Pitchers and catchers have reported to Florida and Arizona, which only means one thing. Baseball season is close! And that also means the rules changes that were first announced last season are now official.
Sorry fans of the LOOGY, but pitchers must face a minimum of three batters (or end the inning) now. No more half innings where the manager feels the need to make three pitching changes to get through four batters! Likewise, rosters expanded by one, but teams are limited to 13 pitchers. So, no more eight-man bullpens and two-man benches! And they finally did something about the September rosters! Now it's only 28 guys instead of 40. So, no more ridiculous unlimited number of relievers that turn the most important games of the season into Spring Training!
My favorite new rule is the wrinkle they added to the injured list and Minor League options. Too many teams were taking advantage of the 10-day injured list and option time and using it as a shuttle to have fresh arms in the bullpen every day. Not to mention those suspicious "injuries" to fifth starters so that they can miss a start and their team had an extra reliever for 10 days!
MLB caught on, though, and went back to the old 15-day injured list for pitchers (while keeping it at 10 for position players), which will make it a lot harder to play those games. Teams can still try it, but there's a big difference between not having a guy for 10 days and not having him for two weeks. Hopefully this means we won't have the daily pitcher transactions anymore and teams will be more selective with their use of the injured list for pitchers. Who knows? Maybe they'll even use it for its intended purpose moving forward!
I also like that they made clear rules about when position players can pitch. It was definitely getting out of control. Last season set a record for the most pitching appearances by position players, and it wasn't just in mop-up duty at the end of blowouts or deep into extra innings. Teams can still do it. They're just limited as to when. I'd like to see a similar rule implemented where pitchers can't play the field or pinch hit unless their team is out of position players, but one thing at a a time.
There is one new rule that I'm very much NOT on board with, however. In fact, I think it's one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time! I'm, of course, talking about the idea of expanded playoffs, which has evidently "gained traction."
Why, oh why, is this idea even seeing the light of day?! There's not a single thing about it that sounds at all appealing. Nothing can be as bad as the NBA's dumb proposal with the midseason tournament and play-in round to for the lowest seeds (that's exactly what the NBA needs, more sub- or at .500 playoff teams!). This comes close, though.
One of the best and worst things about youth sports is that everybody gets a trophy. And that's exactly what this feels like. The MLB season is six months long for a reason. After six months, you know which are the best teams. And only those teams make the playoffs. It's not like every other sport (especially basketball and hockey) where seemingly everyone qualifies and the regular season feels like nothing more than jockeying for playoff seeding.
But too many owners feel left out, so they want to expand the playoffs from 10 teams to 14. This way baseball can be just like basketball and hockey and reward mediocre teams with playoff berths! Instead of limiting it to the top 33 percent of baseball, they'd like to see the top 47 percent keep playing beyond the regular season. Do we really need that? Especially when you have a number of teams that are intentionally non-competitive so that they can stockpile draft picks?
And if that wasn't bad enough, the proposed format is just as dumb! The No. 1 seed gets a bye into the Division Series, but with the Wild Card round being expanded to a best-of-three, that would mean they're sitting around for a week between the end of the regular season and their first game of the postseason. As teams with long layoffs between the LCS and the World Series have shown us, more rest doesn't always equate to an advantage.
Hang on, it gets worse. The other two division winners would get to choose their opponent in MLB's very own "Selection Sunday" TV special after all the game are finished on the final day of the regular season. The No. 2 seed gets the first choice, then the third division winner, with the other two wild card teams left to face each other. And instead of a single Wild Card Game like they have now, these would be best-of-three series with all three games at the higher-seeded team.
Hopefully this is all just a distraction to get people talking about something other than the Astros and not something they're actually seriously thinking about. Because there are so many reasons why this is ridiculously dumb that I've lost count! And some fans are still getting used to the idea of the Wild Card Game. Now you want to throw four wild card teams at them?!
Then there's the No. 1 seed. As I already mentioned, you've got them sitting around for a week between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs. But they would have "home field advantage" yet not play the most home games in their league! Assuming the Division Series went five and the LCS went seven, the 1-seed would play seven home games (the same as they do now). But since the No. 2 seed would potentially have three home games in the wild card round, they'd get nine if every round went the distance (10 if the 1-seed loses in the Division Series).
Meanwhile, with half the teams making the playoffs, you'd have everybody thinking they're in contention well into August. The whole point of going to a single trade deadline on July 31 was to make teams decide if they're contenders or not! This would make that trade deadline practically irrelevant. Because so many teams would think they have a chance that none of the teams that are actually good would have a chance to get better for the stretch run.
Would it make for fewer meaningless games in August and September? Yes. But is it worth that trade-off? I don't think so. Especially since you'd have three "playoff" teams that don't even get the revenue that comes with the 40,000 fans in attendance at a home playoff game (even if it's in the afternoon, which some would have to be since we'd be going from two Wild Card games to as many as 18!).
You know TV has something to do with this, too. More playoff teams means more playoff games to sell to FOX or TBS or ESPN or somebody else (or to even keep for themselves on MLB Network). And that means more money in the owners' pockets (and more revenue sharing funds to be distributed to the smaller-market teams). So, no, I don't think it's a coincidence that they're talking about 2022 as the year these expanded playoffs would go into effect. Because TBS' contract for half of the postseason expires after the 2021 season.
Predictably, reaction to this is lukewarm. Some people think it's a great idea. But there are also a lot of players and fans who agree with me and think this is the dumbest idea Rob Manfred has had yet (and he's had some dumb ones).
Right now it's just something that's being discussed. Hopefully it doesn't get any farther than that. Because MLB needs expanded playoffs about as much as college football needs more bowl games. (Oh wait, that's happening too.)
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