The WBC is back! For anyone new/who hadn't been around during the last one in 2023, this post serves as a rundown for the WBC and how it works.
The schedule can be found here. In the US, it will be aired on multiple FOX Sports channels, as well as on Tubi. The first game is tonight, Chinese Taipei vs Australia, at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. Tomorrow has Czechia vs Korea, and Australia vs Czechia.
The WBC is set up in pools, similar to the Olympics and other tournaments: Pool A, B, C, and D. Top two teams out of each pool will progress to the quarterfinals.
The WBC is a newer tournament, the first one taking place in 2006, and was supposed take place every three years, but lockouts and COVID put a kibosh to that. Pool A runner up with face Pool B winner, and so on and so forth. Four different parks are currently hosting the event, but eventually the teams playing in San Juan and Tokyo will end up in Houston and Miami respectively.
Also, despite what people probably think, USA has not dominated the WBC. Japan is the team to beat. Below is the list of gold medal games, with the winner being in bold.
2006 - JAPAN vs CUBA
2009 - JAPAN vs SOUTH KOREA
2013 - DOMINICAN REPUBLIC vs PUERTO RICO
2017 - UNTIED STATES vs PUERTO RICO
2023 - JAPAN vs UNITED STATES
POOL A - Hiram Bithorn Stadium, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Cuba
Panama
Puerto Rico
Colombia
Canada
POOL B - Daikin Park, Houston, Texas
United States
Mexico
Brazil
Great Britain
Italy
POOL C - Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan
Chinese Taipei
Japan
Australia
Czechia
Korea
POOL D - loanDepot park, Miami, Florida
Nicaragua
Netherlands
Dominican Republic
Venezuela
Israel
RULES
The WBC has some additional rules, which range from player eligibility to mercy rules.
ELIGIBILITY
A player is only eligible to play on a team if:
Citizen of the nation they represent
Qualified for citizenship or hold a passport under the laws of the nation, but not been granted citizenship or been issued a passport. Player must petition to represent team.
Permanent legal resident
Born in the nation or territory
Has one parent who is, or was, a citizen of the nation
Has one parent who was born in the nation
PITCHING
A pitcher cannot pitch more than:
85 pitches per game in the Qualifying Round
65 pitches in the First Round
80 pitches per game in the Second
95 pitches per game in the Championship
The only exception to this is finishing a batter's plate appearance.
MERCY RULES
Doesn't apply during knock out rounds, but games are ended early if one team is ahead by a certain amount
RUN DIFFERENTIAL
The number of runs a team scores is only relevant if there's a tie within the standings. The team with the highest run differential will the team that moves on.
This is a long, hopefully-comprehensive guide on how to watch baseball for hockey fans feeling adrift during the offseason — I have constructed this from the perspective of not only how to understand what you’re watching, but how to make it interesting to yourself.
If the numbers aren't interesting to you, forget about the numbers! They don’t have to exist in your version of baseball. Make up your own rules and use them to watch the game. Watch games only for the one kind-of okay player you like. Pick your favourite team because of a video you saw of one of them bouncing a baseball off his ass (Sean Murphy, then of Oakland A's and now of Atlanta Braves). Baseball Olds will try to pretend like the game is this big thing that only people who already watch it can appreciate, but you just have to find what you love most about it.
I’m using the NHL as my best point of reference: in terms of growing the game, I’d say MLB suffers from a very different problem than NHL (other than like, the current uproar around letting queer people exist, which is a throughline in both), in that while the NHL has a very exciting product but can’t reach people where they’re at, baseball is by and large perceived as a boring, slow game and the league will bend over backwards to make polarizing changes to the Boringest and Slowest parts rather than capitalizing on what excites fans about the game. However, both leagues are plagued by Shitty Commissioner disease. Such is the way of life.
Feel free to read all of this, or none of it, but I’ve tried to split it up in a way that makes sense and is easy to navigate. Last note: many people will tell you baseball is the only major sport going on in North America at this time of year. This is false. The WNBA and NWSL are both in full swing—not to mention the World Cup next month. Supplement your baseball watching with a wide variety of sports where you can!
How to Love Baseball
Pick a Team, Any Team
The first step in becoming a baseball fan is obviously picking a team! I could probably give you NHL comparatives and let you figure it out from there, but I don’t personally think your favourite NHL teams have much bearing on your favourite MLB ones, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown of my teams instead and how you might want to pick a team.
The easiest team for me to love is the Seattle Mariners because I live just across the border, and they aren’t good enough to be annoying but also not bad enough to be embarrassed about. They’re just kind of there, which I enjoy greatly. I also love the Philadelphia Phillies because they’re my friend’s favourite team. They went on a Cinderella run to the World Series last year (before losing to the Astros in the final) and are now solidly middling. My other favourites are the Washington Nationals because of their fantastic social media presence and their hilarious stadium traditions. The current-day Nats are very much the epitome of "how can we lose when we're so sincere?"
Some teams you might want to look into are the LA Angels (actually of Anaheim) for Shohei Ohtani, the Milwaukee Brewers for — at least from what I understand — their boyband energy similar to the New Jersey Devils, the Baltimore Orioles or Tampa Bay Rays for an exciting and winningest team, and the Oakland A's for a miserable fan experience including horribly dysfunctional team management and a coming relocation to Las Vegas.
The easiest team for me to hate is the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a result of their god complex re: being the only Canadian team. A funny thing from this season is that the Rays opened their season with a historic 13-game win streak, only to be killed 6-3 by the Blue Jays to end it. Something about Toronto teams and ending another team’s 13-game heater, or whatever.
Also look into any local teams if you can. In Vancouver, our local minor league team is the Vancouver Canadians, and setting up a little picnic on the grass with friends while watching a Canadians game is a summer staple. Here’s a very cute article about them. There are a variety of lower-level and exhibition teams across the world, especially in countries where baseball is incredibly popular. One exhibition team is the Internet-famous Savannah Bananas who are dearly loved on TikTok. If there isn’t a huge baseball foothold in your area, it’s worth looking into which MLB teams are most popular where you live and/or have the most coverage. Some analytics sites like FiveThirtyEight will occasionally create maps showing each team’s popularity in different states, countries, etc. and that can be a great guide.
Petty Rivalries 101
You can always just Google these, but I decided to just list off a few major ones for your perusal: the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rangers and Astros, the Dodgers and Giants, and the Orioles and Nationals. As Toronto Maple Leafs scholar Acting the Fulemin once put it, the point of sports is to be sad in a group, and the counterpart to this is that it absolutely rules getting to see a team you hate lose.
A quick note on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that it's brought us one of my favourite ever quotes from ex-Mariner and current Yankee Nestor Cortes:
Once you’ve chosen a favourite team, they’re bound to have some kind of geographic or historic rivalry, and you can search those up to find out the background behind them. Also, I highly suggest deciding on a random team you hate for no reason. It makes the season experience much more interesting and gives you the chance to pray on their downfall whenever possible.
Where to Watch
As with most things about baseball, this will vary by your team. Depending on your cable package, you might be able to watch your favourite team already! That’s great news. Even if you can’t, feel free to turn on the TV, find a random baseball game, and imprint on either of those teams like a baby bird. The MLB website offers games broadcast with an MLB.tv subscription, but if you have an account you can also watch the Free Game of the Day and collected highlights from previous games! This is a great way to expand your team repertoire and figure out which team broadcasts you hate with a burning passion. Local radio stations do commentary on games if you like listening to that.
If you just want to get your feet wet rather than diving in straight away, pretty much every major game of the postseason will be uploaded by some “FirstName BunchOfNumbers” user on YouTube: for example, you can watch Game 1 of the World Series last year by just searching 2022 World Series Game 1 Full Game. However, watching the full game might be a slog if you don’t know what’s going on, and you can learn the intricacies of the sport without having to watch all four hours and twelve minutes of like, the 1962 World Series Game 7 (although that is a very exciting game). In that case, skip to the ‘How the Game is Governed’ section and read on.
All of this pertains to MLB teams, but there’s plenty to watch elsewhere. If you have a local baseball team, you might be able to catch a game or two in-person! Minor League Baseball also has their own broadcasting services and highlights are available on YouTube or their website.
League Structure
The MLB season is 162 games long. Spring training, aka the preseason, begins in February. During the regular season, teams play a three or four-game series with the same team before playing another with a different team. For example, this month the Philadelphia Phillies played 3 games in a row against the Washington Nationals on consecutive days. The day after the conclusion of their last game against Washington, they started a series against the Tigers, which was three games with one rescheduled due to weather, and then another three games against the Dodgers. This leads to a schedule that looks like this:
Occasionally, due to weather issues or other postponement reasons, a game will be rescheduled for the same day as another game against the same team — so they’ll play two full games in one day. This is called a double-header. They used to be routinely scheduled in MLB, but now they’re only played as a result of scheduling problems.
Team-wise, it’s a little more complicated than the NHL. Like the Eastern and Western conferences, MLB is separated into two ‘leagues’: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Both leagues have fifteen teams, and until the 1990s teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season at all, leading to different styles of play, tactics, and rules implemented between them. This is no longer the case! However, it’s important to recognize that unlike the NHL, NBA, NWSL, etc., Major League Baseball comprises two leagues, rather than two conferences of the same league. This matters because individual awards like the Cy Young or Gold Glove are given to the best players at their position in both the AL and NL, and the MLB MVP includes both an AL MVP and NL MVP.
MLB is made up of six divisions, with three in each league: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. A division has five teams. If you know much about US geography, you might notice that the teams in each division don’t actually correspond very well to their geographic location: this is for a variety of reasons, not least of which is expansion teams requiring change in division partitioning, but nobody’s going to fix it at this point. And that’s okay!
Fandom and Things As Such
Baseball fandom, regrettably, is not much of a Tumblr phenomenon these days, but Baseball Twitter does have some incredible gems. The Baseball RPF tag on AO3 is also fairly fleshed out (albeit not to the extent of HRPF) and you’ll find that many authors who write HRPF have dabbled in baseball as well. If you’re lost on where to start choosing a team, going through the AO3 grab bag and choosing a random player who you really like in a fic is also a very respectable avenue.
I cannot stress this enough: the easiest way to learn the game without having to learn the characters is reading baseball AUs. That’s it. They’re ten times more approachable than trying to memorize everyone on your favourite team’s roster, and they abound in HRPF if you’re looking for a landing port. I have witness testimony from Lil (@wymgreenteam) that she learned what pitching signs and shortstops were from the wonderful Jack/Nico baseball AU. It works! Obviously fanfiction won’t teach you everything, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed they can be a fantastic first step and really illustrate the game from a fan perspective.
Other Media
I will caution against taking the ‘consume baseball-related media’ advice too seriously, because I find that unlike baseball AUs, other media involving baseball does not always come from someone who watches and loves the game. Think of it like hockey romance books—just like the main characters of those novels are probably not scoring hat tricks in 5 consecutive games, they probably aren’t reaching such baseball heights either.
With that said, I have not watched Daiya No Ace but I’ve heard that people do enjoy it! For genuine baseball culture-oriented media, Roger Angell wrote fantastic articles and books on the game. I love his book ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion.’ Then there are movies like Moneyball and shows like A League of Our Own which tackle specific aspects of the game and how it’s played. Depending on your eventual favourite team(s), hometown coverage will also play a huge part: for the Phillies, that’s outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Penn Live.
Narratives
Once upon a time there was a young man named Shohei Ohtani who was breaking records set in the 1920s while playing on a horrible, failing team that refused to build around him. I assume you have some familiarity with Ohtani, but he is very difficult to describe because he is literally making history. He is the only two-way player in MLB right now: a two-way player is someone who is both a pitcher and a batter; there are a ton of rules about what constitutes a two-way player, but currently Ohtani is the only true two-way player at the Major level. This is not a perfect analogy, but he’s sort of like if Jason Robertson went out there and had a 50-goal season, then immediately jumped into net and played like Juuse Saros. He’s the best all-around player in MLB, and even though he isn’t the best pitcher or the best batter, the fact that he’s incredible at both of them makes him stand out. He also plays with Mike Trout, who’s breaking records of his own, while trying to drag the LA Angels to any sort of notoriety. Here is a prescient article about the Ohtani-Trout era in Anaheim.
Each team has their own current narratives and pairings, but Ohtani and Trout are the biggest one right now. People compare them to McDavid and Draisaitl, but it’s more like if the Oilers had McDavid and Draisaitl but were also one of the worst teams in the league right now. However, Trout is currently in the worst slump of his career while the Angels have won the last 11 of 14 games, so really all this means is that baseball is fake.
Baseball is rife with redemption and villain arcs—you just have to dig a little to find them. I have presented the Ohtani and Trout trainwreck because it’s the closest comparable to the Oilers tragedy, but there are plenty others that really depend on team and current events.
Bush Leagues
MLB teams have a very different relationship to their minor-league affiliates than NHL teams do. There are about five hundred various regional minor leagues, but the MiLB levels are Rookie, Single A, High A, Double A, and Triple A, each of which has two or three individual leagues similar to the AL-NL system in MLB.
The fun thing about MiLB is that it’s a lot closer to home than MLB! Most places don’t have an MLB team, but there’s a good chance anywhere in the USA has a nearby MiLB or regional/collegiate league team. They also have way more interesting names, like the Portland Pickles, Rocket City Trash Pandas, and Sugar Land Space Cowboys. The prospect pipeline in MLB runs a whole lot slower than it does for the NHL, and generally through those Double or Triple-A affiliates, so it’s definitely worth paying attention to minor-league teams and their standout players to see who might be the next rookie on your favourite team.
MiLB player compensation has been an issue for a long time, and the players recently unionized! A few great write-ups on it: 1, 2, and 3.
Regional Popularity
I’ve said this plenty, but I truly do think that finding your baseball niche hinges upon imprinting on a hometown team or a player you just really like. This sport isn’t just an American pastime: it’s hugely popular in Central America and parts of East Asia, and some of the best and brightest up-and-coming (and current) players hail from countries that haven’t traditionally been viewed as bastions of baseball. The game is growing every day, and it’s wonderful to see.
Baseball is very popular in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Korea. Out of those, I’d probably say the Dominican Republic has the largest MLB presence, with only American players outnumbering Dominican ones in the league, but the sport is also fast-growing in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup of Hockey, where the best players in the world compete against each other and Shohei Ohtani (captain of the Japanese team) pitched to Mike Trout (captain of the American team) in possibly the most electric moment of baseball in the 21st century.
How to Understand Baseball
How the Game is Governed
Rather than doing a big writeup on this, I figured I would just find some articles and videos that go through the rules well and hold your hand through it! Think of these like helpful assets, similar to the first time you search up ‘what is goaltender interference’ or 'what is offsides' after hearing it mentioned on the play-by-play and a goal got turned over and all the fans were mad and you wanted to be in on the reason why. This is that search.
Baseball Explained in 5 Minutes
How to identify baseball pitches
Everything there is to know about the The Strike Zone in Baseball.
Intro to Baseball: Positions
What’s going on with the DH in MLB? (MLB Originals)
Rules Glossary | MLB - PDF Version
Lastly, once you’ve got a good grasp on the rules and positions, I probably wouldn’t go straight to watching a full game—you want to make sure you’re using your three hours well rather than staring at a game you don’t really get or don’t care about, or both. Instead, watch YouTube highlights of various players and best (or worst) plays of the week! This gives you an idea of what creates excitement in a game and why, and different positional strengths. From there, you can start watching longer clips, like full innings or the highlights uploaded after each game, which give you a better idea of the game’s pace.
Pressing Play
While I was writing this I remembered that a fun and unique baseball tradition is players having walk-up songs when they’re up in the batting lineup.
Most teams will post their players' walk-up songs on Spotify, YouTube, etc. and while there are a few songs that are synonymous with legendary players - like Mariano Rivera's "Enter Sandman" - players usually like to switch up their songs. Often, a song will become emblematic of an era in that team's history (Anthony Rizzo's "Intoxicated" and the Cubs' 2016 playoff run). After a while, you'll notice patterns in what players pick.
Learning about each player’s song rotation can be extremely revealing, like Mark Canha switching his walk-up songs to Born This Way, Vogue, and I Wanna Dance with Somebody in honour of the Mets Pride Night last week!
Diamond Sports Bankruptcy
I’m not going to pretend to know anything about broadcasting or RSNs, but Diamond Sports, the group that runs Bally Sports, recently filed for bankruptcy, which has really affected some franchises’ profit margins and where their games can be streamed. Not sure if this interests you, but you can read about it here!
The Oakland A’s Relocation
Again: I’m not an Oakland fan, but there’s a lot of debate right now about the owners of the Oakland Athletics moving the team to Vegas despite the wishes of the town and city. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, also made rude comments about Oakland fans as a result of their Reverse Boycott Night, where almost 28,000 fans came out to support the team. A professional sports league commissioner acting like an asshole to fans of a small-market team is nothing new, but it’s the culmination of a lot of drama between terrible owners and a market that loves their team.
The Long, Storied History of Cheating
The long, storied history of cheating in MLB encompasses not only stealing signs and tipping pitches, but also foreign substance usage on hands (which pitchers sometimes try in order to change how they pitch the ball), illegal equipment, and more. It’s kind of a lot. The most notable, recent case is the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Win.
Houston’s Fucking Astros
Nobody likes the Astros except Astros fans. They won the World Series last year and are universally hated, not least of all because of the 2017 cheating controversy.
In baseball, ‘signs’ are what catchers use to communicate to pitchers what kind of pitch they should throw. These rely on knowledge of the hitter currently on the plate and catching them by surprise. Each pitcher-catcher battery will usually have their own signs. In 2017, a year in which Houston won the World Series, the team set up a video camera in the center field seats with a full frontal view of the catcher, and they would use that to figure out what pitches the pitcher would throw. Then from the dugout, whoever was watching the video feed at the time would use a signal (audio cues, like banging garbage can lids) to tell the hitter who was up what pitch they had to expect. This was mostly possible because of the time delay between a catcher signalling and a pitcher throwing, which has been changed by this season’s pitch clock implementation.
In 2020, The Athletic published the first exposé article about the Astros cheating scandal, and it rocked the baseball world. Several immediate consequences followed: the Astros GM and field manager (head coach) were suspended for the full 2020 season, and although players received no punishment, the team gave up four draft picks (their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021).
Pitching and Sticky Stuff
Pitchers applying foreign substances on their hands is always a controversy in MLB games. Recently, star pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected and suspended 10 games after an umpire decided his hand was unusually sticky. TLDR: cheating is common, and consequences vary. Nobody has gotten over the Astros cheating scandal.
Expected By Whom
A quick rundown on the analytics side of the game and how baseball stats look very different both in their progress and insights than hockey. This is how you can sound like you know ball.
The Moneyball book does a great job explaining the rise of sabermetrics (baseball analytics) in the early 2000s, starting with Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and their luxury tax isn’t difficult for big-market teams to pay, small-market teams like Oakland have to constantly innovate in their game tactics in order to stay competitive, and that’s why the game today is so numbers-oriented. Watching a baseball game, you’ll see far more stats than you would in an NHL broadcast: OBP (On-Base Percentage), ERA (Earned Run Average), pitching speed, slugging percentage, pythagorean win percentage, and more. Do not fear the big numbers. You don’t have to know what every stat means in order to love the game, but if you watch enough and you hear commentators discussing what, say, Kodai Senga's ERA is, you’ll come to learn what they mean! In a pinch, you can also easily just search up ‘league average [stat]’ to figure out what the standard is.
Some websites that are really instrumental in baseball analytics are Baseball-Reference, FiveThirtyEight, and FanGraphs, plus YouTube channels like Foolish Baseball and statisticians like Bill James and Tom Tango. Baseball is a lot further along in its analytics revolution than hockey, and as a result, such analysis is not just a thing for Stats Nerds but also a huge part of the way the game is played and watched today. Personally, I love stats that assess umpire accuracy in calling strikes, and so Umpire Scorecards on Twitter is one of my favourites.
It's Too Long and Too Much Money
If Connor McDavid played in Major League Baseball and was close to the kind of player he is in the NHL right now, he would be getting paid north of 400 million dollars, not to mention endorsement money. Instead, he sold his soul to a sport where reporters ask about his biological clock and his only consolation for living in Edmonton is his heated driveway.
Because MLB payrolls are so much larger than the NHL’s and they have a luxury tax rather than a salary cap, contracts are worth much more. The sport itself is less volatile as well: both a product of the longer season (larger sample size) and the luck factor inherent in chance-based games like hockey that isn’t present as much in baseball, a player's year-to-year performance is easier to predict and therefore teams feel more comfortable betting on their production. In contrast to the NHL’s 8-year limit & penalty for long contracts (like the Kovalchuk deal), and bridge deals made when a player hasn't demonstrated that their performance is sustainable, MLB GMs often give their stars contracts over 10 years, and for hundreds of millions of dollars total. Mike Trout is on a 12-year contract for almost $430 million, and by several estimates, his endorsements and the money he receives for being named All-Star, AL MVP, etc. brings that up significantly.
MLB front office terminology is very similar to the NHL, but their contracts differ in another important way: baseball players can opt out of a contract and enter free agency. For example, last season Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $310m deal with the New York Mets, but the Mets were worried about the results from his physical and his injury history, so they pulled out of the deal before the season began and instead, Correa signed with the Minnesota Twins on a six-year, $200m contract.
The Used Boy Auction
Drafting in MLB works very differently than the NHL. The amateur draft (the Main one, which is also called the Rule 4 Draft) takes place mid-season and lasts 20 rounds (used to be 40), plus picks that teams are given as compensation for other events. Teams can draft players either out of high school or college baseball—while the majority of players in the early days were picked right out of high school, nowadays the largest percentage are collegiate players. High school players are only eligible after graduation, and they don’t have junior leagues like the OHL or USHL. Players at universities can only be drafted after their 3rd season there in order to avoid going to a university only for drafting purposes.
Teams retain the rights to sign the players they draft until July 15 of the following year, and a player who does not sign with their team is eligible to be signed once again as long as they meet the age and educational requirements (attending an academic institution, three years of college, etc.) Unless the player has consented to be re-selected by their old team, they cannot be chosen again in another draft year. This leads to players like Brandon Belt having been drafted three times, by the Red Sox, Braves, and Giants, and ultimately playing for the Giants after his college career.
The Rule 5 Draft is another major part of the MLB drafting system. It's sort of similar to what happens in the NHL with an expansion draft, but it takes place in the winter every year. As the MLB prospect pipeline moves slower and it's easy for teams to Stockpile high-quality prospects and bury them in the minors due to the team's current success, this draft aims to ensure that young players have a chance to play in the bigs on a team that needs more manpower. Not every team has to select a player in the Rule 5 draft; last season, 15 players were taken, including the Nats selecting Thad Ward and the Phillies selecting Noah Song.
Here's the official MLB description of the drafting process:
Podcasters or Whatever
My most toxic trait is that I unfortunately love listening to sports podcasts, so here are some good baseball ones:
The Athletic Baseball Show
Ballpark Dimensions
Effectively Wild
The Strike Zone
I hope this serves as a useful first step! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to yell about baseball - I wrote this for two people, so if either of those two people find it helpful, the three hours I spent on it will have been worth it.
would YOU like to learn more about the Minnesota Twins? featuring random fun facts, pictures, and general info about the team. I'll be updating this throughout the season as needed
Welcome to my primer post on baseball! Since people are interested in learning about baseball but can find it daunting, I've put together this post with the basics and then sub posts about other sections (the above will be updated with links as I post them). If you're interested in watching baseball, DM me and I will let you know the link you can watch for free. I'm not going to post it on here because that's how those websites get taken down, and I'm not about that life. If there's anything I missed/anything is wrong, please let me know!
Baseball is a sport played on a diamond in which a pitcher must attempt to strike out a batter. The game is split up into innings, which are then split up into two sections (the top or the bottom. ex: bottom of the first). A standard game of baseball has nine innings, and if both teams are tied, they will go into extra innings. Batters' goals are to hit and reach a base. Their ultimate goal is to run all the bases and make it back to home (where the catcher sits/where batters bat from). The only way to score a run is by crossing home plate, whether it be by a bases-loaded walk, or by a HR.
You can always tell if you're in the bottom or the top of an inning by who's at-bat/who's pitching. If the home team is pitching/defending, then you are in the top of the inning. If the home team is batting, you're in the bottom of the inning.
A pitcher's job is to strike out three batters, and his position players are there to help him.
COUNTS
"3-0" "2-1" "0-2" are all examples of a count you can have during an at-bat. These tell you how many balls the batter has, and how many strikes. Balls come first in the count, so for example, a "3-0" count will mean that the batter has three balls and zero strikes. 2-1 is two balls and one strike. If the ball count reaches four, the batter is issued a walk. If the strike count reaches three, the batter has struck out.
STRIKES
A pitcher's goal is to strike out a batter, and in order to do so, their pitches must be within the strike zone: the 'midpoint' (which is an area between the batters shoulders and top of the uniform pants) and above the knees in their batting stance. Below is an example:
In order for a pitch to be a strike, the pitcher must throw a pitch in the highlighted space above. If it's outside of the space, that is called a ball. Four balls equals a walk (which means the batter gets to go to first base) so it's the utmost importance for a pitcher to make sure that they throw within the zone.
If a batter swings at a ball and misses--no matter where it is in the strike zone--that is an automatic strike. If a batter swings at a ball and hits it, but it goes down the foul line or is hit back towards the crowd, that is a foul tip, counted a strike, but will not cause a strikeout. A called third strike is only possible by a batter swinging and missing, or not swinging at a ball within the strike zone.
WALKS
If a batter is hit by a pitch (HBP), they automatically take first. If a batter, however, is hit by a pitch by swung at it, it is not a HBP and they must continue their at-bat (unless it was their third strike.) If the bases are loaded (one player/baserunner on each base), and the pitcher walks the current batter, everyone moves up one base and whoever is at third goes home, scoring a run.
HITS
A hit is only counted if:
the ball stays within the foul line until it passes the third base/first base bag (depending on which side of the field it's hit)
it hits the ground without being caught by a player
and the batter must safely make it to a base without being tagged by a fielder with the ball.
the only exception to this is a homerun, in which the batter is allowed to round the bases and go home.
OUTS
An out is different than a strikeout in the sense that a strikeout is a pitcher getting a batter out at the plate, while an out a position player (or pitcher) catching a hit ball. If a player catches a hit ball before it hits the ground, it's an out. If a player catches a hit ball after it hits the ground, they must throw the ball to first in order for the runner to be out. If the runner makes it before the ball is in the first baseman's glove, that runner is considered safe. If not, that runner is out, and that counts towards the outs needed to end the inning (three). You can also tag a runner while they're running.
EXTRAS
If the game is tied after the ninth, they go into extras. A ghost runner for the batting team is put on second in an attempt to make the games go faster. If the away team scores a run, the game continues as normal until the home team gets three outs. Then, the home team must score enough runs to beat the away team during the bottom of the tenth, otherwise the away team wins. If they are still tied when the inning is over, they go into the eleventh. However, if the away team doesn't score in the top of the tenth, and the home team does in the bottom of the tenth, then the game is over, and the home team wins.
In this post we'll be talking about the league itself and how it's structured. It's pretty simple as far as leagues go, but I've also grown up with it structured like this, so I think it's still a great idea to cover it.
MLB is split up into two 'leagues': the American League (AL), and the National League (NL). Each league is split up into divisions. I would say you could think of them as conferences, but I don't think even that is right, because you can have two teams in the same region of the US in a different league. Currently, both leagues have an equal number of teams at fifteen each.
We'll start with the National League below the cut.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
The NL was established in 1876 and is sometimes called the "Senior Circuit". It originally started with eight chartered teams, and some of them are still around today: Chicago White Stockings (not to be confused with the CHICAGO WHITE SOX; this team became to be known as the CHICAGO CUBS), Boston Red Stockings (not to be confused with the BOSTON RED SOXS; the original Boston Red Stockings became the BOSTON BRAVES, then the MILWAUKEE BRAVES, and are now known today as ATLANTA BRAVES). However, this was at the very beginning of the leagues creation, and so teams came and went, but there are still some teams who have survived 100 and some odd years later: Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers (originally Brooklyn Dodgers), Pittsburgh Pirates, and the St Louis Cardinals.
Now, the league is split into three divisions. I will be indicating which year they were brought into the league, and their stadium.
National League East
Atlanta Braves - 1871, moved to ATL in 1966 - Truist Park
Miami Marlins - 1993 - LoanDepot Park
New York Mets - 1962 - Citi Field
Philadelphia Phillies - 1883 - Citizens Bank Park
Washington Nationals - 1969 - Nationals Park
National League Central
St Louis Cardinals - 1892 - Busch Stadium
Chicago Cubs - 1903 - Wrigley Field
Cincinnati Reds - 1890 - Great American Ballpark
Pittsburgh Pirates - 1891 - PNC Park
Milwaukee Brewers - 1969 - American Family Field
National League West
San Francisco Giants - 1958 - Oracle Park
Los Angeles Dodgers - 1958 - Dodger Stadium
Colorado Rockies - 1993 - Coors Field
Arizona Diamondbacks - 1998 - Chase Field
San Diego Padres - 1969 - Petco Park
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Established 25 years later and referred to as the "Junior Circuit". For a long time, and even still kind've today, the AL has had slightly different rules than the NL. For example, up until a couple of years ago, the AL was the only league to sanction a permanent DH. In the NL, pitchers were still allowed to hit and did more often than not. But the NL ended up adopting the ALs rule, and now they're even again. The AL also has some historic teams as well, and because the NYY are a part of their league, the AL has the most World Series wins.
The AL is divided up similarly as the NL.
American League East
Baltimore Orioles - 1954 - Oriole Park at Camden Yards
The MLB playoffs are an elimination style tournament. There are several series within the MLB Playoffs: the division, championship, and world series.
The divisional series are the American League Divisional Series (ALDS) and National League Divisional Series (NLDS) respectively. Winners of the divisional series then move on to the championship series.
Then, there is the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and National League Championship Series (NLCS), in which the winner of each series will face the other in the World Series. This is the first time in this tournament an NL team will see an AL team, and vice versa.
WHO QUALIFIES?
Five teams from each league qualify (making it ten total). Six are the winners of each division--NL West, NL Central, NL East, AL West, AL Central, and AL East--and automatically qualify for the playoffs. The four remaining ones are known as the 'wild card', and these are the teams in each league that had the best record but did not win the division.
WILD CARD
The wild card round makes up the first round of the playoffs. This is a single elimination game, so you only have one chance to make it into the playoffs. One winner will be from the AL, one will be from the NL.
DIVISIONAL PLAY
At this point, eight teams remain, four from each league. This series is either known as the ALDS or the NLDS. Whoever won the wild card game then goes on to play the team with the best regular season record in their league. The other two remaining teams in the league play each other. At this point, the games are best of five--first team to three wins in a series moves on to the NLCS or ALCS respectively.
CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
This series works just like the others, but at this point, there are only four teams remaining, two from each league. This time, these play off in a seven game series, and first one to four wins.
WORLD SERIES
The winner of the ALCS and the NLCS face off against each other in a seven series game, first to four wins it all and will be crowned World Series Champions.
Back at the very beginning, what the team won wasn't a trophy, but a pennant that they then could fly over their stadium. Times have changed and they win a trophy now, but it's still called the pennant race.
Aside from the typical positions, there's quite a few others. Some are used more than others. I'll be giving you a basic rundown. Below the cut is also explanations as to the different types of pitchers.
Designated Hitter (DH)
A designated hitter is a batter who bats in place of another player. This position is prominent now more than it ever has been, as now it's a permanent position and replaces the pitcher's spot in the batting order. The designated hitter does not play a position on the field, but can on other days, just a different DH will be assigned in their place. They can also be moved onto the field during a game, but they give up their spot as DH, and someone else will have to bat as the DH.
There is, however, the "Ohtani Rule"--if a starting pitcher simultaneously started as the DH, then the pitcher is still allowed to act as the DH, even after they've been removed from the game.
Pinch Hitter (PH)
A substitute batter. Any player who has not yet entered the game as a substitute is allowed to pinch hit, and for anyone within the lineup. However, this decision must be made before the person they're pinch hitting for is up to bat. A pinch hitter must take the field after pinch hitting, but they don't need to play the same position as the person they pinch hit for. For example, if a third baseman pinch hits for a second baseman, they don't have to play second base; a different player would just have to be switched over to that position.
Pinch Runner (PR)
A pinch runner is a substitute for a runner on base. Typically, these are substitutions made late into the game and replace slower players. Like other substitutions, once a pinch runner is substituted in, the person they replaced is out of the game and cannot be put back in.
Starting Pitcher (SP)
The starting pitcher is the first pitcher in each game. A pitcher is credited with a "game started" if they throw the first pitch of the game to the first batter. Starters are expected to make it through a good portion of the game (typically until the sixth inning) but they can be removed before then for a variety of reasons. Starting pitchers also typically get four/five days of rest between starts, so most teams have four - six starting pitchers to fill in the days. Back in the day, pitchers were expected to pitch all nine innings. Starting pitchers throw a lot of pitches, typically above 80.
Relief Pitcher (RP)
Pitches in the game after the starting pitcher. There are a bunch of different roles for relief pitchers: set up men, middle relief, left/right handed specialists, long relievers, and closers. These however aren't used as frequently as other terminology (aside from closers). Relief pitchers throw a lot less pitches than a starter, but a little more than a closer, depending on if a relief pitcher is left in for more than one inning. Relief pitchers are also expected to pitch in more games than starters, mainly due to the fact they pitch less than starters. Relievers and closers are usually referred to as a team's bullpen.
Closer (C)
Specializes in getting the final outs of a game when their team is leading, typically brought in the ninth inning. They also tend to be their team's best reliever. Closers tend to pitch the least out of all roles, and they can pitch multiple days.
I'll be going over each playing position a little more in-depth here, and there will be an additional post going over the more 'obscure' positions/roles. These are the main nine that you should know, though, and their role. Important note: not all of these rules are hard and fast, especially about who covers who. Depending on the play, things change, but players have to act quick on their feet.
Positions:
Each position has a number generally associated with it (1-9) and these are not the same as batting order position. We'll talk more about batting order in the batting section. I won't be referring to them as number, but I will put them on their assigned position so it'll help you learn. During plays, announcers will often call them by number (3-2-5, for example) instead of by actual title as it's quicker.
Pitcher (1)
Pitchers are players who throw from the pitcher's mound. They throw to a catcher, and there are many different types of pitchers and roles. A pitcher has a variety of different ways in which they can deliver a pitch, but there's also plenty of ways that they can't. Pitchers throw a variety of different pitches, which all change based on velocity and the pitcher's grip.
Catcher (2)
Defends home plate and receives pitches from the pitcher, as well as calls what pitch he wants the pitcher to throw. A catcher must also "frame" a pitch, which means they must try to make a ball look like it was in the strike zone, even when it isn't.
Catchers are the only position that can see the whole field, which makes them great commanders. They give their pitchers sign through PitchCom, which prevents opposing players from stealing signs. A catcher must know his pitcher's strengths, as well as the current batter's strengths and weaknesses in which they can get them out. Because of the defensive prowess a catcher often possesses, team will disregard their offensive production, as a good catcher can get runners out when they attempt to steal, and get runners out at home.
The catcher position is extremely, extremely complicated, and I can't cover this all effectively in this post, so I'll just give you a link to wikipedia (lol).
1st Base (3)
Defends first base. Ideally, a first baseman is tall, throws left handed, and has good reflexes and flexibility. In order for a runner to be out at first, the first baseman's foot must be on the bag with the ball in his glove before the runner touches base (hence the flexibility and height).
When there is a runner at first and a chance of a pickoff attempt by the pitcher, the first baseman will stand with their fight foot against the bag, waiting for the pitcher to either pickoff or deliver the throw. When there is no runner aboard, the first baseman typically plays behind the bag and closer to the foul line, in which the pitcher typically covers for him.
2nd Base (4)
Defends the area nearest to second base on the right hand side of the bag (being on the left hand side was banned with the shift). Quick hands and feet are required in order to turn double plays, as they are the "pivot position" on the field. They need to be able to handle the ball quickly and efficiently. Most 2nd basemen are right handed.
Third Base (5)
Defends the area nearest to third base. This area is known as the "hot corner", because the third baseman stands closer to the batter than every other field position. As with most positions, a good accurate and strong arm are required in order to make plays across the diamond.
Shortstop (6)
Shortstops cover the space between second and third. They tend to see the most play on the field, and their spot is much more demanding defensively because of it. A shortstop needs to be agile and have a strong arm in order to make plays at any of the bases. Shortstops are required to cover second base in double play situations when the ball is hit to either the second or first baseman. Shortstops can also cover third, depending on the play (ie: rundowns, bunting attempts).
Shortstops also tend to be the cut off man with throws from center or left (but from left is mainly the third baseman's job).
Left Field (7)
Plays in the area designated as 'left field'. To tell if a player is in right or left, it's the left side of the way the batter is facing the field. Outfielders must be fast and have great accuracy and arm in order to make plays at any of the bases. Typically speaking, the left fielder will have the weakest arm, as they are in the most shallow outfield position and do not need to throw as far. They tend to receive more balls than right fielders due to the "pull" right-handed batters have when they swing.
On any play, left fielders must back up third base.
Center Field (8)
Plays in the area designated as 'center field'. They face the same requirements as the other outfield positions, but outfielders typically are faster than any other position, and have greater throwing accuracy. Center fielders have to cover more area than the other outfielders, so speed is a must. Typically, they also catch the most fly balls.
The center fielder backs up all catches made by either of the corners. The center fielder backs up throws to second when the runner attempts stealing second base. They are often 'commanders' of the outfield, allowed to call off either corner if they have the best chance at catching the ball.
Right Field (9)
Plays in the area designated as 'right field'. They face the same requirements as the other outfield positions, but right fielders tend to have the strongest arm out of all the outfielders, as they have to make the longest throw to third. A right fielder must always be able to make that through accurately, and fast.
A right fielder's job is to back up first base on throws being made by a pitcher or catcher, in order to prevent the ball from going into the outfield and allowing runs to be scored. They will also backup first base on a bunted ball (aka 'cover the bag') so that the catcher or first baseman has a chance to get it. Any time a ball is thrown from the left side of the field, the right fielder will also back up second base. Finally, a right fielder will cover first if the first baseman is in a rundown between third and home.
