They nabbed five bases in a 10-9 victory. The Baltimore Orioles, aided by some subpar Red Sox pitching, went wild on Opening Day. But perhaps now there’s incentive to see exactly how much easier it is to steal under the new conditions. The league-wide rate of stolen bases in 2022 remained low despite the dip in homers - higher than 2021 but lower than in any season between 19. And there might be more men on base thanks to new limitations on the infield shift. There’s nothing to indicate that homers should rise substantially this year (though there weren’t exactly announcements about the homer-juicing changes during the surge, either). Who needs to risk an out to take second, the exaggerated but fair logic goes, if scoring is going to happen only on a home run anyway?įor everyone not named Aaron Judge, though, homers were down in 2022, with a surge likely fueled by changes in the baseball subsiding and the home run rate dropping to its lowest level since 2015. But it’s still unclear how much it will move the needle in the majors, where the forces of optimization have tamped down stolen base attempts. In minor-league testing and in spring training, it did. A shorter distance to go - thanks to the bigger bases - plus more limitations on pitchers’ ability to limit the running game should yield more attempts and more steals.
