MLB Opening Day
This year, you should expect incredible performances and pretty wild outcomes. Spring is here and baseball is back!
For those of you that enjoy baseball, here is your recap on the best day of the year. This year, Opening Day took place on March 30th. Each and every team kicked off its season and now there is no looking back. Baseball has been getting crazier by the day and it’s really starting to turn heads. For those of you who do not know, Major League Baseball made some very interesting rule changes that are supposed to affect the game of baseball tremendously.
What are these rules you might ask? Well, the commissioner and the rest of the league decided on three rule changes. The first change is the pitch timer. A pitch clock enforces 30 seconds in between batters, 15 seconds in between pitches with the bases empty and 20 seconds between pitches with runners on. The reason for this is to speed up the game. A lot of fans believe that the length of a Major League Baseball game is too long. According to the experts, this should cut the game time down anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. Marcus Stroman was officially the first-ever violator of the pitch clock in the MLB and 13 others joined him on Thursday.
The next rule change is the defensive shift limits. From now on it is mandatory to have 4 players on the infield with 2 on each side of the base. This is going to allow for more hits in baseball now. Eliminating the shift is going to be big for baseball considering the entertainment level.
Lastly, the MLB has made the size of the bases larger for a few reasons. The main reason for bigger bases is to prevent injuries while the underlying reason is to promote more stolen bases.
The changes made to baseball this year are extremely controversial and it is going to be interesting to see how they play out for the remainder of the season and the remainder of their existence.
Now back to baseball. Opening day was nothing short of fireworks. The intensity that the teams brought shows glimpses of a great year for baseball. Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles went 5 for 5 with a home run, a walk, and four RBIs in a 10-9 win over divisional rival Boston Red Sox. The reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge hit his first home run of the year, in his first at-bat which ended up being the first of the year across the league. The Yankees defeated the Giants in a 5-0 effort with the help of Anthony Volpe who made his debut in pinstripes. Volpe was one of the top prospects in the league for the last few years and should be a bright young star. On the National League side of things, reigning MVP Paul Goldschmidt went 2-4 to kick off his season in hopes to keep the ball rolling from last year. Pitching performances were a sight to see with Logan Webb setting an opening-day record with 11 strikeouts.
This year, you should expect incredible performances and pretty wild outcomes. Spring is here and baseball is back!
