MLB and Union talk major rule changes

[MikeAD]

https://sports.yahoo.com/a-preview-of-the-new-procedural-changes-coming-to-mlb-in-2020-162807254.html

 

Changes for 2019:

• Trade deadline is July 31st.  No trading of players who have cleared waivers, etc after that.  Only one deadline.  (Source 1 Source 2)

Changes for 2020:

• Roster expansion by one to 26, including a maximum 13 pitchers, in the regular and postseasons. After Aug. 31, rosters may grow to as many as 28, with a maximum of 14 pitchers. 
• Increasing the injured list and option-recall duration for pitchers from 10 to 15 days.
• The shortening of between-inning breaks at Major League Baseball’s discretion.
• Extra innings of the All-Star Game would begin with a runner at second base.

Players Association has rejected the 3 batters per relief pitcher proposal. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, MikeAD said:

Roster expansion by one to 26, including a maximum 13 pitchers, in the regular and postseasons. After Aug. 31, rosters may grow to as many as 28, with a maximum of 14 pitchers. 

That's pretty radical.  We might see a handful of games, at least before September, with as few as five or six pitchers.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, MikeAD said:

https://sports.yahoo.com/a-preview-of-the-new-procedural-changes-coming-to-mlb-in-2020-162807254.html

 

Changes for 2019:

• Trade deadline is July 31st.  No trading of players who have cleared waivers, etc after that.  Only one deadline.  (Source 1 Source 2)

Changes for 2020:

• Roster expansion by one to 26, including a maximum 13 pitchers, in the regular and postseasons. After Aug. 31, rosters may grow to as many as 28, with a maximum of 14 pitchers.
• Increasing the injured list and option-recall duration for pitchers from 10 to 15 days.
• The shortening of between-inning breaks at Major League Baseball’s discretion.
• Extra innings of the All-Star Game would begin with a runner at second base.

Players Association has rejected the 3 batters per relief pitcher proposal. 

Wow, that’s pretty much the end of the September call-up as we know it.    Buck always said the September expansion was ridiculous, even though he used it to his advantage very well.    

[DrungoHazewood]

25 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Wow, that’s pretty much the end of the September call-up as we know it.    Buck always said the September expansion was ridiculous, even though he used it to his advantage very well.    

I like the end of (most) September call-ups and the unified July 31st trading deadline.  It's comical that you can have one team for 4-5 months, then change a bunch of things and play with added stars and a bunch of extra pinch hitters/runners/defensive replacements the last month or two.  While the bad teams are fielding lineups with six guys who spent the year in Walla Walla and Kalamazoo.  I don't know of any other sport that allows radical roster reconstruction in the most important parts of the season.

[Hallas]

On 2/21/2019 at 9:32 AM, SurhoffRules said:

Another take on what's slowing the game down: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/foul-balls-are-the-pace-of-play-problem-nobodys-talking-about/

I believe this is one of the side effects of shrinking in-play foul territory (which has been a design decision done by most teams building stadiums in order to get seats closer to the action.)

If we had more stadiums like The Coliseum in Oakland then it would be a lot less prevalent.  Or even somewhere in between.  Not every stadium has to be that expansive in foul territory, but you could at least make it so a player has to walk more than 5 steps to get from the foul line to the fence.

[Rene88]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

Wow, that’s pretty much the end of the September call-up as we know it.    Buck always said the September expansion was ridiculous, even though he used it to his advantage very well.    

Yeah-first thing I thought of was Buck being critical of September expansion. I would have made it 30 myself.

[Hallas]

It sounds like they're also trying to tackle  the economic situation of the baseball "middle class" as well, and disincentivize service time hoarding.  I'm not really sure how you accomplish this.  The best I can come up with is to remove an option year and remove 1 year of team control.  But I don't know what concessions that MLBPA makes to get these two things.  Maybe a system where you have 4 years of pre-arb control with a large minimum salary bump (say, 750K/year) and 1 year of arbitration (which is priced to be equivalent to Arb-3 players under the current system.) Or a salary cap, but that's not very likely.

[Can_of_corn]

14 minutes ago, Hallas said:

It sounds like they're also trying to tackle  the economic situation of the baseball "middle class" as well, and disincentivize service time hoarding.  I'm not really sure how you accomplish this.  The best I can come up with is to remove an option year and remove 1 year of team control.  But I don't know what concessions that MLBPA makes to get these two things.  Maybe a system where you have 4 years of pre-arb control with a large minimum salary bump (say, 750K/year) and 1 year of arbitration (which is priced to be equivalent to Arb-3 players under the current system.) Or a salary cap, but that's not very likely.

That's easy.  They give in on the International draft.  That way the players don't actually give up anything, they just screw over some 16 year olds most of whom will never be in the Union.

[Hallas]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

That's easy.  They give in on the International draft.  That way the players don't actually give up anything, they just screw over some 16 year olds most of whom will never be in the Union.

didn't they already do that though?

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Hallas said:

didn't they already do that though?

Owners wanted a draft last time and they settled for the current slotting system instead.

Or did you mean that the Union makes a practice of trading away the rights of non-union members, because yea, they totally do that.

[DrungoHazewood]

15 hours ago, Hallas said:

I believe this is one of the side effects of shrinking in-play foul territory (which has been a design decision done by most teams building stadiums in order to get seats closer to the action.)

If we had more stadiums like The Coliseum in Oakland then it would be a lot less prevalent.  Or even somewhere in between.  Not every stadium has to be that expansive in foul territory, but you could at least make it so a player has to walk more than 5 steps to get from the foul line to the fence.

In the 1890-1905 era foul balls became a big problem.  In the beginning none of them were strikes.  Then in 1894 they made foul bunts strikes, because there were a lot of hitters who would just bunt foul any strike they didn't want to swing at.  But there were still guys like Keeler and Roy Thomas (mentioned in the article - look at his bb-ref page, there's nobody remotely like that anymore) who'd swing and foul off pitches forever.  So in 1903 (AL) and 1904 (NL) they made all foul balls (except with two strikes) a strike (there are varying online dates for the year the foul strike rule was implemented in each league, but '03 and '04 are when you clearly see spikes in the strikeout rates).

Anyway... they saw a problem, and they implemented a fix.  I have less faith that the powers-that-be will do that today.  Although today it's not quite so simple because the foul balls aren't mostly on purpose like 120 years ago.  You can't mandate bigger foul territory.  I think moving the mound back would help somewhat.  I guess we'll see what happens in the Atlantic League this year - if their record-keeping is good enough to give us foul ball data.

[DrungoHazewood]

15 hours ago, Hallas said:

Or a salary cap, but that's not very likely.

I think the MLBPA will propose a cap in conjunction with a fixed percentage of revenues somewhere north of where it is today.  Something like 45% of revenues go to player salaries in exchange for a $200M cap.  Both mild enough to be acceptable.

[Aglets]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think the MLBPA will propose a cap in conjunction with a fixed percentage of revenues somewhere north of where it is today.  Something like 45% of revenues go to player salaries in exchange for a $200M cap.  Both mild enough to be acceptable.

Do you think the owners would approve a salary floor as well?   I'm pretty sure that would appeal to the MLBPA.

[ChosenOne21]

Couldn't most service time gaming be solved by declaring players free agents after 6 or 7 years of service time instead of the 6.190 or whatever it currently takes? There'd at least be no more three weeks in April when you belong in the majors

[eddie83]

Says here 3 batter minimum is happening. I still wonder if a pitcher finishes an inning what they do. 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26259301/mlb-union-agree-1-trade-deadline?platform=amp&__twitter_impression=true