We're gonna need a bigger base, and other 2022 rule changes
Rule changes! Everybody's favorite thing returns for the upcoming baseball season with new and improved innovations, guaranteed to liven up the game for you and yours. Coming to the High-A Central as soon as Opening Day, April 8: - Pitch Clock: An on-field clock that should "create a crisp pace
Rule changes! Everybody's favorite thing returns for the upcoming baseball season with new and improved innovations, guaranteed to liven up the game for you and yours.
Coming to the High-A Central as soon as Opening Day, April 8:
- Pitch Clock: An on-field clock that should "create a crisp pace of play, with batters required to be ready to hit and pitchers required to deliver the pitch within allotted periods of time. With runners on base, pitchers will have additional allotted time for each pitch but will risk automatic baserunner advancement if a third pick-off attempt or step-off within the same plate appearance is made without recording an out."
- Larger Bases: The size of each base previously was 15 inches x 15 inches, but it will be increased to 18 x 18 this season. "Bigger bases were used in 2021 at the Triple- A level and in the Arizona Fall League, and were associated with a decrease in the severity of base-related injuries. In addition, the reduction in distance between bases led to a modest increase in the rate of successful stolen base attempts."
- Defensive Positioning: No more infield shifting. At least four players must be in the infield at all times, with two players to each side of second base, "intended to allow infielders to better showcase their athleticism, to increase batting average on balls in play, and to restore a more traditional set of aesthetics and outcomes on batted balls."
How will this affect your Lugnuts game experience? The lack of shifting will likely pass unnoticed; what's there to see about something that isn't there? (In fact, even when shifting was at its height, there were still a great many teams that refused to shift in previous Midwest League and High-A Central seasons. This just removes a defensive tool from the arsenal for the more analytically inclined organizations.) You might notice the larger bases at first, but then quickly grow used to them.
The pitch clock, however, should produce a clear effect. Last year, the average Lugnuts game took three hours and 15 minutes to play. The average game time for the Stockton Ports, playing in the Low-A West with a pitch clock, was two hours and 43 minutes. The Lugnuts' average game featured fewer base runners (24 combined per game) and runs (9.5 per game) than the Ports (27 base runners combined, 11.5 runs combined), and yet Stockton played its games over half an hour faster than Lansing.
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The automated ball/strike system (ABS) has not yet come to Lansing, Michigan, but keep an eye out in the future. The ABS will be used at every ballpark in the Triple-A West starting on May 17. In the Low-A Southeast, they'll experiment with a Challenge system: "umpires call balls and strikes, and the pitcher, catcher, and batter have an ability to appeal the umpire’s call to the ABS system. In Challenge Games, each team will receive three appeals. Successful appeals will be retained." Either the ABS or Challenge system could well arrive in Lansing in 2023.
The Lansing Lugnuts open up April 6 vs. Michigan State in the 2022 Crosstown Showdown presented by Delta Dental before raising the curtain on the High-A Central season at home vs. Lake County on April 8. Click here to purchase single game tickets.
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