MLB's New Rules Are Saving Baseball and People Hate It 

Maybe some day they could "save" baseball by addressing ridiculous blackout restrictions and tv deals that push people away from using extra effort or money needed to watch any baseball at all. Especially when going to games is expensive as hell.

Save baseball by making tickets affordable, and letting folks watch it on TV, end blackouts.

When I was a boy growing up in Boston in the 60s, the game was great. There was plenty of day baseball and day/night double headers. The season and World Series ended in early October, not November. Also, as a boy growing up, almost all the Red Sox games were televised on UHF, which could watch without paying for it. My parents were poor and could not afford to pay for me to watch baseball. I never went to a game, but I was able to watch the games on TV or hear it on the radio. Also, the World Series games were in the daytime. Young kids have a hard time watching baseball at night if they have to go to school or their parents can't afford cable. Baseball has gotten ridiculous with its overpriced tickets and cable viewing. When I was a boy, I and all my friends' first love was baseball. Now, it's a sport for the rich, privileged middle-aged men. If they want to save baseball, make the sport available for young boys. Also, when I was a boy, I played whifle ball, baseball, and softball with my friends on the streets or the park. My parents couldn't afford to let me play little league. I grew up following my beloved Red Sox and watched their games on TV or listened to them on the radio. I feel bad for kids growing in Yuppie Suburbia, where they can play sports on the streets. No wonder why kids have no interest in baseball. Greed is killing baseball. Make tickets affordable for families, and put baseball on regular tv.

I went to my first baseball game last week (yankees against blue jays at yankee stadium). It was just overall a great experience, even though it was a "boring" low scoring game. It seems to me (a complete novice) that the clock really made a difference and forced the game to flow at a nice pace. And it was not too quick, it still was a quite relaxing experience unlike every other sport I'm used to here in Europe.

Zack Greinke shaking off his own pitches is one of the best things I have heard in my whole life.

For a sport that doesn’t exist you do a great job covering it

I went to my first baseball game in my 28 year life on june 7th 2023, Mets vs Braves. And I must say as a new baseball fan the whole experience was very enjoyable. The amount of game that went on was perfect not once was I bored watching the game. Before this year I never would have imagined going to a baseball game because they seemed boring...

In middle school the school took a trip to a game and it was my first time seeing a baseball game (I didn't know anything about the baseball at all). There was so much down time between pitches and everything I didn't even know the game was going on for almost an hour, I thought they were warming up or something because almost nothing was happening.

Two things people hate; change and the way things are.

The ghost runner rule just feels like me and my buddies in our backyard making up rules because we only had 6 people wanting to play...

As a former baseball player, MLB players not being able to hit opposite field is just insane and lazy. To be playing at that high of level but not able to control where you hit it is ridiculous. I understand the MLBs reasoning for the rule, but if you suck at hitting one direction and they put a shift on you, maybe it’s time to learn how to hit the other way

advertising gambling sites is immoral

The problem with baseball is that I CANT WATCH IT. I downloaded the mlb app and paid the subscription and the app still tells me “you can’t watch postseason games” ITS OPENING DAY!!! I swear the MLB does not want me to watch it. I have to watch on the go (I’m currently in Japan) and the MLB won’t allow me to PAY to watch a damn game because apparently their app thinks it’s the postseason or it thinks I’m too far away from St. Louis. They make it too damn complicated to watch a damn game

MLB holding batboys/batgirls being held to a higher standard than their umpires is crazy...

Baseball fans when they cant watch their favorite pitcher sit there for 20 minutes before walking the batter: 😡😡😡😡😡😡😢😢😢😢

I think the pitch clock will irrelevant as pitchers get used to it. Pitchers used to pitch at the pitch clock pace without the clock. Any baseball fan who is over thirty probably watched Mark Buerle pitch at least once. The bigger based only favor the runner on tag plays. They favor the defense otherwise. The ball gets there faster than the runner.

Joey Gallo still getting shifted in shallow right by loopholes is hilarious to me

At this point watching baseball is like watching a group of statisticians discuss a complex board game. There’s a bunch of percentages for obscure actions, and a lot of meticulous rules.

Would love another analysis of this at the end of the season

I agree these rules are going to turn out to be amazing but the extra innings "ghost runner" rule is still god awful

Longest game from opening day was Cardinals/Blue Jays at 3 hours 38 minutes. Mostly attributed to 384 combined pitches thrown, 19 combined runs, 12 pitching changes.

Today I watched the O's vs Red Sox and honestly? The 3 hours flew by. Felt SOOO fast, despite it being so long from it being a 10-9 game

The time problem isn't the rules, it's the endless routines of the players. How many times do you have to "touch here touch there, shift your cap" etc.

Bro you should do an updated version showing the affects of these new rules this season

Max Scherzer on the mound could be diagnosed as psychotic. So him using the pitch clock as a weapon is on brand. Zack Greinke using PitchCom in Spring Training and not taking it all seriously is totally him as well. Zack calling his own pitches must have been wonderful for him.

I'll voice my opinions on the rule changes after I've seen what it does in the next few months. However, the one thing I can't stand is the extra inning ghost runner. That to me is atrocious. I do like how they dropped the defensive shifts though. Lefties AVG will skyrocket.

I won’t be surprised if they come up with a rule limiting outfield shifts, dividing the outfield into thirds based off the lines of 2nd base

Some are already speculating that the pitch clock might be connected to increased Tommy John surgeries, i.e. the pitch clock hurts pitchers, by having less downtime between each pitch. I don' think this is the case. But it's still to early to say, anyway. And if it turns out to be the case, perhaps new pitching styles will develop, or things like the opener will become more common.

I have never understood why pitchers never got more involved in pitch calling. Jimmy Key is the only pitcher I've ever seen that would give signs to the catcher. The catcher would give the initial sign and then Jimmy relay his sign back. If the catcher put down a "1" but he wanted to throw a "3" then he would "swipe" with his glove 2 times. It was very efficient and didn't require any technology at all.

Damn I don’t like the changes exactly but this is definitely going to be the most exciting year in baseball in a long time by sheer chaos alone. It’s like a huge balance patch in a videogame 😂

and yet the still DONT allow the one guy who calls balls and strikes to see the tech that indicates if its a ball or strike. Its BEYOND stupid.

it's almost september and to recap: NO ONE is talking about the pitch clock anymore. NO ONE EVER talked about the shift rule. Baseball is watchable to the casual fan again... but I still can't watch without a subscription service.

This is way better than the new rule explanations all the RSNs are airing.

I'm 63 an old school fan and I love ethe new rules. The players themselves caused this by taking forever to get in the box, to deliver a pitch, all the throwing over, stepping out, and so on.

I went to a Rockies game this past Sunday (Apr 30th) and it felt like baseball but even my wife who isn't a baseball fan commented that the game was flying by. It felt like baseball though.

The only change I’d make is adjust the pitch clock so it doesn’t determine the outcome of a tied 9th inning game with bases loaded and full count

Overall I'm interested to watch the impact of the rule changes over the course of the season. The only issue I have at the moment is MLB going after bat boys, that's just not cool.

There is word that the stadiums are losing revenue from the shorter game times. Less time equals less money being spent at the consession stands. From the discussions I'm hearing over my local sports talk air waves, there is a possibility that stadiums may end up opening the gates earlier which I like that idea. I never get to see my home team practice on the field and the gates always seem to open when the visiting team is practicing. So this would be a nice change if it happens. Spend more time at home away from home.

Ryan Braun stepping out of the box to redo all his uniform was bull. I'm so happy that baseball is going faster.

Im a baseball traditionalist. But I just don't understand how the game has gotten so long. Seems the changes are good from what I can tell so far

hot take, i would like them to move the fences back 5 or 10 feet, it would open up space increasing doubles and triples, while also decreasing homeruns thus forcing teams to steal bases, hit and run, bunt ect to score runs, instead of get on base and stand there hoping for a homerun

Someone give me a compelling reason why should shell out hundreds of dollars to have my family attend a shortened game!? Such a shame

Just make the game 5 innings... and 62 game regular season (with each team playing each other twice), with single elimination play offs and relegate bottom 4 teams to minor leagues. Keep the luxury tax so there isn't too large of a disparity between teams finance's.

I have several issues with this. The main one is changing the game you might as well throw the record books out.

Losing a WS game because of a pitching violation will cause a riot.

I think more people are realizing it’s a good rule

these rules have worked out great so far. I have watched more televised baseball this year than any other season already

I only have a problem rules allowing the officials (umps) to cause a run scored. They could easily decide a game for their own private purposes. It's like a football official awarding a field goal as a penalty.

Opening day was only a few days ago and from the games i've seen they are already 30+ minutes shorter, have more balls in play, and more runs. It's fucking awesome.

This is the perfect example of how you have to make a bunch of stupid rules to maintain an even stupider rule

Just add a rule where they time pitchers throughout the game, remove the clock, and at the end tally the total time pitched (TTP lol) and the team with the lower TTP gets 3 bonus points lol. That'll speed things up 😄

"games are too long" said no one who actually enjoys the game. This is a TV network thing, so they can schedule other programs but mostly so they can plan the right amount of commercials to add to a game.

The rule to force batters to stay in the box is a good rule. The problem is not that they are a foot or two outside, but because some tend to wonder around in circles. Nobody wants to wait for them to get themselves together.

I like the idea of the pitch clock but a tie (or close) game in the later innings not being rushed and allowing tension to build is one of the best things in sports. I don’t want to see a bottom of the 9th in the playoffs get rushed. I wouldn’t mind maybe seeing the pitch clock not being used if the tying run is on deck in the 8th & 9th innings. Just an idea

I never watched much baseball. It's a great game though, just only at times, and I do feel they are too long. I'm used to NHL haha. But from my perspective, these rule changes all would make the game more appealing to someone like me, which I believe is their goal, to draw in new viewers to fight against the common perspective that baseball is long and boring.

All of this just to add more commercials.

It's kind of amazing to me the answer to the shift isn't just getting better at batting, idk. Obviously harder than it seems, just goes to show insane these pitchers are too.

Baseball is so under rated. Its 1000x better than football. Nothing beats the walk off home run!

i love baseball, and have always loved watching games no matter the time but getting people to agree to watch it with you or let you finish a game has always been a hassle and i understand the other side 100% the game is long and monotonous and the season is even longer to people who are casual or dont care about baseball… these 2 and half hour games are great… more buddies have been willing to sit down and watch the game… the shift rule opened up offense… and the game has honestly flowed so much better with less just “readjusting” or “settling” the players used to take their time doing. I don’t think the game needs to be any quicker than this and it just keeps up action for more of the viewing time. Its honestly felt like a win-win for fans hardcore and casual

The new rules are great. I don’t have to change the channel between pitches anymore, I love it.

I've watched a few games already this year after not having watched regular season in probably ten years. So refreshing the amount of contact and action happening in the games. I don't understand the baseball purists who just want to see guys stand around all day long. You still get long games in this system, just only when there's a lot of offense prolonging innings -- not pitchers just taking forever to deliver the pitch.

Double headers and night games def benefited from it. Having a 7 game ending before 10:15 with no extra innings is great for people to have to communute

It definitely shouldn’t be deciding the end of a game. I understand speeding up the game but there should be limits to that b/s at the height of the game.

I hope those steal stats hold true. I am a fan of the stolen base and am excited to see it increase!

Really feels like American sports are all about "highlights" rather than the actual sport, probably why Football (soccer) isn't as popular over there. These changes might well result in more hits and web gems but, they also subtract from any duels between batters and pitchers, and web gems are good because they're not as common, if you saw 3 a game they wouldn't be called "web-gems" it would just be fielding. I dunno about the changes, seems overkill to me, I really like baseball, but American sports culture as a whole kinda makes me sick to my stomach

Oh no, not my traditional baseball! Up next, robo umps

I followed baseball semi-seriously 8 or so years ago but for some reason I stopped watching sports altogether for a couple of years. One of my coworkers who’s a baseball nut started telling me earlier this year about all the new rules that I missed, then he told me about Ohtani and I figured I should see for myself what’s up with all that. We caught a game during our shift and I fell in love with the sport again. It just felt like great timing to get back into the sport. I don’t care what oldhead purists say, the pitch clock and extra innings rule are one of the most seamless, simple yet dynamic rules changes they could’ve brought to modernize the game. This year I’ve watched more hours of baseball than any other form of content aside from youtube. All of that is in great part thanks to the new dynamic rules that were added.

Watches baseball all day yesterday. It was amazing. More stolen bases more hits. More runs. Action every AB. I could mess with a post 7th inning clock increase in close games. Like within 3 runs

Im usually a hockey football basketball guy and It has perked my interest to watch games. Going to spring training games and dbacks games growing up, my biggest gripe was always how slow the game moved.

Think the biggest problem (for televised MLB at least) is using modern tech to analyze every pitch in real time, and then using it for nothing but showing if the umpire's call was right or wrong. "It wasn't in the strike zone, but the ump thought it was so it's a strike" Either incorporate into the calls themselves or just stop using it entirely, it's silly as hell

Dude I haven't even liked baseball since the 2nd grade and yet I'm still invested in this channel.

More hits, more stolen bases, more runs scored..... This will impact pitchers records quite a bit. I'm definitely not a fan of these new rules

Oh yeah so much fun to watch commercials so quickly every inning! Thank you so much!

I remember when Showalter first took over the Orioles, the shift was not only incredibly useful but it was fascinating to watch because it was so unique. I remember thinking how funny it was seeing the second baseman in right field. Then it became common practice. Then the shifts got even more pronounced. Then, before the end of the decade not even 8 years out it made the game entirely unwatchable (sure some might disagree but for me and most people I know they’d agree)

Only complaint I heard today from visitors to Oracle Stadium was that they went to get a beer and missed a bunch of action because it moves so quick.

The first year is always tough when changing things - especially this drastic. I'm in favor of the rule changes though admit they need a little tweaking (as anything does in it's first year)

I'm not a big fan of the shift rule still, but thank god for the pitch clock. It's been long overdue. I'm also a big fan of stealing getting to be emphasized again, it was sad seeing it start to fade away outside of teams using specialist money on it. Not a fan of the ghost runner in extras though.

i quit watching baseball about 5 years ago - couldn't take the unlimited batters calling time, pickoffs, pitcher changes, mound visits, shake offs - it was torture. Decided I'd watch this year and before first pitch ump calls strike on batter. pitch count 0, strikes 1. batter swings/misses next 2 pitches. pitch count 2, 3 strikes - batter out. first 2 pitch strike out I ever saw. I now watch baseball. Rockies need taller purple stitches on their baseballs to level out their thin air to get inline with all other MLB parks stat lines.

Wouldn’t all these things that increase offense in turn make the games longer again.

I've enjoyed the changes so far. I think a faster game with more regular action is good. I think these changes will mature well when the summer gets here.

That one sentence pretty much sums up this year's MLB rule changes; "It's working and I hate it"

How could the commissioner of baseball have a comment in a 1909 article about game length when the first commissioner wasn’t appointed until 1920.

This is the first year that I have felt inclined to watch baseball in years. Everyone is getting up in arms right now but like no shit there will be loopholes and a lot of violations at the start of the season as people get used to the rules. People really need to give it some time because I think this will make baseball so much better.

I have a few issues with the new rules but generally I think all that needs to be solved is tweaking, such making sure that pitchers don't get too exhausted too quickly with the clock; 15 seconds is a decent amount of time but MLB should probably change it if issues that to occur with it.

These folks are payed millions of dollars and they can't even pay attention while walking up to the plate? Imagine an NFL defense that waited until the play clock was at 8 to line up.

i personally love long games.. the longer im in a stadium the better

I think I've only watched 1 full baseball game in my life but these videos are truly fascinating. I wish you would cover hockey too.

The only new rule I wanted was Robo-ump, and didn't get it.

If you're gonna pay $500 to step out of the box to reset your swing/stance, you're gonna take as much time as you need. They should just remove the fine and restriction and have a system where refs/umpires are able to make flexible decisions based on the flow of the game in a more nuanced sense. Like when there's a long stoppage in a soccer game for injury or a streaker or technical malfunction, they add time to the end of the game to make up for it. Or when referees allow teams to play on after one of their players are fouled if they're pushing an advantage and book the offending player after a stoppage of play. It's up to the discretion of the officials to monitor and officiate the game based on it's flow and the actual events of the game, a pitch clock could easily remove all of it's fuckery if it was more open to flexible rulings on a play to play basis

MLB needs to adopt the old little leage rule that if the batter has both feet in the box and doesn't call time you can pitch whenever you want.

I hate the new rules, they are making baseball not fun, and I hate that they make games faster, I love long games

What a quality video. Your speed and succinctness while sharing a ton of relevant information earns you a sub. I’m a judgemental POS and I’m impressed with you. Thanks.

No, the game got way shorter, which what happened is all stadiums just increased their prices. Further pricing out us poorer folk and will never go to games. Frankly the guys just need to play and stop trying to squeeze everything for what it is. Just play. Batters don't need to get up there, adjust gloves each time, adjust bat, feel themselves, fix pants, so on. Same goes for pitchers. Just hit and throw

I just disagree about the pick off limitation, the runner need to feel always on check

I’m playin division 1 baseball rn and this video breaks it down perfectly. In the end there will be more action in less time which is the ultimate goal and I support that. The pitch clock doesn’t bother me at all because I like to work quickly while I’m hitting so the pitchers speeding up kinda helps me.

I was at the marlins home opener and I saw how Sandy Alcantara and Max Scherzer was unsettled by the clock. Too many walks given

This is just so weird. I want to get back into watching sports but seeing how the MLB is trying to speed the game up artificially through the use of digitality is just so stupid. Another issue I have that is very controversial is that players should be paid less and the teams with the most money shouldnt be able to dominate the sport since it makes the game more about access to capital then skill.

the thing I don't like is the shifts banning but I guess I'm not like most of the fans out there, I do like defensive games and I do like the possibility to use strategies that need the use of stats and lot of observation, it was pure mental skills like counting cards in black jack

I hate banning the shift. It's the player's job to adjust how teams defend him not the other way around!

Love the explanation with everything going on with the new rules. 👍