There’s been a lot of discussion about the “new” slide rule and how it’s somehow unfair. This morning Jeff wrote about the Nick Markakis slide and how poor Jose Bautista feels he was sliding within the context of the rule. Readers here will know how I feel about it but in the interest of clarity let’s look at the facts. In this case the facts are that there isn’t all that much new about the rule, it’s more about enforcement.
The New Rules
Every year MLB makes changes to the official rules, this year 20 changes were made many of them purely renumbering and format changes but a few have actual effect on the way the game is played and only one was actually new.