BABS and 2023’s New MLB Rules

So, Major League Baseball is shaking things up for us fantasy leaguers. This season will see a bevy of new rules, nearly all intended to goose run-scoring — a pitch clock, bans on extreme defensive shifting, larger bases and a balanced schedule. It remains to be seen whether they will have their intended effect, but if nothing else, it increases the level of statistical uncertainty for our players.

Thankfully, BABS is all about embracing imprecision, so “uncertainty” is right in her wheelhouse. Still, we should take a closer look at the potential impact of these changes and how BABS will be responding to them, if at all. Note that I go into a full discussion of the impact of each change in this year’s Baseball Forecaster. I’ll be summarizing here.

Balanced Schedule: Teams will now face intra-divisional opponents 24 fewer times than in the past. This is good news for players in strong divisions, bad news for players in weak divisions. Aaron Judge will face more Central Division teams; the Tigers and Pirates should just throw in the towel now.

I’m kidding. Truth is, we’re looking at about a 15% shift of intra-division games to opponents outside each team’s division. It’s not nothing, so there will be some erosion and inflation of numbers, but I suspect it will mostly be swallowed up in normal statistical variability.  I did note that Nick Pivetta had an ERA of 7.57 against the Yankees, Rays and Blue Jays, and 2.95 against everyone else, but that was an outlier.

How BABS will be handling this: She’ll be lamenting the loss of games between some natural rivals, but other than that — nothing.

Pitch Clock: Pitchers will now be allowed only 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty, and an additional five seconds with runners on. Last year, pitchers averaged 18.2 and 23.6 seconds, respectively, so there will be a little bit of chopping necessary. When tested on the minor leagues, most pitchers were able to adjust to this pretty quickly. Those promoted over the last few seasons were already locked in.

I’m less concerned with starting pitchers than with max-effort relievers. Flamethrowers like Devin Williams and Kenley Jansen are at the far end of the bell curve, often taking over half a minute to recover after each pitch. Those are the guys I’m a little worried about because: a) if they continue to throw at max effort, less recovery time could lead to injuries, or b) if they throw at lesser effort they could be less effective. Of course, there is also a c) nothing bad happens.

How BABS will be handling this: BABS will be adding a (Rg-) indicator to a group of relief flamethrowers who have a history of long breaks between pitches (according to USA Today): Jonathan Loaisiga, Hunter Strickland, Josh Staumont, Emmanuel Clase, Alex Colome, Devin Williams, Kyle Finnegan, Kenley Jansen, Aroldis Chapman and Giovanny Gallegos. We don’t know for sure that the pitch clock will affect them, but the $0.50 ding to your risk budget should be enough of a warning that it might. (If they already have a regression liability, BABS won’t add anything.)

This is part of the beauty of BABS. We can put up a warning flag without making arbitrary adjustments to a player’s projections.

Bigger Bases: Bases have been expanded from 15 inches to 18 inches, which effectively cuts the distance from home to 1b or 3B by 2 inches and between the other bases by 4.5 inches. This, in tandem with another rule that restricts pitchers to two free 1B pickoff throws (on the third throw, the runner must be nailed or is awarded second base via “balk”), effectively opens the floodgates for baserunners. When tested in the minor leagues, stolen bases soared.

There are several paths that might feed into a increase in steals:

  • With 1B closer to home plate, more fast runners may reach safely.
  • Baserunners with marginal SB success rates might get more of a green light.
  • Already fast runners might boost their success rate.

How BABS will be handling this: This is a difficult one since stolen bases are driven not only by skill but also by circumstance and managerial philosophy. BABS tested lowering the thresholds for each speed grade, but the results yielded adjustments to only two players in the ADP top 100, eight in the top 500, but 30 players between ADP 500 and 1000. The ranges for each of (s), (SB) and (S+) are already so broad that they likely encompass much of whatever increase we’ll see in SBs. Regardless, BABS has decided to leave this adjustment in and offers one word of advice: Pay up for those (S+) speedsters. You likely won’t need to roster as many SBs to contend, but the speediest among them could swipe 50+ bags this year.

Banning the Shift: All four infielders will now be required to stay on the infield dirt with two on either side of second base. This will effectively open a hole in the defense that could be exploited by high-contact ground ball/line drive pull hitters. It’s a very specific group. It might also negatively affect high-contact ground ball pitchers.

How BABS will be handling this: BABS identified the hitters who were shifted against the most in 2022. Similar to how we handled the pitch clock, BABS will add a positive regression tag (Rg+) to those who are high-contact ground ball/line drive hitters. The ones most likely to be affected are Yordan Alvarez, Max Kepler, Josh Naylor, Keibert Ruiz, Adley Rutschman, Carlos Santana, Corey Seager, Kyle Tucker and Jesse Winker. There are several other names that have been bandied about, but these are the ones BABS believes are deserving of the (Rg+) tag.

The pitcher impact is fuzzier and BABS will allow the currently broad ratings to capture any changes in the potential outputs.

All of these changes… could create chaos. We just don’t know. But there is a high likelihood that most performance shifts will fall within the broad ranges already defined by BABS. Also, BABS already values the three major asset classes in this hierarchy, which continue to work well for our purposes:

  1. Batting effectiveness (a,AV,A+)
  2. Speed (s,SB,S+)
  3. Power (p,PW,P+)

For pitchers, pitching effectiveness (e,ER,E+) is valued higher than strikeouts (k,KK,K+).

For most traditional forecasters, 2023 will be a challenging year. For BABS, it’s just another day at the office.