MLB will be going to a three-batter minimum rule in 2020 that should make it especially difficult for lefties who struggle versus righties to find work.

[backwardsk]

Haven’t seen the full rule written out.  Does this mean if a guy comes in an inning and gets two outs to end an inning, you can’t pinch hit for him?

[Tony-OH]

59 minutes ago, mdbdotcom said:

I expect we will see an epidemic of left specialists experiencing minor arm soreness and needing to be removed from a game.

That's what makes this rule absurd. What is going to stop pitchers/teams from faking "injuries" if they have a better matchup for a key part of the game? This sounds crazy, but what if you have a guy who is rested enough only to throw about 20 pitches and uses them up in two batters? Are they going risk injury by forcing the pitcher to stay out there?

[wildbillhiccup]

5 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Or the high end $10 million/yr plus setup relievers.

Yep, although I think the days of us seeing those types of contracts for RPs might be over. 

[Aristotelian]

47 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I think this is ludicrous.

While I do not like the one batter specialist, I dislike even more, MLB dictating how the game will be played.

 

 

+1. Will they require pinch hitters to play defense or pinch runners to hit? The 25 man roster is a natural limit. Other than that, let managers get the most out of their players and don't mess with the game.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, weams said:

Discuss.

Good!

(End of my discussion.)

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, wildbillhiccup said:

Yep, although I think the days of us seeing those types of contracts for RPs might be over. 

Chapman got 3/48 a week ago.

[MDtransplant757]

Baseball is trying to appeal to the youths not by marketing their players like the NBA and NFL but by changing the rules to make everything more complicated. They're trying to reduce time of games, but offense prolongs games. 

[Tony-OH]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Good!

(End of my discussion.)

So you are fine with dictating that a pitcher must face three batters even if he's gone over his prescribed pitch limit for that game? It's an absurd rule that will not help speed up the game.

[weams]

12 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

Haven’t seen the full rule written out.  Does this mean if a guy comes in an inning and gets two outs to end an inning, you can’t pinch hit for him?

I think it is within an inning. 

[Philip]

Every time I think of Mad Fred, and that is a typo that I’m going to leave in, I wonder if he’s deliberately trying to ruin the game. He has no sense of The “game of chess” aspect of this game. He has no response for a successful strategy except forbidding that strategy.

 Some of the things he’s done can be legitimately debated(although I personally dislike everything) but some things are just without reason or benefit. 

[Philip]

12 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

So you are fine with dictating that a pitcher must face three batters even if he's gone over his prescribed pitch limit for that game? It's an absurd rule that will not help speed up the game.

Amen!

It’s stupid. And there is no reason for it. It makes the game less interesting. It takes away an important part of a managers strategy. It neutralizes some of his tools, it’s just stupid.

[Redskins Rick]

17 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

+1. Will they require pinch hitters to play defense or pinch runners to hit? The 25 man roster is a natural limit. Other than that, let managers get the most out of their players and don't mess with the game.

Personally, I would like to see it increase to 26, and stay that way,no added man for the 2nd half of a double header.

Good point, pinch hitters and pinch runners can be a key point in the game. 

[weams]

http://m.mlb.com/glossary/rules/three-batter-minimum

Pitch to an end of a half inning. So can he a one batter guy.

Quote

MLB will institute a rule change beginning in 2020 that requires pitchers to either face a minimum of three batters in an appearance or pitch to the end of a half-inning, with exceptions for injuries and illnesses.

 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, wildbillhiccup said:

I think a better solution would have been to put a cap on the number of pitching moves you can make in each game (not counting injury-related moves) and let the manager's determine how he wants to use those moves. This seems very reactionary and definitely works against the smaller market teams who are forced to be more creative with their relievers because they can't afford high end starting pitchers. 

There's always the conflict between creative use of rules and rosters, and not wanting to restrict competitive advantages small market teams often want to use.  At some point you have to say just go play an engaging form of baseball instead of doing 11 mid-inning changes a game. And figure out other solutions to market imbalances.  It doesn't do us much good to have five hour games that nobody wants to watch just so long as the Orioles have a 10% better chance of winning those unwatchable games.

My idea was to just disallow all mid-inning pitching changes.  You can use as many pitchers as you like, but unless you're injured you can't come out until the inning is over.  And if you're injured... see two answers below.

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

Then you could end up with a situation in which a manger bungles his moves and you have a one inning reliever out there that doesn't have his stuff getting lit up while throwing 40+ pitches.

Or you use a position player.  

1 hour ago, mdbdotcom said:

I expect we will see an epidemic of left specialists experiencing minor arm soreness and needing to be removed from a game.

That's easy.  Make the rule that if you're removed from the game for an injury you can't pitch for five days. Or 10.

1 hour ago, Redskins Rick said:

I think this is ludicrous.

While I do not like the one batter specialist, I dislike even more, MLB dictating how the game will be played.

MLB has always dictated every aspect of how the game will be played!!  All rules in all sports are arbitrary. They are what they are because a bunch of people on some committee decided that's what they are.  Moses didn't come down from Mount Cooperstown with the rules on stone tablets.  Mostly they're what a bunch of guys from the 1800s came up with, fumbling around, trying to come up with something that made them money.  They were pretty spot-on about a lot.  But they couldn't foresee every loophole and every change that would happen 120 years later.  They certainly didn't envision managers doing six mid-inning pitching changes a game.  Prior to the last major changes in the rules around 1900 it had been less than a decade since they allowed any unchallenged substitutes at all.  In 1890 if you wanted to bring in a LOOGY he'd better also be your RFer because the other manager was just going to say no.

But here in 2019 the primary goal of the rules is to foster an engaging, entertaining, money-making sport of baseball.  If they allow every single rule to be stretched to its logical conclusion we may well end up with a sport nobody wants to pay to see any more.  

[Redskins Rick]

10 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

But here in 2019 the primary goal of the rules is to foster an engaging, entertaining, money-making sport of baseball.  If they allow every single rule to be stretched to its logical conclusion we may well end up with a sport nobody wants to pay to see any more.  

While I will agree with your post that MLB is trying to "tweak" [my word]  the game to make it more engaging. Lord knows, they need to.

IMO, this doesn't do that much.