The Major League Baseball rules coming out of the lockout and new Collective Bargaining Agreement keep getting more and more absurd. We keep moving away from the challenge and strategy of the game, which makes it great, to participation trophy nonsense rule changes.

The shift had an impact on the game. It made it more difficult for pull only hitters to get on base. It seemed batters were unwilling or unable to adjust. Instead of teams investing in players like Jeff McNeil, who supposedly had that all fields approach and get the ball in play game MLB supposedly wanted, they are banning the shift.

After the implementation of the universal DH, they made a special rule just for Shohei Ohtani. If Ohtani wants to continue hitting in games after he has been removed, great news; he can! For the first time in history a player lifted from a game can now stay in the game.

They are also bringing back the ghost runner or Manfred man. We all thought we were done with the runner on second in extra innings, but we are not. That is here to stay because we don’t want to keep using pitchers. After all, we can’t penalize teams who want to bullpen games or keep going to their pen all of the time. That wouldn’t be fair to ask teams to fully develop pitchers and have to strategize past that one game.

Oh, and we also have more postseason teams. After all, it’s not fair that only five teams per league make the playoffs. Oh, and a winner-take-all game for two teams who didn’t win their division also wasn’t fair. They now get to play and be a part of a series.

There’s more nonsense in the rule changes, and there is certainly more on the way. In the end, this isn’t good for the game, but this is what happens when you put people in charge who don’t care.