As we near the halfway point of the 2023 MLB season, our first with a host of rule changes that dominated baseball news through spring training and over the opening weeks of the regular season, it's time to ask: Who is benefitting most -- and least -- from these new rules?
As with most changes in a zero-sum enterprise like baseball, it has worked out better for some than others. The effects, where they exist, can be subsumed by the innumerable factors that determine the outcome of a game, play or season. Players age, they get hurt, and good, old fashioned luck plays havoc with short-term results. Even with a half-season of numbers now available for us to pour through, in some instances it's difficult to assign credit or blame for variances in individual performance to the new rules and we don't always know if a league-level change is a product of them.
Still, three months into baseball's new reality, we can take a snapshot of some of the apparent winners and losers in the sport's evolution. Let's run through some of the most notable outcomes from the opening months, ones that at least dovetail with the changes to the rulebook.