NASHVILLE – The Orioles weren’t eligible for today’s draft lottery but moved up two spots for next year’s first selection.

They went from holding the 24^th to the 22^nd because of luxury tax penalties imposed on the Yankees and Padres.

“That’s a pretty high pick coming off a 101-win season,” said executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias.

It’s the lowest for the Orioles since pitcher Cody Sedlock was taken 27^th overall out of the University of Illinois in 2016.

They also have the 32^nd selection, a prospect promotion incentive pick for Gunnar Henderson winning the American League’s Rookie of the Year Award, and the 34^th in the Competitive Balance A round.

We found out during the 2023 MLB regular season that we could watch a game lasting two and half hours again and it would not be completely rare. We found out we could survive a game played without defensive shifts. We found out we could be completely okay with scoring and base stealing on the rise.

And we found that the game was not dramatically changed in any way.

As any of us that had seen the pitch clock used in the minors already knew, fans would quickly adjust to the clock. After a few games, they would forget it was even there.

For the avalanche of criticism Rob Manfred gets as MLB commissioner – and he did not implement any of this on his own – these changes worked, and I contend they were very good for the game.

The average time of a big league game lasting nine inning was two hours and 40 minutes last season, down from 3:04 in 2022 and 3:10 in 2021. Yep, we gained a half hour. Beautiful. And needed.

It is reasonable to wonder how many more stolen bases we will see in the majors this coming season with the new rules in place. Those who can run may get more chances than in previous seasons. It’s fair to wonder what that could mean for the team with the two top basestealers in the American League last year: the Orioles.

Shortstop Jorge Mateo stole 35 bases on 44 attempts to lead the AL in 2022, and his teammate Cedric Mullins was second, just one base behind, getting 34-of-44. Tampa Bay’s Randy Arozarena stole 32 bases, and then came Bobby Witt Jr. of Kansas City with 30.

By leading the AL, Mateo became the third Oriole (fourth occurrence) to lead the league in steals, joining Brian Roberts (2007) and Luis Aparicio (1963 and 1964). He is the sixth O's player (eighth time) since 2000 with at least 35 stolen bases.

As a team, the Orioles stole 95 bases (with Mateo and Mullins producing nearly 73 percent of that) to rank tied for fifth in the AL and tied for 11^th in the majors. It was a big jump from Baltimore’s 54 steals in 2021, which was tied for 12^th-most in the AL.

So they return two of the top basestealers at a time when stealing bases could become easier. Or it sure appears they could.

The Orioles take the field today in Sarasota, Fla., for the first official workout of the new season. Yes, baseball is back. The first spring training game is set for a week from Saturday at Ed Smith Stadium against the Minnesota Twins.

With the new year comes new rules in Major League Baseball. We will see a pitch clock, restrictions on infield shifts and larger bases.

The pitch clock has at least one intended goal: reducing time of games. The average MLB game lasted three hours and seven minutes last season, and officials think there is a chance we see that time trimmed as much as 25 minutes per contest.

Requiring that two infielders be positioned on either side of second base should allow for more action in the game. More balls should get through to the outfield, leading to more hits, but infielders also will have more ground to cover, putting a premium again on range and possibly bringing more great defense back to the game. Think more diving plays and off-balance throws.

Last year teams shifted a combined 60,765 times on the infield, with more shifts coming versus lefty batters on the right side of the infield. Now there can only be two infielders on each side of second base, and they must be on the infield dirt. The MLB batting average for 2022 of .243 should go up a bit. That was the lowest in the game since 1968. On the other hand, minor league teams last year saw just a two-point gain in batting average – from .247 to .249 - with the shift-limiting rules in place.

There will be some rules changes coming to Major League Baseball in 2023 and among them is essentially the elimination of infield shifts. Starting next year, two infielders must be on each side of second base and they have to be no deeper than the back-edge of the infield which touches the outfield. Also, teams cannot switch defenders and for instance move a shortstop to the second base spot on the right side against a pull lefty batter.

This change should add some offense and some defense to the game.

The shift takes hits away from batters that are pull happy with groundballs and mostly unable to hit against the shift. Had they been able to do that, they would see fewer shifts. But we know how that turns out.

I went back and looked at the MLB number for Batting Average of Balls in Play (BABIP) every year since 2010. For most of the seasons between 2010 and 2019, the final BABIP was between .297 and .300. But teams kept shifting more and more and that number dropped to .292 in the shortened 2020 season and in 2021. The BABIP was .290 last season.

Now that lefty batters won’t face a seeming picket fence on defense on the right side moving forward, some hits will be added to their up-to-now sinking batting averages. That could create more scoring in the game in general and more scoring chances. More runners can mean more pressure on pitchers, who then make more mistakes in some of those spots and more runs are scored.

In anticipating the negotiations between owners and players leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, everyone assumed there would be two major areas of dispute: baseball's economic model and potential rule changes to the sport. Turns out the two sides really only discussed money before the CBA expired late Wednesday night and owners instituted a lockout. Commissioner Rob Manfred, during his Thursday news conference with reporters in Dallas, revealed the rule change...