After a couple of seasons spent reacting to some of the most substantial rule changes that Major League Baseball has instituted in quite some time, the baseball world seems to be settling into a new status quo entering 2025.
Changes adopted in 2023, which most notably brought us things like the pitch clock, restrictions on defensive shifts, larger bases and limitations on pickoff throws had a dramatic impact upon game play, the history books and our fantasy league strategizing.
Average game times shrunk by 28 minutes from 2022 to 2023. Baseball saw both its first 40/70 and 50/50 players in history in 2023 (Ronald Acuna Jr.) and 2024 (Shohei Ohtani), respectively. And fantasy managers who began 2023 by going all-in on Corey Seager, predicted to be one of the hitters most helped by the new shift rules, enjoyed what would ultimately be an 82-point jump in his batting average to a career-high .327.
Across the league, statistical trends generally remained constant in 2024, fueling this feeling of a new “status quo.” While league-wide run production declined by more than four-tenths of a run per game, the league-wide BABIP (.291) finished within six points of its 2023 number (.297), batting averages on pulled ground balls and line drives were within six and two points for left- and right-handed hitters, and the league averaged over 0.7 stolen bases per game for the second straight season — the highest SB rates since 1999.
All that said, the 2024 baseball landscape — and its 2025 outlook — wasn’t completely absent of fantasy-relevant change.
This is where Inning 7 of the Playbook comes in, putting the league-wide trends that have influence over your rankings, draft-day preparations and in-season strategies under the proverbial microscope. If you’d prefer to skip ahead to a specific area of interest, the links below will take you directly to each.
Baseball is enjoying a new normal
Whereas change had been the name of the game over the past half-decade in MLB, 2024 saw only minimal tweaks to the aforementioned 2023 rule changes, while only two additional, minor rule changes have been announced thus far for 2025. For the record, neither of these latter two is likely to carry much weight in the way of fantasy relevance.
After the successful implementation of the pitch clock for 2023, MLB adopted another reduction to these in 2024, shrinking the time with runners on base from 20 to 18 seconds. Across the league, average game times further shortened, with 2024’s two hours, 36 minutes reflecting an additional decline of four minutes compared to 2023, as well as the league’s shortest such time since either 1984’s two hours and 35 minutes. Additionally, the league’s monthly averages remained steady — two hours and 37 minutes at their longest, in July, August and September — after a 2023 that saw gradual, month-over-month increases.
Interestingly enough, that change to the pitch clock did not result in a spike in violations. In fact, violations dramatically declined in 2024, further fueling the status-quo feeling. Last season, there was an average of one overall violation — whether by the pitcher, batter or catcher — per 9.0 games, and for pitchers the average was one per 11.7 contests, both significantly down from 2023 (5.1 and 7.1, respectively).
However, the “pizza box”-sized bases continued to have a sizable impact upon stolen bases, which is easily the most fantasy-relevant development of the past two seasons.
While the league-wide stolen base success rate declined last season, dropping from 80.2% in 2023 (the league’s highest rate since World War II) to 79.0% (trailing only 2023 and 1948’s 79.2% during that same time span), players continued to run wild on the base paths under the new rules. Baserunners attempted a steal on 6.8% of their opportunities last season, up from 6.3% in 2023, which itself was up substantially from the league-wide 4.6% rate from 2019-22 combined.
The result: A whopping 24 different players successfully stole at least 30 bases in 2024, the most in any single year since 1999 and a number previously approached this century only by 2012’s 23. Elly De La Cruz‘s league-leading 67 stolen bases last season were tied for the seventh-most this century, and we’ve now seen three of the 21st century’s eight best single-year totals occur in the past two seasons (Acuna’s second-best 73 and Esteury Ruiz‘s tied-for-seventh 67, both in 2023).
While this has softened the overall demand for stolen bases in fantasy leagues, the statistic’s return to relevance has again shifted our need to fill the category in rotisserie leagues. Using Player Rater metrics, a 30-SB performer brought 51% greater value in that specific category in 2019 than in 2024, but there were also twice as many 30-SB players who finished in the top-100 overall (12) than in 2019 (6).
Points-leagues managers, too, should appreciate that the league-wide rise in steals provided some sneaky value in their format. After 2023 saw 14 of the league’s 18 total 30-SB performers total at least 300 fantasy points, 2024 had 13-of-24 accomplish the feat. Additionally, 6-of-14 in 2023 and 4-of-13 in 2024 both scored 300-plus total fantasy points while accruing at least 10% of said points as a result of stolen bases alone.
This phenomenon was most recognizable with elite speedsters such as Brice Turang, whose 50 stolen bases accounted for 15.7% of his 319 total fantasy points, Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose 40 steals represented 12.0% of his 333 points, or Maikel Garcia, whose 37 steals reflected 12.0% of his 309 points.
Using ESPN’s projections, several candidates for both 30-plus stolen bases and 300-plus total fantasy points could provide similarly sneaky value: Turang (projected for 40 steals and 283 fantasy points), Anthony Volpe (35 and 298), Garcia (34 and 316), Dylan Crews (34 and 275), Xavier Edwards (32 and 282) and Jake McCarthy (31 and 281).
The death of the complete game
Declining rotational workloads has been a theme across the past decade, as starting pitchers are increasingly not finishing what they started.
The 2024 season saw the fewest complete games in MLB history (28), even fewer than there were in the COVID-shortened 2020 (29). And while, yes, 2020’s total was influenced by rules shortening doubleheader games to seven innings apiece (13 complete games in 2020 were seven innings or shorter), consider that there were still fewer complete games of 100-plus pitches in 2024 (17) than in 2020 (20).
Extending that further, the 2024 season became the sixth consecutive season in which the league’s quality start rate was below 37% (36.1%). To put that into perspective, 10 years ago (in 2015), just better than half of all starts across the league met the quality-start standard (six-plus innings, no more than three earned runs allowed).
Increasingly, teams are taking a Tampa Bay Rays-like, specialized approach to their pitching staffs, attempting to maximize the output of every batter faced. The overwhelming majority rostered the league’s maximum of 13 pitchers, meaning five starters and eight relievers, last season, enhancing teams’ opportunities to lean on their bullpens in the middle-to-late innings.
There’s perhaps no greater example of the effect on starting pitchers than this: In 2024, only 248 of the league’s 4,858 total starts (5.1%) saw a starter allowed to face an opponent’s lineup more than three times (meaning at least 28 batters faced). That was by far the fewest in any season in history, and nearly 1,000 fewer than there were 10 seasons earlier (1,244 in 2024), as teams continued to recognize the wide disparity between starters’ performances the first two times facing a particular opponent (.320 wOBA, 19.4 K%) versus the third or more (.341, 16.0%) this century.
This has put a greater premium on the quality of outings rather than quantity, placing a greater demand on our selectivity of individual matchups rather than simply loading up on the greatest number of potential starts in a given week or season.
Consider that in the past three seasons combined, 66% of the pitchers (48 out of 73) who amassed at least 180 IP also managed at least 2.5 Wins Above Replacement and a 110 ERA+, both strong measures of pitching quality. That represented a sizable boost over the 59% (59-of-100) who did so from 2017-19, and that in itself was a good step ahead of the 52% (87-of-168) who did it from 2014-16.
For those of you in rotisserie leagues and mired in a debate about the best categories to use, that provides as strong a case for using for innings pitched as a measure of pitching quality as we’ve seen so far this century. Gone are the days of pitchers like Livan Hernandez, Sidney Ponson and Jeff Suppan logging hefty innings totals despite hideous ERAs. In 2024, not a single pitcher who was allowed to throw as many as 190 innings had an ERA greater than 3.60, the first time in a non-shortened season in history that has been true.
For fantasy managers in leagues with daily transactions, this means there’s a greater importance on slotting in relief pitchers of great-to-elite quality in your available spots wherever possible. That’s as true in rotisserie as it is points-based leagues, as exactly half of the pitchers to earn at least a 6.50 Player Rater grade last season — this number specifically chosen as roughly the benchmark for a player to earn a top-100 ranking — were relievers, the highest such percentage in at least a decade.
The rise in velocity
There’s a probable correlation between the aforementioned increased specialization of pitching across the league and the rise in velocity, as teams continually value pitchers’ raw stuff over long-term stamina.
Speaking to velocity specifically, last season MLB saw its greatest overall average velocity across all pitches (89.1 mph), as well as its greatest average four-seam fastball velocity (94.2 mph). Starting pitchers have been especially leaning more upon velocity, as they averaged a record 93.9 mph with four-seam fastballs, while throwing 295 pitches of at least 100 mph in 2023 and another 285 in 2024 — with those two totals being the most in any season for which we have detailed velocity data.
Fantasy managers are well versed in the way in which the league-wide velocity spike has influenced strikeout numbers — the league’s seven best single-season strikeout rates have all occurred in the past seven seasons, with 2024’s 22.0% and 2023’s 22.1% placing in the top five — but with that has come heightened worry about injuries.
From 2021-23, there were 61 pitchers who averaged at least 95 mph with their fastballs and 90 mph with all pitches thrown in a single season (some making repeat appearances on the list). This group would make 11 more IL appearances the subsequent year, averaging 33 more days on the shelf apiece. The group also averaged 28 1/3 fewer innings pitched, and 57.3 fewer total fantasy points scored.
While those numbers might not seem devastating, consider that among these 61 were 12 who spent 118 days or more on the IL in the subsequent season, while an additional six had an IL stint at least that long within the two seasons that followed it. Eight of those 18 total lengthy absences included Tommy John surgery, while Spencer Strider underwent internal brace surgery. Others, like Frankie Montas and Brandon Woodruff, were sidelined due to shoulder operations.
This isn’t to say that peak velocity is the only forerunner of significant injury for a pitcher, but the data certainly hints strongly at a correlation between the two.
With that in mind, fantasy managers should at least remain aware of the league’s current hardest-throwing pitchers, tucking away the possibility of adverse effects in either the 2025 season or beyond. This was 2024’s list of pitchers to meet or exceed the aforementioned 95-plus mph fastball and 90-plus overall thresholds, while also amassing at least 100 innings pitched:
One additional pitcher met the 95/90 mph criteria with at least 100 IP in 2023: Michael Kopech, who was shifted to relief last season. Multiple reports in mid-January raised worries about his right forearm, which began to bother him during the 2024 postseason and warrants monitoring throughout spring training, although the Los Angeles Dodgers claim those concerns are overblown.
A full seven Playbook “innings” are now in the books, so you should be ready to take your fantasy baseball game to the advanced level. In the next edition, we’ll dive more deeply into advanced metrics such as Statcast, defense independent and “luck”-based statistics.
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