By Jason Alwang
Spring is upon us, which can only mean one thing: Baseball is back. Like every season, there always seem to be many storylines when spring training starts in late February; this year is no exception. With the updated rule changes, along with compelling storylines, the 2024 MLB season should be an exciting one.
Last season, MLB implemented new rules that changed the complexity of the game for years to come by banning the shift, imposing a pitch clock, and making the bases larger. Despite all those changes, the league has made even more slight changes to this year’s rules/formats. Fans won’t have to wait for exciting baseball moments since the game will be faster than it ever has been before with their updated rule changes.
Last season, we saw a drastic change in the game’s speed. In the 2022 season, according to Statista, games clocked in at an average of just over three hours in length, but after the rule changes, games in the 2023 season ran only two hours and forty-two minutes on average. That will go down even more for the upcoming 2024 season because the time that pitchers will have to throw their next pitch when runners are on base will have eighteen seconds to get their pitch off versus the twenty they had during the 2023 season.
This plan intends to work more toward what Major League Baseball has been trying to accomplish in the last couple of seasons. They want to speed up the game to make it more watchable. MLB doesn’t have the luxury of fewer games versus the other leagues. Reducing the time the pitchers have to pitch is a way to make every pitch feel more important. Due to this change, it will be important to track how the overall earned run average (ERA) for pitchers sways in either direction.
One of the other new things this season is a team, and that’s the Los Angeles Dodgers. The biggest storyline heading into this season, outside of where Shohei Ohtani would sign, was where Yoshinobu Yamamoto would sign. Being one of the most generationally talked about names from Japan when it comes to baseball, he signed a massive contract with the Dodgers to join his Japanese buddy Ohtani on the team. The Dodgers are set to have arguably the most dominant starting pitching rotation we’ve seen from any baseball team in years. Ohtani will not pitch this season, but he will be the team’s primary designated hitter and provide power for the Dodgers lineup. I asked students at Western New England University what they thought about the Dodgers’ position in this upcoming season. “If each player individually performs to their level and how they’re supposed to play, then the Dodgers should run away with it with the team that they have,” said psychology major Owen Cotton when talking about how team play will come naturally for this team if they play to their abilities. Everyone will have their eyes on the notable additions to the Dodgers and see if they can go all the way.
There are many other notable storylines and rule changes that are sure to make this 2024 season a wild one. Let’s play ball!
