The Winners And Losers From MLB’s New Rules

“So we wondered, which teams might do better or worse than their projections thanks to the new rules? That’s why we created MANFRED, or the Metric for Assessing Negative or Favorable Rule-Effect Dynamics. MANFRED takes every team’s 2022 ranking in categories that will be pertinent to the new rules — pitch tempo (which obviously matters for the pitch clock), defensive-shift frequency (since the shift is now outlawed) and sprint speed (since larger bases and restrictions on pickoff throws encourage more base stealing) — and combines them into a weighted composite1 that ranks teams from those most likely to benefit under the new rules to those most likely to suffer.”