Opinion | Major League Baseball Has Unleashed a Faster, Freer Version of Itself. You’ll Need to Pay Attention.

In previous years, planning a typical preseason game, the Mets manager Buck Showalter would have been laser-focused on decisions like who to try that day as leadoff batter or which pitchers he would have available coming out of the bullpen.

But this year, late in spring training, he was pondering which player would be miked up for part of a game to provide audio commentary, sometimes even from the field, for the Mets.

“Why don’t you ask Max if he’ll get miked up?” Showalter suggested at one point, clearly a joke, since the reference was to Mets’ pitcher Max Scherzer, a.k.a. Mad Max, known for possessing one of the most intense personalities in baseball.

The start of a season usually brings a fresh round of questions about baseball as cultural inheritance, a big-business sport forever looking in the rearview mirror to its halcyon days as the so-called national pastime. But this year, somewhat shockingly, the new season represents a genuine departure for organized baseball. In pushing forward with tradition-defying rules changes — like a pitch clock, bigger bases and viewer-friendly innovations like miking up managers and players — baseball has taken dramatic steps to recapture a vitality and vividness for fans and players alike.