This is my last post before the start of the 2023 MLB regular season, which will officially be next Thursday, so I figured I’d take some time to talk about what excites me the most about the upcoming campaign. I don’t intend on this post to be pulpy with “bold predictions” or “playoff predictions”. There’s plenty to be excited about this upcoming season beyond what’s actually happening on the field or in the standings. So, let’s talk about it.
Jeff Passan said on a recent podcast episode of Green Light with Chris Long (yes, the former defensive stalwart of the Chicago Bears talked baseball with ESPN’s senior reporter) about how this is the first time in a long time where there isn’t a clear “best team in baseball”, and I’d have to agree with him. The Dodgers and Astros don’t look as strong as they did last year, the Padres and Yankees only got better, the Mets are the Mets, and it seems like the league as a whole is evening out just a little bit. What makes this even better is that this natural parity goes hand-in-hand with the new schedule rules, which mandates that every team will play every team. The fact that the march to the World Series seems more open than ever is quite enticing, even though you could call me a spoiled Yankees fan who’s always in the running.
Besides the new schedules, the biggest changes heading into 2023 will obviously be the rule changes, namely the pitch clock, which has already shaved off almost 30 minutes per Spring Training game this March. The pitch clock, mixed with the momentum that baseball is gaining after a successful World Baseball Classic in terms of viewership, is sure to bring new fans to a league that has been foaming with new stars for half a decade, not to mention already existing stars like the unicorn himself, Shohei Ohtani, who was the talk of the town after striking out Angels teammate Mike Trout to win the 2023 WBC for Samurai Japan. I hate the “face of baseball” talk because it’s just fanfare at the end of the day, but maybe Major League Baseball needs Ohtani to represent whatever this new age of baseball will actually look like. After all, he gained around two million Instagram followers over the span of the tournament.
And then there’s the prospect of what the fans will be seeing once they get into the fandom of modern baseball, a statistical oasis of strategy that isn’t seen in other sports. It seems that new stats are invented every year to help quantify America’s pastime, and I can’t wait to see where the revolution takes us next. Not that I have the software capability to make the following happen, but judging hitters’ quality of contact as compared to similar pitches in speed and type in the same zone is something that’s always piqued my interest. In other words, let’s say a 96pmh fastball down the middle has an average exit velocity of 105mph when contact is made. Now, let’s say that in a specific instance, a hitter doesn’t square up that exact pitch and hits it at 85mph. Then, you extrapolate those instances over an entire season, and you have a whole new way of looking at how hitters swing and how pitchers pitch. Listen, I love numbers, but I’m no stats darling. Only the SABR gods know what the guys at SABR are cooking up with regards to new stats.
All in all, baseball is bound to change a lot this year, more so than in any recent year I can remember, which can only mean good things for the future of our favorite sport. Play ball!
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