FanPost Friday: How are we feeling about those new MLB rules?

Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday. The Mariners lost a few games last week and are 0.5 games behind Houston for first place, but the good news is that the Rangers are three games back and are seemingly fading fast. In other great news, the Angels did several more unfathomably bad and stupid things as baseball team in the week following my merciless hit piece. You just can’t make these things up.

Remember the whole waiver wire dump thing to get under the luxury tax threshold?

Oh no, what to do! Ah, here we go.

This is when calling a team “a literal poverty franchise” stops being an exaggeration. My goodness.

I wonder what the vibes are like in the Angels dugout these days?

Me: “Siri, show me an example of ‘ennui.’”

Siri: “here is schadenfreude-tinged ennui, you sick fuck.”

Then there was........this......

When Shohei’s grandkids ask him in 50 years, “Wow, grandpa, what happened with the 2023 Angels anyways?” Shohei can say, “Don’t know. Wasn’t there.”

Massive shoutout to Sam Blum for covering the car crash in real time. You’re doing incredible work, comrade. We salute you.

Okay enough about the Angels, I did not intend for that to be so long but wow they just can’t help themselves. Anyways, we’re gonna talk about those MLB rules changes that many of us gnashed our teeth about at the beginning of the season. I am on record as being pretty firmly against the pitch clock, at least its current state. I love that it’s good for literally everyone who plays and works the games, but I still do not love how it shortens my time at a ballgame when I do actually get to attend. I will admit it has bothered less as the season has gone on, but I do still think it was an absolute crazy move by MLB to roll out several massive rules changes all at once instead of doing one per season to see how it affected the game, but the MLB owners are famously not scientists.

Forbes says MLB is self-reporting that the rules change are having a bonzers effect on TV and streaming numbers, but we’ll just have to take their word for it since there isn’t really a way to objectively confirm that. It also says the Mariners are up 25% in year over year viewership on their RSN (ROOT Sports, which they own). Let’s just keep that lil’ factoid in our pocket for the offseason, right?

Because Manfred and the owners wanted to speed-run baseball for the viewership numbers, they also threw in the “pitchers can only do two disengagements or pick-off attempts” rule along with the pitch clock, so every moderately fast player is prime Rickey Henderson on the base paths now. Personally, I’m pretty okay with this because stealing bases is exciting and creates potential for chaos in the game, but I mean it will change how we value stolen bases as a stat.

So how are we feeling about the state of the MLB rule changes as we approach the end of the season? Let’s hit those polls!

Feel free to elaborate on your thoughts on the rule changes in the comments!

Have a great weekend and go Mariners!