Speeding it up
Manfred: MLB pace changes will happen with or without union
Major League Baseball will change rules to speed games next year with or without an agreement with the players’ association.
Management proposed last off-season to institute a 20-second pitch clock, allow one trip to the mound by a catcher per pitcher each inning and raise the bottom of the strike zone from just beneath the kneecap to its pre-1996 level at the top of the kneecap. The union didn’t agree, and clubs have the right to impose those changes unilaterally for 2018.
Players and MLB have held initial bargaining since summer, and MLB chief legal officer Dan Halem said this week he would like an agreement by mid-January.
“My preferred path is a negotiated agreement with the players, but if we can’t get an agreement we are going to have rule changes in 2018 one way or the other,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday after a quarterly owners’ meeting.
Nine-inning games averaged a record 3 hours, 5 minutes during the regular season and 3:29 during the post-season.
There are ongoing talks for a new posting system with Japan to replace the deal that expired Nov. 1, one that would allow star Japanese pitcher/outfielder Shohei Otani to leave the Pacific League’s Nippon Ham Fighters to sign with a big league team.
MLB agreed last month to a framework with Nippon Professional Baseball that would keep the rules of the expired deal pretty much in place this offseason, allowing a high posting fee of $20 million.
Starting next off-season, the fee would be 15 per cent of the guarantee of a major league
contract and 20 per cent of the signing bonus of a minor league contract, a person familiar with that negotiation said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement was made.
The union informed MLB on Thursday that it had set a Monday deadline for reaching a deal, according to Manfred. The union doesn’t want the uncertainty of Otani’s situation to hold up teams’ negotiations with other free agents, another person familiar with the talks said, also speaking on condition
of anonymity because no announcement was made.
“I’m hopeful that the union will find a way to get on board and we’ll open that player market up and let players who want to play here see if they can get signed,” Manfred said. “These are relatively small issues.” On other topics:
RECORD HOME RUNS Owners were told experts are looking into the specifications of baseballs after a record 6,105 home runs were hit this season.
“There’s going to be activity on that front during the off-season,
and we’ll have more to say on that at some point during the off-season,” Manfred said. PROTECTIVE NETTING Owners were updated about team decisions on expanded protective netting, made after several fans were injured by foul balls this year. MLB has not decided whether to change the league-wide minimums.
“I’m not prepared to say exactly what next year’s going to be,” Manfred said. MONTREAL EXPANSION Denis Coderre, the Montreal mayor who pushed for MLB’s
return to the city, was defeated last week in his bid for re-election. Manfred repeated that no decisions on expansion will be made until after Oakland and Tampa Bay resolve their quests for new ballpark.
“I’m not sure who’s going to be the mayor of Montreal at that point,” Manfred said. “I do know that it would be extraordinarily unlikely for baseball to return to Montreal without some concrete plan as to where a team would play. We’re not going back to playing in Olympic Stadium.”