Major League Baseball gets stereotyped as a slow, hidebound organization bound up in its own tradition and high on its own bow tie colunmist-addled romance, but the signature element of Rob Manfred’s tenure as commissioner has been rapid change in rules, strategy, and the general aesthetics of the game. Within the last decade or so, MLB has imposed new limits on a game whose signature feature is a lack of a clock and the basic idea that the game lasts for 27 outs. Now, teams have restrictions on when they can bring in relief pitchers, which has not done anything to stem the game from shifting to an endless parade of relief pitchers, and it has put a finite cap on mound visits, which has only existed to confuse people who are wondering what MVR means on a scoreboard.
An Aesthetic Review of Baseball in 2022
