The 2022 Madness Sweet 16 & Elite 8 Roundup | We’re Gonna Need Some More Tacos Here

Is Anyone on First?

Opening Day tees off in just 9 days after an ugly offseason punctuated with a 99 day strike that made complete the dismissive eye roll for all those looking on. Billionaires pillow-fighting millionaires over issues at-home fans attempt to unpack with the enthusiasm of an emptied, tire-flattened cellophane bag of Cracker Jack. Such is the state of affairs as MLB tremblingly lights the boilers under the 2022 Season. The so-called Collective Bargaining Agreement hashed out mercilessly across public negotiating sessions possesses all that’s been bandied about breathlessly on Twitter. A 27% increase in minimum salaries (to $700K) stair-stepping 20% annually; an expanded 12-team postseason; the complete forgiveness of ALL fines issues to players found in violation of 2021 Covid-19 protocols; an enhanced vision plan that allows players to purchase both eyeglasses and contacts in the same benefit year. Inflation has now officially bled into America’s pastime. And ONE interesting instance of Deflation.

Buried in the 400+ page agreement is an item of particular interest to players in the Minor Leagues this year; everyone else in the immediate years to come. After the All-Star break in July, second base will move 13.5 inches closer to the pitching mound in all Minor League stadiums. This change will knock more than a foot off of the distance from first-to-second and second-to-third bases. Not only that, but the physical size of the bags will increase from 225 to 324 square inches on Day 1. Boosters will argue that these collective updates right a wrong 135 years in the making (too, err, inside Baseball to get into here). And they would technically be correct. Cynics will counter that such momentous and seismic ruptures with precedent are little more than naked attempts at injecting sizzle and spice into a hotel banquet dinner of rubber chicken and dead veggies. And they wouldn’t technically be wrong. What all sides agree on is that Baseball has a razzle-dazzle problem in a staid game that eclipsed an average of 3 hours in 2021. There were 25,006 singles last year, down 12% since 2011. This tells you two things: Everyone is swinging for St. Louis and no one wants to be the catalyst for a free Doritos Locos taco courtesy Taco Bell in the postseason. Everyone likes the drama and high art of a stolen base; everyone it seems but the runner. Commonplace analytics of every player at every position frown down mightily on running wild every inning of every game. And with it was swept in Baseball’s version of the golf whisper.

And so, Baseball is turning to math of a different sort to stem the infectious proliferation of yawns greeting its main dish. If simple geometry can boost attention-getting base stealing (and thereby quicken game pace) in the Minor Leagues, then all the noisy sausage-making commotions will have well been worth it. Spoiler alert: a pilot in the Pacific Coast League in 2021 produced negligible results. But heck, if the rules changes bring a base more that a foot closer to a runner from the jump, human intuition has a funny way of deleting an analytics-hyped spreadsheet and looking past a first-base coach’s furiously disapproving nod. The result is just what MLB salivates over. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that this “enhancement” will be calling on Major League stadiums as soon as next year alongside the much-maligned yet much-needed pitch clock. When that happens, it’s not so much about Who’s-on-first but rather what-happens-at-second. Batter uppppp?!?!?

Now if only the CBA could have addressed the perennial foundering that is the Baltimore Orioles. Rumor has it Team management figured they’d have a better 2022 record had the Team soldiered on maintaining the Lockout was still in full force. All joshing aside, the Team where once Cal Ripken Jr presided will one day emerge from its reckless slumber. A baseball fan can only hope. And you know what they say about hope as a strategy. Anyhow, turning now to March Madness, Order has now been restored. Out are all the would-be Cinderellas, gone are all the killjoys leaving intact your callsheet of normality. Withstanding the blistering heat admirably up to the Sweet 16, everyone’s favorite underdog in St. Peters melted like a beeswax candle in church against a suddenly searing UNC. Elsewhere, the Bulldogs might have made it to the Final last year but this year they are OUT. As-is hot-to-trot Arizona who didn’t quite live up the in-Season hype so thoroughly metered out on court this past Winter. But Coach K’s gauzy farewell tour continues unabated with his Dukies while the Jayhawks and the Tar Heels fight to spoil his April 4th retirement fete. Ohhhhh the high drama; Should be fun to watch!