Highlights of the New Labor Deal

In a year that saw lockouts in both the NFL and NBA, Major League Baseball's players and owners quietly agreed on the details of a new CBA that was officially ratified today.  As a result, the league with the most famous work stoppage in history, the 1994-95 strike that cancelled the 1994 World Series, will have 21 consecutive years of labor peace.  (Personally, I don't think MLB will ever have another work stoppage again.)

That's not to say there won't be some significant changes coming to baseball.  In fact, just the opposite.  The new CBA has a bunch of changes.  Both sides just happened to agree on what they should be and how to implement them.  The two biggest ones we already knew.  Starting in 2013, the Houston Astros are moving from the NL Central to the AL West, giving each league 15 teams and necessitating daily interleague play.  The playoffs will also be expanded, with an additional wild card team in each league and the two wild card teams facing each other in a one-game playoff prior to the start of the Division Series.  As I've said in the past, I'm not really a fan of the extra wild card team, but I'm on board with most of the other changes.

• Teams in the same division can now meet in the postseason prior to the LCS.  This was made necessary when they added the second wild card.  It's likely that both wild card teams won't be from the same division, and they can't wait until the wild card game is over to set the Division Series matchups.  So, now it'll be 1 vs. the wild card winner and 2 vs. 3.  That's the way it was already set up (unless the wild card and No. 1 seed were from the same division), so this change is pretty minimal.  And, again, it was necessary if they want to have that wild card game.  The only potential problem is when, for example, the Phillies and Braves are the two best teams in the National League, but that happens so infrequently that it's a non-issue.  Besides, this added emphasis on winning the division is definitely a good thing.
• The All-Star Break will be extended to four days in 2013, and MLB has the right to move the All-Star Game to Wednesday.  I have to say, I really like the idea of a Wednesday All-Star Game.  It seemed a little weird to think of at first, but it actually makes way too much sense to not do it.  Moving the Home Run Derby to Tuesday and All-Star Game to Wednesday would give the players Monday as a travel day (instead of after their game on Sunday).  Even more importantly, the Sunday rule for starting pitchers would no longer apply.  Wednesday is the usual throw day after a Sunday start anyway, so they'd all be available to pitch.  Ask the AL about that problem in Arizona.  As for extending the break, since most series are three games, a lot of teams already get four days off anyway.  This is probably just addressing the problem of some teams starting a four-game series on Thursday (and getting only three days off), while others started a three-game series on Friday (getting four days).  This makes it uniform.
• Players can't change uniform numbers during the season without switching teams.  No more getting traded only to have somebody else wearing your number, so you buy it from him after a couple of games.  Just like there's no more switching from 32 to 23 because you're trying to break a slump.  This is a marketing thing more than anything else.  MLB doesn't want to be stuck with tons of apparel in stores that has the wrong number on it.  I still have a couple questions about this rule, though.  What about those guys on the Triple-A shuttle?  Say a guy gets called up in May and is issued No. 28, then he gets sent down and somebody else is given that number.  Now that same guy comes back in September and 28 isn't available.  Likewise, what about the young guys who make the team out of Spring Training?  If you're given No. 84 in Spring Training, it's pretty clear you aren't expected to make the team.  But what if you do?  Do you have to keep 84 all season, or can you switch to a normal number?
• Teams and players are no longer allowed to ask official scorers to reconsider scoring decisions.  This is just a minor blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things, but I thought I'd throw it out there for Mr. Jim and his official scoring brethren.  They do a great job and have to come up with hit/error decisions almost instantaneously.  If it's close, they have the benefit of replay.  It's not their fault that a guy loses his hitting streak because that questionable play in the third inning was ruled an error instead of a hit.  Just like there's no reason to go back and change a borderline play from a hit to an error to protect a pitcher's ERA, or go the other way because it's the eighth inning and that was the other team's only hit.
• Instant replay will be expanded to fair-or-foul calls, fan interference, and whether a ball was caught or trapped.  The umpires still need to approve this one, too, but you've got to figure that expanded replay will be implemented in some form.  It's silly that the only thing they can review right now is whether or not a home run left the park.  They at least need to be able to review fair or foul down the line, too.  I'd be OK if they still wanted to limit it to home runs, but fair or foul is just as easy to review and just as important.  And we've seen that replay doesn't actually take that long or disrupt the game that much.  It's more important to get the call right.  Play everything out like the ball's fair, then send the runners back if it's foul.  I have no issue with that.  Trapped or caught is a little trickier, but I think that's the extent of where you can go with replay.  You have to leave the judgment plays (Did the throw beat the runner?  Did he make the tag in time?) in the hands of the umpires.
• The schedule formula still has to be worked out, but teams will play 17 or 18 division games and no more than 20 interleague games.  I still like my suggestion for the way the schedule should be made.  Just saying.  But I'm glad to see that they're sticking with the unbalanced schedule.  If they're going to put an added emphasis on winning the division, it wouldn't have made any sense to have teams play fewer division games.  Especially now that all six divisions are going to have the same number of teams, everybody in baseball should play the same number of division games.  Wasn't that part of the point of moving Houston in the first place?  I think the 18 interleague games that every American League team has been playing for years is the perfect number.  It has to be an even number, 12's not enough and 24's too many.  18's just right.  Three weeks out of the season to play interleague games isn't an imposition, and doesn't disrupt the flow of things as much as a whole month would.  You're still playing 144 games (89 percent of the schedule) against the teams you're fighting for playoff positions.  Most of those 144 should be against your division, which it looks like they're going to be.

There are obviously tons of other things in the new labor deal, but those are the notable highlights.  Lots of the details still need to be agreed on (like drug testing), but the deal was signed, sealed and delivered well before the deadline.  There wasn't even the hint of a work stoppage.  Isn't it reassuring to know that there's at least one league where the players and owners are actually, for the most part, on the same page and able to get along?  And isn't it ironic that it's the one that's historically had the MOST contentious negotiations?