The new rules:
Pace of play, trade deadline and All-Star tweaks in store for 2019, but here’s why MLB went too far with a change for 2020.
❚ Spring training notes, Pages 10-14
It’s time for baseball’s annual spring cleaning, a rules ritual that unfolds somewhere at the intersection of pragmatism, progress and desperation.
Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association have come to an agreement — or in one case, an agreement to mildly disagree — on a handful of rule changes that will have both subtle and sweeping impacts on the game.
They come amid the greater backdrop of a potential nuclear winter come 2021, when the collective bargaining agreement expires. With that in mind, the word “agreement” here is an automatic win.
2019 changes
Pace of play: Last year’s big shake-up, capping mound visits at six a game, was an objective success. Sure, we can’t fully correlate a five-minute reduction of average nine-inning game time with this rule. The bigger win was behavioral: Pitchers learned they can survive by not conferring with the catcher every other pitch. Hey, maybe the guy on second base has your signs. But maybe he doesn’t! Or maybe you can throw the ball and we’ll all find out.
Now, visits will shrink to five and, and possibly four in 2020. Fantastic. Imagine if your workplace placed a cap on meetings. It’d be time to rejoice.
In concert with shorter between-innings breaks (2 minutes, 5 seconds to 2:00 in local games, and from 2:25 to 2:00 in national games), we might yet see plenty of games end before your late local news.
The one-time trade deadline: Thank goodness. Baseball’s August trade rules are sufficiently Byzantine that most fans and surely some players forget how they even work. So, RIP to those annual explainers.
Better yet, it’s one fewer month where the industry fixates on transactions, rather than, you know, the game. Front office aggression will be frontloaded — be it in the offseason, which needs a dose of adrenaline, or at the July trade deadline, which is sufficiently zany but now should be even more stirring since it’s the last chance for players to move.
All-Star election day: Literally nobody asked for this. Sure, you see MLB working — the buzz surrounding the NBA’s AllStar roster draft is significant. The Midsummer Classic needs juice. The All-Star Game is a natural platform to amplify its biggest stars.
But layering another day, or couple of days, of voting atop several weeks of online voting seems redundant. It certainly gives the central office and individual teams a runway to get creative in promoting the top three vote-getters at each position and arousing the respective fan bases.
But if Mike Trout or Yadi Molina or Bryce Harper went wire-to-wire in some two months of voting, it’s hard to imagine them getting toppled on “election day” — and if they did, well, that just rendered millions of prior votes irrelevant.
Will the masses flock online to determine whether Gary Sanchez, Mike Zunino or Jonathan Lucroy get the nod behind the plate for the AL? Maybe so. This will certainly be a test to see how much MLB and its advanced media arm can milk from this exercise.
All-Star cash: Sixteen years after This Time It Counts, MLB and the MLBPA finally figured out World Series home-field advantage doesn’t talk the way cold, hard cash can.
With that, kudos to them for dredging up a $1 million prize for the Home Run Derby winner (and $2.5 million overall) as well as raises for the winning All-Star team. The Derby jackpot might not get a Trout involved but could be a tipping point for an emerging star still shy of his first massive payday.
They might be wise to divert a few bucks to the charity of the player’s choice, since it’s an objectively decent thing to do, and from an #optics standpoint might repel the element of fans who beat the “greedy players only getting richer” drum anytime someone gets paid.
Players will also receive bonuses for finishing in the top three of All-Star voting, a nice symbolic nudge to get players to further engage on social media to drum up fan interest.
2020 changes
Roster rumblings: A 26th man. Fewer players in September — 28 total. A to-be-determined cap on pitchers. Restrictions on position players pitching. A 15-day injured list stay for pitchers, and a 15-day minimum stay if they’re sent to the minors.
Bravo, all of it.
The September change will result in a net loss of service time for players, but that will be somewhat mitigated by all teams forced to carry 28 players by Sept. 1 (often, teams will delay roster additions a few days to save money or prioritize minor league play-offs).
The rest of it? It’s a lot of bookkeeping that essentially will create more action and more jobs for deserving players.
Carry fewer pitchers (probably a 12-man cap)? Then the ones you have must pitch longer.
Force injured (or “injured” pitchers) and optioned pitchers to stay off the roster longer? Then you’re far less inclined, or able, to manipulate the staff with constant shuttles to Class AAA and trips to the injured list with sometimes marginal injuries.
The corresponding effect: More jobs for position players. The fifth outfielder has been extinct for several years, and the fourth outfielder has been on life support, along with the third catcher and the highly specialized defensive replacement or pinch runner.
Now, a motivation exists for teams to commit to proven players on the end of their roster, rather than a constant shuffle of relatively anonymous Johnny Hardthrowers bouncing up and down from Class AAA, a move that also suppresses their service time.
Sure, teams can and will use these end-of-roster spots on rookies.
But it at least creates space for a veteran not quite good enough to start and currently not deemed “valued” enough to commit a full one year of salary.
Three-batter minimum: Ah, the bridge too far.
It’s worth noting the language here in the agreement between league and union:
The Office of the Commissioner will implement an amended Official Baseball Rule 5.10(g) requiring that starting pitchers and relief pitchers must pitch to either a minimum of three batters or the end of a half-inning (with exceptions for incapacitating injury or illness). The Players Association has agreed that it will not grieve or otherwise challenge the Office of the Commissioner’s implementation.
Translation: This is Rob Manfred’s baby, all the way.
And if you don’t like it — whether you’re a fan, manager or executive — speak up. Manfred has moved quickly and stridently as commissioner, but if the perception exists that this rule will have ugly, unintended consequences on game play and strategy, well, he’ll be the one wearing it.