SLATE NOTES We made it through all the off-season rule changes, the hot stove season and of course the World Baseball Classic. Now it is time to rip this bandaid off and see what the MLB season has in store for us. Here are my quick thoughts on the rules changes and their impact Pitch Clock: I love the concept of guys stepping into the box and on the mound and going. It’s like the golfer who gets up to their shot and takes 5 practice swings, re adjusts, looks at the hole, back at the ball and over and over and then just duffs one 30 yards forward while you wait to hit your 283 yard drive. Lets go, chop chop. But I hate the concept of enforcing rules such as called balls and strikes in key situations and I don’t think it was that necessary as much as the players just needed to really self police themselves better. My guess is that it will impact some hitters and some pitchers, everyone differently and in the end the pitchers will be the ones who adjust faster than the hitters. Hitters are more likely to choke up and try to just put the ball in play deeper in counts and thus we might see a reduction in homers and an increase in base hits. I believe the limit on throw overs to first base is going to burn relievers. They’re the ones who take the longest with pitch times generally and have the fewest depth of pitches for the base runner to guess what they are throwing. This, combined with teams being more aggressive late with the lead is going to result in most of the steals boosts coming off bullpens. And yes, there will be a steals boost. Mostly for the guys who were already running and run fast. They’ll just go more often now, but you still gotta get on base to steal. The shift is going to be a minimal impact. Why? The only thing the shift was preventing were singles. So maybe some more hits and RBI ops go up for lefties. Maybe some more steals too for those guys, but generally these were home run hitters that were being punished and those numbers won’t change. It’s a minimal impact. For DFS today we have site synchronicity! Amazing that both sites chose to include the 1PM games,…...
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