Image credit: © Joe Rondone/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK

In this article, I’m exploring trends affecting baseball in 2023 that were underreported. You might not know about them. So I’m telling you them.

Here’s what we covered in the first article:

• Batters continue to get hit at a near-record pace.
• Position player strikeout rates hit an all-time high.
• The shift ban resulted in fewer balls in play than in 2022, the third-lowest ever.
• Stolen bases, and the stolen base success rate, were up sharply, but some teams went the opposite direction.

I’m going to wrap up with three fun ones. Reminder that I’m excluding 2020.

Return of the Long-ish Reliever?

We may have turned a corner in reliever usage. It seemed were inexorably headed toward a game in which teams used 3.5 relievers per game, each throwing one inning. That trend’s turned.