This has been an issue in baseball for years, and people inevitably complain about it every September! Yet, despite this, neither the players nor the owners seem to be in any sort of a rush to change things. The owners like the opportunity to check out some of their younger players, while the Union likes the idea of getting those guys a month of Major League paychecks and service time.
But that doesn't change the fact it makes no sense that they completely change the roster size for the final month of the season. Football teams don't suddenly get 75 players for the season finale. Basketball rosters don't increase to 18 so that LeBron can "rest" before the playoffs. Yet in baseball, it's perfectly acceptable to go from having the standard seven or eight relievers suddenly become a 15-man bullpen! (Since, you know, it's so typical for you to have five lefties in the bullpen!)
I'm not completely opposed to the idea of the expanded roster. You wanna have a third catcher? Go ahead. Bring up a couple young guys to be pinch runners? Be my guest. Don't want to send somebody down to take someone else off the DL? I get it! Wait until September 1 and you don't have to.
Rather, my problem with the expanded rosters is the inequity it creates. Some teams are more financially sound than others, meaning the Yankees or Dodgers or Red Sox can handle the increased salary burden better than teams like, say, the Royals or Reds. In fact, here are the current roster sizes for those teams: Dodgers-36, Red Sox-36, Yankees-33 (which will become 35 when Judge and Chapman come back), Reds-31, Royals-31.
Back when the Nationals were still the Expos and owned by Major League Baseball, the other 29 teams didn't want to pay any extra Montreal players, so they weren't allowed to call anybody up in September. While in the wild card race! Needless to say, the Expos missed the playoffs, and players on that team flat out said the fact that they weren't able to add anyone down the stretch was one of the reasons why they had a terrible September.
That leads me to another problem. The playoff contenders are adding guys primarily as reinforcements, but, for the most part, they're still playing their main guys regularly. They have to. They're fighting for a playoff berth! Sure, the Red Sox and Indians might give some of their starters a break after they clinch, but the Yankees and A's and all the NL teams are pretty much keeping their extra guys around purely for the ride.
Meanwhile, these contenders will be playing meaningful games against opponents that will be treating the same games as, essentially, Spring Training. The Yankees play the Blue Jays and Orioles this week. What do they have to play for? So, while one team needs all the wins it can and will be playing its starters the whole way against a bunch of rookies. That affects the integrity of the pennant race! So does a team trotting out a different reliever for every batter because they've got 15 guys in the bullpen! It's September! Not Spring Training!
To me, there's a very simple compromise to be reached here. Teams can still call up as many players as they want up to 40. But they have to designate a "game roster." I'll give a little leeway here, too. Maybe the game roster is, say 28 instead of 25. Regardless, the game roster is the same for both teams. That's the key point here. You don't have the playoff-contending, 36-player Dodgers taking on the out-of-it-since-June, 31-player Reds.
Certain restrictions would be placed on that "game roster", as well. You have to declare at least three starting pitchers eligible (I'm talking actual starting pitchers, not that stupid crap the Rays do). That way you can't just swap out your starter every game as a way of keeping a 12-man bullpen. You can make your previous day's starter ineligible if you want, but another starter becomes active to replace him. And if you want to make a reliever that threw 30 pitches the day before ineligible, go ahead. (Yes, as I type this, I realize there are loopholes to this rule that teams would take advantage of, most likely in the form of those stupid "openers.")
Likewise, a guy gets a little banged up and you want to give him a couple days off, you have the ability to do so without putting yourselves down a player. Same thing when Boston and Cleveland want to rest their starters in the final week. Just make whoever you want to give the game off ineligible and you still have a full roster.
My suggestion isn't that out-of-the-box. And there are a lot of people in the game who've proposed something similar. And it makes sense. It serves both purposes. Teams that want to give their young guys a look can do that. Meanwhile, teams fighting for a playoff berth can continue playing their starters in games that are as close to normal as they were for the previous five months of the season.
In the playoffs, rosters reset back to 25 anyway, but you can change them from series to series. The Yankees and A's don't need four starting pitchers in the Wild Card Game. Whoever wins will likely have two extra hitters in the Wild Card Game that they'll swap out for starters in the Division Series.
Doing the same thing at the end of the regular season really wouldn't be much different. They can change the roster from game to game. They'll simply have 40 guys to choose from. That keeps the purists happy by preserving the integrity of the pennant races, and it keeps the Union happy because all of those players accrue service time whether they're on the game roster or not. It really is the best of both worlds.
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