 to .298, but that change is well within a normal year-to-year variation, so it's hard to say that this uptick is because of the rule change.
In fact, one could posit that the change has hurt righty hitters because teams eventually realized that shifts didn't really work against them. By last season, some teams stopped shifting against righties almost entirely.
Prime anecdotal example: the great Mike Trout. According to Baseball Savant, Trout was shifted 61% of the time over the past three seasons despite being a righty hitter. His WOBA against shifts was .438, compared to .384 in non-shift situations. Now all he sees is non-shifts, and his numbers are, for him, a little down.
On the other hand, there is no question that lefty hitters have prospered anew from the ban, with a BABIP that has rocketed from .283 to .296. That 13-point increase is gargantuanormous, which isn't a word, but this is an instance when existing language just won't do.
The list of players whose numbers have been goosed by the shift ban is a long one, but the avatar for them all is Rangers MVP candidate Corey Seager.
When Seager first came up with the Dodgers, he was an immediate star because of his full array of skills that, at the plate, translated to standout percentages in all three slash categories. Through the 2017 season, those numbers were .305/.375/.502 over 1,413 plate appearances and, as Seager was still only 23, there was every reason to believe they'd only go up from there.
During the five seasons after that, Seager still produced star-level numbers, hitting .274/.344/.489, but obviously the numbers were down. His isolated power numbers actually went up (.197 to .215). His strikeout rate got considerably better (20% to 16.4%), and his walk rate (9.6% to 9.1%) mostly held steady. In other words, Seager's underlying metrics suggested he was a more consistent, mature version of his younger self, who was already awfully good.
Nevertheless, Seager's slash stats went down for one reason: His BABIP through 2017 was .357 and over the next five years, that figure plummeted to .290. Some of that was because he became slightly more pull-heavy and began to hit the ball in the air much more often. And why wouldn't he? Seager became one of the most heavily shifted hitters in the game. By last season, that number reached 92.8% of his plate appearances, per Baseball Savant.
While we can't say Seager's remarkable start to the 2023 campaign is entirely due to the shift ban, once again we might observe that it has not hurt. Seager's BABIP so far is .390 -- or 100 points higher than the level he established over the past half-decade. His increase of .148 points of BABIP over last season is by far the biggest in the majors among qualified hitters, per Baseball Savant. That has boosted his slash line to an MVP-esque .362/.420/.656.
That .390 figure probably isn't real, and we'll see what Seager's true talent level looks like in the revised reality as the seasons unfold. He's still pulling the ball and hitting it into the air more than he did as a young hitter, though this season he has gone to the opposite field more as well. It's an approach that has served him well and continues to.
Now, though, that approach is augmented by that lack of a shallow-right-field second baseman to rob him of well-struck non-fly balls. During the five seasons before this one, Seager had a .723 OPS on ground balls and line drives hit to his pull side. This season, that number has been .936.
Seager won't always produce like this, but to see him rewarded for doing what great hitters have always been rewarded for -- hitting the ball hard -- is as good an argument as any in favor of the shift ban.
New rule: Bigger bases, limits on pickoff attempts
Result: Stolen bases are back in a big way
Winners: The quick
Losers: Catchers
The dramatic downturn in game times (see below) has been the big-font headline in rule-change news, but there has to be at least some debate about putting the increase in steals front and center.
The average steals per game so far is 0.72, per baseball-reference.com. If that holds up, it would be the highest figure in this category in 25 years. Excitingly, as teams have started to acclimate to the new reality, the steal totals have been creeping up, going from 0.70 in April to 0.71 in May to 0.77 so far in June.
The instances of caught stealing are up as well as teams have become more aggressive at exploiting the restrictions on pitcher disengagements and the larger bases, but there remains room for steal totals to grow. In June, the success rate on steals has been 78.2%, and while that's down from the start of the season, it's still a figure that would shatter the all-time record of 75.7% set in 2021.
It's been fun to watch. Esteury Ruiz of Oakland is on pace to steal nearly 80 bases, and he doesn't even get on base that much. Ronald Acuna Jr. is having a great season in any context, but he's on pace to approach 70 steals, which will make a nice top-line item on his MVP résumé.
Last season, Jon Berti of the Marlins led the majors with 41 steals. No one has hit the 70-steal mark since Jacoby Ellsbury in 2009. No one has hit 80 since the king of theft kings, Rickey Henderson, did it in 1988, as did Vince Coleman. That's also the last season in which we had at least one 70-steal guy in each league.
Think about it: Every trend in baseball in recent years has been pushing stolen base totals down, even as success rates were reaching all-time highs. Teams simply weren't taking the risk unless the metrics all but assured the success of an attempt. That has abruptly changed and, again, these numbers are more likely than not to keep climbing.
Acuna is probably the avatar for this trend. He has always been one of baseball's most daring baserunning threats, but that has been relative to the era. He led the NL in steals in 2019 -- with 37, a number he might hit this season by the end of June. According to the Fangraphs' season pace estimates, 13 players are on pace to steal at least 37 bases in 2023.
Of course, as we mentioned, baseball is a zero-sum game and if someone is stealing a base, then someone is giving up a steal. That "someone" is some combination of a pitcher and a catcher and, either way, there are some frightening paces in the steals-allowed categories.
While many managers will say that pitchers bear more responsibility for allowing steals than catchers, it's usually the backstops who bear the brunt of the stat-based criticism, because pitcher totals are watered down by their relative infrequency of appearances. Noah Syndergaard of the Dodgers leads all pitchers with 20 steals allowed, a small number when held up against the catchers' steals-allowed leaderboard.
Last season, Miami's Jacob Stallings led all catchers with 61 stolen bases allowed. He threw out 19% of opposing base thieves. This season, Stallings has allowed 32 steals on 36 attempts (11% caught stealing rate) and is on pace to allow around 72 stolen bases.
And yet this season, Stallings doesn't rank among the top 10 catchers in steals allowed. In fact, he doesn't even lead his team. Stallings shares the position in Miami with Nick Fortes, who has allowed 34 steals and thrown out just 8% of opposing thieves. (This, obviously, does not speak well of the collective ability of Marlins pitchers to hold runners.)
Anyway, Fortes doesn't rank in the top 10 in steals allowed, either. Two catchers -- Washington's Keibert Ruiz (58) and Chicago's Yasmani Grandal (55) have already allowed more than 50 thefts, putting them on pace for well over 100 steals allowed. Ruiz is on pace to give up 134, which would be the most by a catcher since Mike Piazza allowed 155 in 1996. The 61 steals Stallings allowed last season is a number that suddenly seems quaint.
New rule: Pitch clock
Result: Clock violations are now a thing
Winners: Hitters
Losers: Pitchers
This is a soft victory. So soft that you almost can't hear it, as its effect is buried by other sources of statistical noise.
The pitch clock has been the game's most stark change from a visceral standpoint, and the data says that its enforcement has favored the hitters. Pitchers have been tagged with 451 auto-balls through games Sunday, per baseball-reference.com. Meanwhile, hitters have been flagged with 191 auto-strikes.
Still, those 642 total violations represent 0.3 instances per team, per game, or about one-fifth of 1% of all pitches thrown. It just hasn't been a big deal. There have been individual examples when a penalty might have hurt a player, hitter or pitcher, but the competitive impact has been minuscule.
An obvious example: On June 15, Phillies closer Craig Kimbrel was flagged for three violations in one inning in a game at Arizona, including two during a plate appearance by the Diamondbacks' Jake McCarthy. Kimbrel still recorded a perfect inning and got the 404th save of his career.
Kimbrel's eight pitch clock violations are the most of any player. All but one of those have occurred when Kimbrel already had two strikes on a hitter. The one exception was on Saturday, when Kimbrel was penalized against Oakland's Tony Kemp before the first pitch of a plate appearance. Kimbrel then threw a ball, making the count 2-0, and then a strike. Finally, Kemp singled to right on the 2-1 count.
Was it the auto-ball? We can't know, but it didn't help. Kimbrell has allowed just a .187 OPS during his long career when he has gotten to a 1-2 count on a hitter. When he has gone to 2-1, that number soars to .915. But if the penalty didn't matter, then there would be no reason to make the rule change.
Overall, there have been 37 walks issued because a violation occurred with three balls on a hitter, per TruMedia. Meanwhile, 34 strikeouts have resulted in two-strike violations on hitters.
So, yes, hitters have benefited more than pitchers from enforcement of clock-related guidelines. But it's more an annoyance than a reason for moundsmen to mutiny against the change. Also, not for nothing, the frequency of violations has decreased with each passing month.
New rule: Pitch clock (again)
Result: Games are faster
Winners: Most fans
Losers: Some fans
If you like shorter, snappier games, then it's working out great. To admit that you do like faster games doesn't make you less of a baseball fan. It only means that you were not that much into watching pitchers hold the ball on the mound, or seeing batters step outside the batter's box to adjust their pads and scratch themselves after every pitch.
The games are faster. There are no sample-size qualms in making that observation. Contests have taken an average of two hours, 37 minutes per nine innings, down 26 minutes from last season and 33 minutes from the record-high times of 2021. This quickening has held steady from spring training. As we hit the onset of summer, it's probably safe to say that this is what baseball looks like now, at least from a time standpoint.
We'll equivocate here and call it "most" fans because there are some traditionalists who just don't like clocks in a sport that has never had them, at least not this obtrusively. That's fair. Also, for fans who go to the ballpark only now and again, some games have zipped by so quickly you almost wonder if some of those folks felt they got their money's worth.
Still, those complaining about 26 minutes of dead time being cut out of the average ballgame are a tiny minority. Even many of those older, purist types have to admit that aside from the tick-ticking-ticking of the pitch clock, this is closer to the version of baseball most of us fell in love with than we've seen in a long time.
There are other hurdles to clear in the future, like making a real dent in the proliferation of strikeouts. For now though, we can see that the rules have mostly yielded more -- more hits, more steals and more time left after the game to talk it all over. That much, at least, feels like progress.