San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Will new rules make baseball better?
Baseball has changed over the years, decades and centuries, but we’ve had so many rule changes lately that it’s tough to keep up.
We’re here for you. With the 2022 season starting Friday for the Bay Area teams, here’s a glimpse into the rule changes and whether they’re suitable:
Umps mic’d up: This is a beaut. This provides more transparency and accountability, and fans will love it. Similar to the NFL and NBA, fans will hear over the sound system the explanations from umpires on the review process. In the past, fans were left to guess. Let’s take this one step further. Post umpire statistics including their strike-zone success rate on the scoreboard. Player stats are posted. Why not ump stats? For that matter, list the umps reviewing calls in New York. Players can be demoted to the minors or released, and that should be true of umpires as well. If an ump in the minors has better success rates than one in the majors, he or she needs to be promoted.
Universal DH: I loved the separate rules for the AL and NL, especially with the Giants and A’s both playing in the Bay Area. We had the luxury of having our choice. But teams stopped taking pitcher at-bats seriously and stopped spending much time working with pitchers on their swings (out of injury concerns), so it’s time to move on. There’s no longer a difference between the leagues. MLB’s next step should be geographical realignment, like the NBA with its Western and Eastern conferences.
Ohtani rule: A starting pitcher who doubles as the DH can remain in the game as the DH after his pitching stint is over. This will promote the use of two-way players, but mostly it was designed to showcase the great Shohei Ohtani, which always is a good thing. Somewhere, Madison Bumgarner is probably still taking hacks and itching to perform double duty.
Ghost runners: This wasn’t going to continue a third season, but the rule was negotiated back into play. Every extra inning, a runner will be placed on second base in an effort to finish games quickly and help prevent injuries. This one’s awkward for baseball traditionalists. How about going halfway and playing one extra inning in usual fashion and then using ghost runners in the 11th or later? Maybe it can be reconsidered for 2023.
Nine-inning doubleheaders:
Yes, yes, yes. Seven-inning doubleheaders were played in the first two seasons of the pandemic, but it’s glorious those are a thing of the past. Bumgarner nevertheless should have been awarded a no-hitter for throwing seven hitless innings a couple of years ago. He was credited with a complete game, after all. It wasn’t his fault it wasn’t scheduled for a full nine.
12 playoff teams: OK, 40% of MLB teams make the postseason. Not as good as the previous setup (33%, 10 teams) but much better than the 47% (or 14) that owners wanted. Yes, more buzz is anticipated with the playoff races involving more teams, but the fear is that mediocrity will be rewarded. Under this format, the Reds would have made the playoffs last year with 83 wins. Teams could decide against beefing up payroll if they can make the playoffs with a record near .500. We might also see much more workload management if the regular season is that little bit less important. We’ll be watching.
28 players: This makes sense with the shortened spring training. Instead of opening with 26-man rosters, teams will have two extra bodies through May 1. We can imagine Gabe Kapler and Mark Kotsay finding ways to employ 20-plus players especially at a time when starting pitchers’ workloads aren’t built up.
30 humidors: Every ballpark will have a humidor so that baseballs maintain the same consistency in Colorado, San Francisco, Oakland and every other locale. The Giants will store their walk-in humidor at the bottom of the clubhouse steps behind their dugout, and Oakland’s will be beyond the right-field wall. The Rockies were the first to use a humidor to counteract the effects of high altitude and low humidity — in other words, make the ball a bit less supercharged a mile high — and teams followed suit. By last season, 10 teams had humidors (neither Bay Area team), so MLB figured it would be best if all teams conformed. Stay tuned for how the ball will carry at Oracle Park and the Coliseum.