SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. >> As the Giants took the field Friday morning, they were greeted by new sights in center field and behind home plate: four large LCD clocks. The game with no time constraints now, suddenly, has some.

While the Giants — and 29 other teams — have incorporated the new rules coming to MLB this season into their training routines for the first week and a half of camp, they get their first introduction to the pitch clock, a limit on pickoffs, larger bases and shift restrictions in live action today, when they begin Cactus League play against the Cubs. There is no grace period, now or once the regular season starts.

“I anticipate us being very inquisitive,” manager Gabe Kapler said.

Kapler is encouraging his players to ask questions — to umpires during games, to coaches during drills, to teammates in the clubhouse. One group that has been surprisingly helpful: young players, who are typically the ones asking veterans questions but, having experienced versions of the new rules in the minor leagues the past two seasons, are suddenly the experts.

“It’s the unknown that gets into people’s heads,” said catcher Blake Sabol, who played with the pitch clock last season at Double-A and will start today’s opener behind home plate. “I think as time goes on, people will get used to it. I felt like midway through last year, I wasn’t even thinking about the clock much. It was just how we played.”

In a move that drastically reduced the average time of games at the minor league level, pitchers now have either 15 seconds, with the bases empty, or 20 seconds, with runners on, to deliver the pitch. The clock starts once the pitcher receives the ball back from the catcher, and he can only step off to reset it (or pick off) twice. If he steps off a third time, and doesn’t get a runner out, it is an automatic balk.

If the ball hasn’t been released from the pitcher’s hand by the time the clock expires, he is charged with an automatic ball. The same goes for batters: If they aren’t in the box with at least eight seconds left on the clock, they’ll be charged an automatic strike.

“Catching live ABs, with pitchers, you can tell which ones aren’t even looking at the clock,” Sabol said. “It’ll go all the way down to zero and they’re still set. So some guys have to be a little bit more conscious with it.”

How many violations might we see early in play?

“Maybe a few,” said reliever Cole Waites, who got introduced to the pitch clock with Single-A San Jose in 2021. “I think the biggest thing is going to be disengagements. I don’t think the clock is going to affect too many guys.”

But then again...

“It’s quick, man,” fast-paced starter Alex Wood said. “It’s friggin’ quick.”

Since they arrived in Scottsdale, Giants pitchers have been throwing their bullpens with a pitch clock in place. When it came time to face live hitters, they set up TV monitors behind a net adjacent to the mound and displayed the countdown on the center-field scoreboard.

In those sessions, Wood noticed one wrinkle.

“Last year in Triple-A, they were waiting for you to get close to the rubber to start the clock. Now it’s wherever you get the ball they’re starting the clock,” Wood said. “I did it my first day in the bullpen. I was catching the ball where I normally do, at the end of my throw toward the bottom of the mound, and those extra two or three seconds, it’s huge. It’s fast. Games will be fast, though. I think it’ll be nice for fans and players. It’ll be interesting the first week of spring training, for sure.”

If Wood is calling something quick, you can expect others will, too.

He was one of five Giants pitchers to rank among the top 25 fastest workers in the majors last season, according to Baseball Savant.

The others are Sam Long, John Brebbia, Jakob Junis and Logan Webb.

Only one other team had more than two pitchers in the top 25 (Cleveland, three), which can be attributed to a philosophy the Giants have long hammered home with their staff, to push the pace. The phrase was emblazoned on T-shirts long before a pitch clock was put in place.

“Nobody necessarily saw this coming,” Kapler said. “We think of it more as a competitive advantage to put the hitter off balance.”

There are also some notable holdouts: Camilo Doval and Taylor Rogers were two of the slowest workers in the majors last season.

However, Kapler doesn’t envision either having an issue once games count.

“One of the reasons that pitchers move very slowly between pitches is because they can,” Kapler said. “Now that they can’t, they’re like, ‘Oh, OK, I need to prepare for that.’ It’s not something that they’re unable to do. It’s something that they know they can take advantage of. ... With Camilo but with others, there’s an awareness that there’s a penalty for this now.”

More to watch

Are stolen bases sexy again? >> The consensus seems to be yes. Players swiped a total of 2,486 bags in 2022, the 11th straight season without reaching 3,000 leaguewide, or 100 per team. But with larger bases (a 44% increase in surface area) and pitchers forced to use their pickoff moves more strategically, most around the game expect to see an increase in stolen base attempts. If a pitcher has already used up his two disengagements, might the pitch out, which has also fallen out of style, make sense in some situations? Perhaps we see more of those, too.

Will pitchers call their own games? >> At least one San Francisco starter, Alex Cobb, has already committed to trying it out. It’s something Ross Stripling and Alex Wood have experimented with during their bullpens, too. It’s made possible by the PitchCom devices introduced last season and is thought to help pitchers who decide to use it save time they would normally spend shaking off their catcher.

What strategies emerge this spring? >> It remains to be seen whether teams save their best strategies for the regular season or test them out in exhibition games — and risk opponents stealing what works. “We’ll look for ways to be good within the construct of the rules and take advantage of anything that we can,” Kapler said, acknowledging that the other 29 teams will be doing the same. One thing that won’t happen: infielders getting a running start to get around shift restrictions, which require two players to have their feet on the dirt of each side of second base when the pitch is released. That strategy has already been banned. But what about a two-man outfield, with the third outfielder positioned in shallow right field, where the third baseman or shortstop would typically shift to in the past? We’ll see what emerges over the ensuing five weeks.