8 New Year's resolutions for baseball this year

This is the year! The year you’re going to start that hobby, lose that weight, find that love, get that job or otherwise elevate your existence.

The January changing of the calendar (unless you’re the type to actually use the first four months of those 16-month calendars they sell at mall kiosks) is as good a time as any to assess, adapt and improve.

And it’s the same way for our favorite sport.

What follows are a few modest (?) 2024 resolutions proposed for the grand ol’ game and those who participate in it.

To baserunners: Summon your inner Acuña
Obviously, Ronald Acuña Jr., with 41 homers and 73 steals in 2023, is in a class all his own in terms of the power-speed profile. But he showed us what can happen in the new rules environment when a runner is especially adventurous on the basepaths.

Acuña attempted 87 steals -- the most since Jose Reyes (99) in 2007. It was the equivalent of one steal attempt for every three times he reached base via a single, double, walk or hit by pitch. This is completely ridiculous. But, just for fun, if the entire league applied that strategy, we would have more than 17,000 steal attempts ... only about 12,000 more than the all-time record set in 1987!

OK, so ... that’s not happening. But a resolution for a little more derring-do after years of sabermetrically inclined cautiousness would be appreciated. Base stealers had an all-time best 80.2% success rate this past season on the highest number of attempts (4,369) since 2012. There’s really no reason we can’t get to a number closer to 5,000 attempts, which would be in line with what we saw in the 1990s.

To ascending teams: Don’t take your window for granted
I’m looking most specifically at you, Orioles and Reds. I get it, you don’t want to sacrifice too much of tomorrow for today. But the tepidness you showed at the Trade Deadline arguably came back to bite you down the stretch in 2023.

A truly fun O’s team did not do enough to upgrade a pitching staff that, unfortunately, looked a heck of a lot different once Félix Bautista went down in August, leading to a quick exit in October. And the surprising Reds didn’t do anything to improve a starting staff that had one of the highest ERAs in MLB -- a big reason why they fell short of October.

A ”window,” as we so often refer to it, is a delicate thing in this game. You can build an elite core but still only get one or two big bites at the apple. I’m thinking here about the Cubs’ supposed dynasty that bubbled to the surface in 2015 and only reached (and won) the World Series once. Or in smaller-market terms, a Royals team that sandwiched consecutive World Series appearances inside of multiple third-place finishes in the AL Central.

Seizing your moment when it comes is the point. The D-backs were on the fringes of the NL Wild Card race in 2023 and sent a message to their clubhouse by adding a terrific closer in Paul Sewald and power in Tommy Pham. They reached the World Series and have parlayed that into an aggressive offseason. The O’s and Reds possess two of the Top 5 farm systems in the game, per MLB Pipeline’s rankings, so they should resolve to leave no stone unturned if they’re back in the thick of things this summer.

To managers: Loosen the leash on your starters
From the Department of Wishful Thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if teams put a little more faith in their starting pitchers? Yes, yes, I am aware of the "Third Time Through the Order" penalty. It’s real. I get it.

But we’ve also reached this bizarre point in the evolution of the game in which starters are resting more to pitch ... less. Last season, starters made 1,988 starts on five days’ rest, shattering the record set in 2018 (1,813). Yet, the number of innings thrown by starters (24,984) was the second-lowest in a full season in the 30-team era.

It’s especially stark with young starters. Only 27 pitchers aged 25 or younger reached the 100-inning threshold in 2023. That was one fewer than in 1994 (a season that ended on Aug. 11 because of the strike) and the same number as 1954 and 1959 (when there were only 16 teams). If protecting young arms is the goal, then the strategy is a failure, as evidenced by the perpetually problematic pitching-injury rate.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has publicly floated the idea of further limiting the sizes of pitching staffs (thereby reducing bullpen sizes). So it would behoove the industry to resolve to develop starters that go deeper into games. Let’s start now!

To several MLB teams: Let’s see the fruits of the 2023 Draft
Because the pandemic had prompted some prominent high school prospects to go to college instead of the pros, the top end of the 2023 Draft was one of the most talented in recent memory. As the game skews younger and developmental timelines are accelerated, it’s not outrageous to suggest we get meaningful innings and at-bats in 2024 from guys plucked out of college just a year prior. Heck, the Angels already promoted No. 11 overall pick Nolan Schanuel in August!

So to the acquiring clubs, let’s resolve not to let Paul Skenes (Pirates), Dylan Crews (Nationals), Wyatt Langford (Rangers) or any other potential future stars reside in the pipeline if it’s not absolutely developmentally necessary.

To whatever baseball gods are in charge of injuries: Leave Mike Trout alone
Just 237 games played from 2021-23. That ain’t gonna cut it. Trout is already a Hall of Famer in waiting, but the shortened 2020 season and a litany of injuries are going to have a big impact on his round numbers. He once had a possible path to 700 homers. Now, we just want to see this linebacker in baseball clothes post up numbers to make 500 a foregone conclusion again.

Trout has adjusted his playing style and made a concerted effort to protect his body on the field, to no avail. He’s lost teammate Shohei Ohtani to the Dodgers. Let’s resolve to let the man play in 2024.

(Oh, and I’d also like to put in a good word for Kris Bryant and, um, every single pitcher on the planet. Thanks.)

To critics: Stop blaming the pitch clock for injuries and the playoff format for upsets
As noted above, pitching injuries are a part of the game. A big part, unfortunately. All the more as velocities have increased, non-fastball use has increased and spin rate and max-effort bursts of effectiveness (rather than durability) has been prioritized in pitching development.

Some have tried to push forward a narrative that the pitch clock suddenly ushered in another wave of injuries. The data does not support it. For one, injuries had skyrocketed as the game slowed to a crawl in the pre-pitch clock era. Ulnar collateral ligament surgeries at the MLB and MiLB levels have been on an upward trajectory for decades and have been exacerbated by more players entering the professional ranks already with significant injury histories. Injured-list placements were actually down in 2023 (497), relative to 2022 (501) -- and 49.3% of those placed on the IL in 2023 had been on the IL in 2022 or 2023 (because the best predictor of future injury is past injury).

Baseball absolutely has a pitching-injury problem, but it’s not a new invention of the clock. If anything, long term, the increased pace provided by the clock could conceivably improve pitcher durability, as future Hall of Famer CC Sabathia recently told me.

“Guys can’t walk around the mound and load up and throw as hard as they can,” Sabathia said. “You’ve got to get into some kind of rhythm. And when you get into a rhythm, you can throw deeper into the game.”

As for the postseason, October randomness is a feature, not a bug. We’re not going back to the two-team postseason or the four-team postseason. Personally, I’m in favor of expanded playoffs as an avenue for teams with lesser resources to forge their way to the Fall Classic.

This new format is imperfect ... just like every Wild Card format before it. But if the extra day or two that top division winners have off in this format versus the previous format is such an issue, there is a very easy solution: At the conclusion of the regular season, the top two seeds in each league get to decide if they’d rather have the time off or play in the best-of-three Wild Card Series.

Can’t wait to see how that will go.

“If having five days [off] means you can’t make the adjustment,” said ace Spencer Strider after the Braves were ousted in the NLDS for the second straight year, “you have nobody to blame but yourself.”

What he said.

To us observers: Let’s not get too giddy about “winter winners”
Man, they deke us every time, don’t they? Last winter, the Mets spent so many dollars that many of us ignored that the average age of the starting staff was about as old as the presidents depicted on those dollars. The Padres were clutch in the Hot Stove season but not during the real season, when they went 9-23 (!) in one-run games and 2-12 (!!!) in extra innings.

So, sure, applaud the perennial division-winning Dodgers for upping the ante and their World Series hopes with the Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto signings and Tyler Glasnow trade. Herald the Yankees for bringing in another superstar in Juan Soto. Salute the Royals for committing more than $100 million to their future payroll with an uncharacteristically aggressive winter.

But also ... calm down. It’s January.

To everybody: Stop saying “the MLB”
It’s Major League Baseball, not "The Major League Baseball." When you say or write “the MLB,” everything you say or write afterward is ignored by those of us who can only hear the internal, blood-curdling scream raging in our heads as your fifth-grade English teacher cries uncontrollably.

The slow creep of “the MLB” into our sports lexicon has got to stop. I’ve seen it on otherwise legitimate social-media feeds and in print from people who should know better. If we don’t put a stop to this in 2024, what kind of world are we leaving behind for our children?

Let’s resolve to make this the year the bell tolls for “the.”