Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced several proposed rule changes. Manfred has looked into to speeding up the game and grow the interest in baseball. For the most part I like the idea of these changes. Should they accept these changes?
One major change is the designated hitter being added to the National League. The DH is the one unique difference between the two leagues. I like the fact that pitchers hit in the National League, but with inter-league play being a big part of baseball now, it gives the NL a disadvantage in American League ballparks. This allows NL teams to have a designated hitter when they face AL teams. It also prevents a pitcher from getting injured, especially pitchers from the American League who only bat a few times a year. Yankees pitchers Chen-Ming Wang and Masahiro Tanaka have both got injured from batting. Chen-Ming Wang was never the same pitcher after that injury. It is better for baseball taking out the risk of injury for pitchers even though there are some pitchers that can hit. It is fun to watch pitchers like Bartolo Colon bat, but it is not worth the injury potential. MLB is looking at lowering the pitching mound. This is a way to increase offensive and try to decrease strikeouts. I don’t believe this will make a difference, but if it helps make the game more exciting than I am all for it. It is a change that shouldn’t happen. They are looking at a rule to allow two-sport amateurs to sign major league contracts. They don’t have to do this one because of there being very few athletes who are in a position to be two-sport athletes. This is because of Kyler Murray who was drafted by the Oakland A’s at ninth and decided to go to the NFL over MLB. If it doesn’t work out for him, he could lose out on baseball. Athletes will decide to pick one of the two sports they play and not toy around with both. It is becoming less common for athletes who can play in division I athletics to play more than one sport. The MLB is hoping this will allow athletes still consider baseball and increase their chance of going toward the MLB. A single trade deadline before the all-star break was also proposed. This will prevent teams that are out of it from trading away all their best trade assets. Currently the trade deadline is July 31 and the waiver trade deadline is August 31. This proposal will have one deadline ending before the middle of July instead of allowing players to be dealt until the end of August. This is a great idea to prevent teams from trading away all their best players during the season. If the deadline was June 30, there won’t be as many fire sales because of a teams season being over. If they plan on adding a waiver period, it should be from July 1 to the all-star break. There is a proposal to stop tanking with pushing toward a draft penalty for losing teams. My idea is for the first round to push them back at least five picks instead of picking first they pick sixth. The win count should be 68-70 with the teams under getting their first-round pick moved back. A team isn’t going to tank if it means getting a worst pick than a team that won 75 games in the first round. I think they also should make the second-round pick one of the last few picks of the round. It forces an organization to put a team out there to win. The earlier trade deadline and getting a worst pick for being bad combined will make the season more interesting. Teams aren’t going to give away all their best players if it means they get a worst draft pick. It will give fans of bad teams a reason to watch their teams in the last couple months of the season because they will have something to play for.
There are several proposals to speed up the game. A three-batter minimum for pitchers. This will prevent a pitcher from coming in to face one batter. This will allow there to be fewer pitching changes during a game. I don’t like seeing several pitching changes in an inning because it gets annoying having a few commercial breaks during a half-inning. If you are trying to get people into baseball too many pitching changes will tune them out. You can say it takes away from some of the strategy of pitching changes because you can’t bring in a pitcher in any situation. A manager will still need to figure out what pitcher should be used for the three upcoming batters in the current situation. A pitcher who got final out of the inning with facing one or two batters shouldn’t have to face a second or third batter the next inning because this will defeat the purpose of this change. The limit could also reset with relievers who pitched the previous inning. They would have to face at least three batters in their second inning of work. Another change is adding a 20 second pitch clock. I believe this is a great move to speed up the game. This will keep the action moving throughout the game. More action is what baseball need to get more people into the sport. It should only be used when no runners are on base, because of how pitchers and baserunners could manipulate it. Hopefully, pitchers keep up the pace with runners on and don’t put the action to a crawl. A good consistent pace will help make the game more interesting. The MLB is considering increasing the roster to 26, while decreasing the September roster from 40 to 28 and maximum of 12 pitchers. In September, calls ups lead to more pitching changes, which slows down the game. This prevents a team bringing up a bunch of pitchers in the bullpen and using them a lot. I like the idea of decreasing the roster in September but having 28 active players for the game with up to 32 players on the roster. There should be a max of twelve pitchers active, which includes the starters. Last season, Rob Manfred decreased the amount of mound visits to six and can reduce it even further looking to decrease it to four this season and three by 2020. The reduction of mound visits helped with speeding up the game and decreasing it further will continue to reduce the game time. It should get dropped to four and stop at there. The reduction to six has worked out the way you hoped because it stopped a catcher going out to the pitcher often, like Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez. It would become interesting strategically with how you should use your mound visits. It would work like timeouts in other sports, where you need to use the few you have at the right time.
For the most part these changes are good for baseball and will help the league. These changes will help Major League Baseball increase the speed of the game and generate more interest in the league. Baseball is looking toward remaining a major sport in today’s society.
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