If home plate is the dish, Major League Baseball’s new-look bases might be deep-dish.
“Wait ’til you see [the bases] — they look like a pizza box, to be honest with you,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters on Tuesday.
The bases that the MLB will be using will be three square inches larger than before, increasing from 15 square inches to 18.
The league hopes the increase in base size will help ensure safety but there also theories that teams will steal bases more frequently with the base paths being four inches shorter.
Cora, however, does not foresee a dramatic increase in stolen bases this season but has talked to his team about “playing fast whenever we can.”
“Talking to the minor league coaches and everybody that used the rules last year — it’s not that all of the sudden we’re going to steal 100 bags with a guy,” he said. “The value of the out is still in play, and you get 27. So you got to be smart, you got to be efficient.”
Cora also believes teams will need to adjust to the change in the spring training schedule as well which has been cut shorter, due to the World Baseball Classic going from Mar. 7-21.
“The timing is a little bit tougher because of the tournament,” Cora said. “But it is what it is. We have a lot of guys going to the tournament, and we have to do a good job the first 10 to 15 days [of spring training] to get them used to it.”
The addition of the pitch clock, counting down from 15 seconds with no runners and 20 seconds with runners, will also take some time to get used to according to Cora.
“You’ll see a lot of pitch clocks all over the place, and you’ll hear horns and all that stuff trying to remind guys of the pitch clock, which is the most important thing.”