New rules in baseball

They are three new rules that will be significant for Major League Baseball this year. I am personally in favor of two of them. 

The first one I like is the new pitch clock rule that is being used to help to speed up the game. This rule will put pressure on the pitchers to have to pitch to the batter with a time limit. It's going to be fun to see if this rattles the pitchers at all. I am definitely in favor of making the game go faster, because in the last 10 years or so, it seems like most of the pitchers were really dillydallying between pitches, causing the games to last between three and four hours every time.

The other big change that I am in favor of is the elimination of a shift. You used to be able to have more than two players on either side of second base or even basically a fourth outfielder. With the new rule, this will not be allowed and will do a lot to help left-handed hitters have more hits between first and second base. I am looking forward to seeing Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper take advantage of this and hoping they will end up with at least 20 or 30 more hits between them. If the game has to be long for more hitting, I am OK with that.

There is one rule I don’t like. Pitchers are no longer allowed to throw unlimited pickoff throws. The new rule only allows three pickoff throws per batter. I know this is supposed to speed up the game and allow more offense, but I think this is going too far. I would have said five. It will be interesting to see what happens through the season.

The 76ers are still playing pretty well, but they have to play more good defense and get more offensive rebounds consistently if they want to go far in the playoffs. They played back-to-back games against the Miami Heat, and in the first game, their offensive rebounding was terrible, and that was a huge reason why they lost the first game so easily. Thankfully they played a good second game against Miami, in Miami, and won by 20 points.

I would also like to say good luck to all the Cape winter sports teams as they go into the playoffs. The girls’ basketball team has been playing great this season. I hope they can capitalize on it and go far in the playoffs. Go Cape!