MLB Commissioner for a Day

The week between Christmas and New Years is the week time forgets. Everything is a little less hectic, and baseball news typically slows to a crawl. This year there is no baseball news at all because the owners locked out the players. So, I’m taking advantage of this week to cover two topics I’ve wanted to cover for a while. Earlier this week I looked at the role the Yankees played in the 1992 Expansion Draft. Today I’m going to play commissioner.

Specifically, I’m going to lay out a few rule changes intended to improve the game’s pace and aesthetics, because boy, they stink right now. The average nine-inning game took three hours and 10 minutes in 2021 (a record high) even though only 66.97% of plate appearances resulted in a ball in play (a record low for a non-pandemic season). That’s a lot of time spent waiting around for something to happen. Surely this can be improved.

I’m not going to bother discussing economic matters because, frankly, I’m sick of talking about money and luxury tax thresholds and service time manipulation the like. I’m going to stick to the game on the field, which took a backseat during labor talks. Commissioner Rob Manfred told Jayson Stark (subs. req’d) rule changes were not part of collective bargaining sessions immediately prior to the lockout.

“Frankly, based on the discussions at the table, we saw it as another contentious issue and tried to put it to one side in an effort to get to an agreement on the theory that we could deal with it mid-term of the next agreement,” Manfred said. We’ll see whether they discuss rule changes as part of future talks. Now it’s time to put on my commissioner’s hat and sound like an old crank.

Pitch clock

Remember when Manfred first took over and all he talked about was pace of play? Then he just stopped talking about it? That’s because of gambling. I’m not making that up. Manfred admitted it. MLB and the other sports leagues are all about gambling revenue and MLB’s pace is perfect for live betting, so the commissioner stopped trying to speed the game up.

“The biggest issue is that sports betting is the biggest opportunity of fan engagement,” Manfred told Sportico in April. “I’ll tell you a funny story. One night I was coming back from an event and the phone rang and it was (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver. And we were talking about something and he said, ‘Rob you gotta stop talking about the pace of game. Your pace of game is going to be absolutely perfect for sports betting.’ And he’s right.”

I don’t care even a tiny little bit about gambling (at least not until MGM or DraftKings starts paying me directly!) but I care about pace of play. Baseball is a big commitment. Three and a half hours a night for 162 nights a year? It’s a lot. I’ve gotten into the NBA the last few months and it’s great. Action is close to nonstop and the game is over in two hours. I love it. That kinda pace isn’t possible for MLB, but the sport’s current pace can be improved.

A pitch clock is a no-brainer. The average pace between pitches within an at-bat is close to 25 seconds nowadays, and that’s because pitchers deliver the ball, then take that little bit of extra time to recover so they can load up and throw max effort again. The continually increasing time between pitches is mostly strategic. It’s not coincidence or laziness.

The bare minimum is a 20-second clock with the bases empty. The rule book has a 12-second rule, though the 12 seconds start when the pitcher receives the ball back from the catcher. There's nothing stopping the catcher from hanging onto the ball a little longer. My 20 seconds would start after the pitch is caught. Here is MLB Rule 8.04:

When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call “Ball.”

The 12-second timing starts when the pitcher is in possession of the ball and the batter is in the box, alert to the pitcher. The timing stops when the pitcher releases the ball.

The intent of this rule is to avoid unnecessary delays. The umpire shall insist that the catcher return the ball promptly to the pitcher, and that the pitcher take his position on the rubber promptly. Obvious delay by the pitcher should instantly be penalized by the umpire.

My perfect world scenario is a 20-second pitch clock with the bases empty in 2022, an 18-second pitch clock with the bases empty and a 20-second pitch clock with men on base in 2023, and a 15-second pitch clock with the bases empty and an 18-second pitch clock with men on base in 2024. It’ll never happen, but a man can dream.

A few things about this. First, Triple-A and Double-A implemented a 20-second pitch clock in 2015, so many big leaguers have experienced it. In fact, Stark (subs. req’d) says over 80% of players to appear in an MLB game in 2021 played with a pitch clock in the minors. This isn’t a new concept we’re hoisting on a bunch of old timers. Most of the league has experience with this already. (High-A West added a 15-second pitch clock this year.)

Second, the minor league pitch clocks cut down on the time of game pretty drastically, at least initially. The Triple-A and Double-A pitch clock cut 11 minutes off the average time of game in its first year, and it was 20 minutes for Low-A West this year. The problem? Time of game eventually began to creep back up. Here’s a chart from the great J.J. Cooper:

This is an enforcement issue, not a pitch clock issue. As is often the case when something like this is left up to the umpires (remember when hitters had to stay in the box after taking a pitch?), the enforcement begins to lag. The same thing happened with the sticky stuff crackdown. The checks aren’t rigorous and spin rates began to creep up. A pitch clock is only half the battle. It must actually be enforced to be effective. That’s on MLB and the umpires, not the players.

To enforce the pitch clock, I suggest MLB create a pitch clock ump who sits in the press box next to the official scorer, and keeps track of the pitch clock on an official MLB timer. That way the Astros couldn’t cheat and calibrate the clocks displayed in the ballpark to 21 seconds for their pitchers and 19 seconds for the opponent, or something like that. If there’s a violation, the pitch clock ump buzzes the home plate ump, and he calls a ball. Easy peasy.

Three, there is a performance component to this. Force pitchers to pick up the pace and the quality of their stuff could slip. Stark (subs. req’d) says average fastball velocity in the minors was identical in the pitch clock and non-pitch clock leagues, though there’s more to it than velocity. Other characteristics (spin, axis, extension, etc.) could take a hit, particularly as pitch counts build and pitchers get fatigued.

I see this as a feature, not a bug. If a pitch clock causes even a slight decline in pitch quality, it could lead to more balls in play and more offense in general, and I am 100% in favor of that. Here’s a graph from Travis Sawchik. When I first saw this it shook me to my core.

More pitches result in foul balls than balls in play these days. And that swinging strike line is inching closer and closer to the ball in play line too. I don’t like that. If a pitch clock and thus less recovery time between pitches can lead to more balls in play (through a decline in pitch quality) at the expense of foul balls and swings and misses, how is that a bad thing?

And four, I understand there will be injury concerns. Force pitchers to pick up the pace and they could get hurt. Everything in baseball is inherently risky though, and as long as you give players enough notice, they’ll adjust. There were injury concerns about the sticky stuff crackdown too, and they never manifested. (Tyler Glasnow blamed his Tommy John surgery on the crackdown, though he later admitted his elbow had been hurting since 2019, so he’s just a giant baby looking for someone to blame.)

Maybe a pitch clock could reduce injuries? Right now guys are throwing max effort and taking as long as they need to recover between pitches. Cut down on the recovery time and they will be forced to pace themselves more on the mound, and cutting down on the number of max effort throws could cut down on the number of injuries. Just a thought.

Anyway, a pitch clock is long overdue. 20 seconds is a reasonable starting point, then gradually trim it down to 18 (or even 15!) seconds. It’s not about making games shorter, necessarily. It’s about reducing the downtime within games. Watching pitchers stand around and take deep breaths for 25-30 seconds between pitches is a snoozefest.

Pitcher usage

I understand and appreciate the opener and bullpen game strategies, but they make for a poor viewing experience, and I think baseball is at the point where intervention is necessary. This postseason was a nightmare. There were so many bullpen games and pitching changes, and of course postseason commercial breaks are longer. It was the perfect storm of dragging a nine-inning game out as long as possible. Another graph from Sawchik:

There’s just no way a non-baseball fan clicking through the channels landed on a postseason game and said “hell yeah this is action packed! I’m hooked!” There are countless ways to entertain yourself nowadays, many of which are cheaper and less time-consuming than being a baseball fan. MLB has to cater to shorter attention spans if it plans to remain relevant.

Anyway, teams use openers and bullpen games because they work – the Dodgers used 25 bullpen games in 2021, which is more or less a No. 5 starter’s workload – and I’m generally a “don’t tell teams how to use their roster” guy because I don’t want to stifle innovation, but the pendulum has swung too far in favor of pitchers. It’s time to swing it back in the other direction. Here are my pitcher usage rule change ideas.

11-pitcher limit. Starting pitchers are the closest thing this sport has to a main character and it’s time to return them to prominence. The easiest way to do that is reduce the number of relievers a team has available on any given day. Start with a 13-pitcher limit in 2022, scale it down to 12 pitchers in 2023 and 2024, then trim it to 11 pitchers in 2025. That way teams and players have plenty of advance notice and time to adjust.

Offense would increase because starters would pitch deeper into the game and go through the lineup multiple times, and the more a hitter sees a pitcher, the more success he has. There’s the fatigue/pacing yourself aspect too. No more going all out for 80 pitches and letting five relievers finish out the game. Starters may have to hold something back (their third or fourth pitch, etc.) for the third time through order like the old days.

Also, two fewer pitcher roster spots equals two more position player spots, allowing teams to do more platooning, pinch-hitting, pinch-running, etc. All that ostensibly adds offense and just more excitement to the game in general. You could let a guy like Tyler Wade run wild once a game without worrying about him having to hit later, or running out of infielders.

My concern here is teams would use the 11 pitcher spots on 10 guys who go through the lineup once and once only, plus a closer. That would turn each game into 3-4 one time through the lineup guys, essentially. It’s a valid concern, though I’m not sure there are enough pitchers good enough to go 2-3 innings regularly for this to become common league-wide. So many guys are one inning and one inning only pitchers.

I wasn’t onboard with the whole “limit the number of pitchers a team can carry” thing when it first became a thing a few years ago, but it’s grown on me. There were 309 instances of one team using at least seven pitchers in a game in 2021. It happened once every eight games, give or take. It happened once every 154 games from 2000-09, and that was the era of full 40-man roster Sept. call ups. I appreciate the strategy, but man, so many pitching changes is a bore.

We’ll never get back to the days of 240-inning starters and that’s not even what I want. I want to limit the number of mid-inning pitching changes per game, and I would like starting pitchers to be A Thing again. Like it or not, bullpen games will only become more common, because they’ve become more and more common the last few years, and everything in baseball history has progressed toward using pitchers less. Without intervention, I see no reason to believe that won’t continue.

Call up/send down minimum stays. But Mike, with an 11-pitcher limit, won’t teams just shuttle pitchers up and down constantly? Yes indeed, dear reader, so I propose a 15-day rule for players sent down and called up. Right now a player sent to the minors must stay down for 10 days before he can be recalled. I say up it to 15 days, and also apply it to players called up. So, when you call someone up, he has to stay up 15 days too.

The 15-day minimum stay will eliminate those “fresh arm for a day” call ups and force teams to really think about this stuff. The conversation shifts from “can he give us 2-3 innings tonight?” to “can he help us win the next two weeks?” When you’re limited to 11 pitchers, you can’t afford to waste a spot on a guy who isn’t fit to contribute. Every roster move takes on added importance.

There will still be bullpen shuttles to some degree, but the 15-day minimum stay will cut down on their prevalence significantly. And if you can’t shuttle pitchers in and out as often, it means fewer pitching changes within games, because you can’t use five relievers today and fall back on bringing in two rested pitchers tomorrow. Managers and pitching coaches will have to be more judicious with their moves.

Required rest for starters. Even with an 11-pitcher limit, there is nothing preventing a team from using an opener, then going to a bulk reliever who chews up 4-5 innings. What we can do is make it a little tougher to use an opener. I propose that every starting pitcher, regardless of whether he’s an actual starter or an opener, must sit out the three days immediately following his start. The only exception is an extra innings game. Use whoever you want in extras.

So, for example, if the Yankees use Chad Green as an opener on Monday, he must sit out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday before being eligible to pitch again Friday. Would you want to use Green to get three outs (or even six) on Monday only to not have him the next three days? With a regular starting pitcher, this is no big deal. He wouldn’t pitch those three days anyway. With a reliever who opened though, it could create some headaches.

Now, that said, if Wednesday’s game goes to extra innings, then the Yankees could use Green in the tenth inning (or later). The first nine innings though, nope. The point is you can use a guy in an emergency situation should the game go long (like a starter who chips in an inning on his throw day) but you couldn’t plan on having him for that game. Emergencies only, basically.

It’s important to differentiate between sitting out three days and sitting out three games. I don’t want to remove the ability to start someone on three days’ rest. That’s still a thing that happens on occasion. So the loophole here is Thursday might be an off-day, which means Green would really only be ineligible to pitch Tuesday and Wednesday after opening Monday.

This rule would not completely eliminate openers, but it would force teams to think twice about how they use them. You couldn’t start Green on Monday knowing he’ll still be available to throw the seventh inning in a close game Tuesday. You’re not going to get rid of openers entirely. I think this would help reduce how often they are used, however, and that’s better than nothing.

Three-batter minimum to start innings. 2021 was the first full 162-game season with the three-batter minimum and there were 1,364 pitching appearances of no more than two batters faced. It was 2,173 in 2019 and 2,306 in 2018. The all-time high is 2,588 in 2015. So yes, the three-batter minimum did significantly cut down on mid-inning pitching changes (unless it’s a walk-off situation, two or fewer batters faced means there was a mid-inning pitching change).

We can do better though. Right now the three-batter minimum spans multiple innings. Face one batter this inning and you only have to face two batters the next inning (unless you’re taken out between innings). I say reset the minimum every inning. If Joely Rodriguez comes in and gets out a lefty for the final out of an inning, and the Yankees want to send him back out for the next inning, he then has to face three batters. The clock resets every new inning.

Want to take a pitcher out between innings before he faces three batters? Go nuts. My goal is reducing the number of mid-inning pitching changes, which slow the game down and make for a worse than it needs to be viewing experience. This comes with two benefits. One, managers couldn’t go batter-to-batter anymore! No more “one baserunner and he’s done.” Longtime readers know how much I love that move.

And two, resetting the three-batter minimum will lead to a few more favorable matchups for the offense. Remember, teams will have two extra position players available to pinch-hit because of the 11-pitcher minimum, and knowing the pitcher who starts the inning must face at least three batters will create more opportunities to get a good matchup. More offense is a good thing.

So, just to wrap this section up, here are the new rules I’m proposing in an effort to change the way teams use pitchers:

• Gradually scale down from 13 pitchers to an 11-pitcher limit.
• 15-day minimum stay for players sent down and called up.
• Three days required rest for any pitcher who starts a game.
• Three-batter minimum resets to start each inning.

Maybe this is all too much. A pitch clock and an 11-pitcher limit and a three-batter minimum reset and the inability to shuttle pitchers in and out daily is just too much and will lead to a wave of injuries. I acknowledge the possibility. That’s why it’s important to announce this all ahead of time rather than spring it on everyone midseason like the foreign substance crackdown, and to do it in stages rather than all at once. Spread it out and get there in a few years.

My goal is to increase offense (specifically balls in play) and to speed up the game (through fewer pitching changes). Get rid of those “Aaron Judge had four at-bats and saw four different pitchers” games and strikeouts will go down, and the game will move more briskly. Baseball is the entertainment business and teams have optimized pitching to the point that the sport’s entertainment value has taken a hit. I want more balls in play and less waiting around.

Postseason changes

One way or another, we’re getting an expanded postseason with the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. MLB proposed a 14-team format and the MLBPA proposed a 12-team format. If the union is proposing 12 teams, we’re getting at least 12 teams. More teams equals more games and more games equals more revenue. That’s all this is about. More money.

With a 14-team postseason format, the 82-80 Phillies would have made it this season, and the 80-82 Angels and Rays would have made it in 2017. Come on now. An exclusive postseason is part of what makes baseball great. You have to grind through a 162-game season to get there, and now MLB wants to put half the league in? All this will do is water down the competition and make the postseason even more crapshooty.

As commissioner for a day, I would stick with the basic 10-team format we have now, with teams qualifying in the same way (three division winners and two Wild Cards), though I would change things a bit. Here are the changes I would make to the postseason.

Modified Wild Card: The win or go home Wild Card Game is pretty great. I mean, it is pure baseball torture when the Yankees are in it, but overall it’s pretty fun and good for the game. You can lure new fans in with the idea of a Game 7 without having to sit through Games 1-6 first. Is it fair? Eh, everyone knows the rules ahead of time, and that’s fair enough to me.

I think we can liven up the Wild Card Game experience. To do so, I would adopt the Wild Card format used in Korea, which is a best-of-three series in which the higher seed starts with a 1-0 lead. So the higher seed only needs to win one game to advance while the lower seed must win two games. You could get really crazy and make them play both games as part of a doubleheader, but nah. Let’s make this a two-night event.

Beyond adding another potentially exciting postseason game, this also puts a premium on being the higher seed. No one wants to go on the road in the Wild Card Game, but a team is not going to go all-out to get home field advantage either. They’re going to do what they have to do to line up their ace and their bullpen, first and foremost. If they get to play at home too, great. With this format, that top spot is much more valuable. Regular season games will be more meaningful. (Imagine this year's AL Wild Card race with this rule?)

Pick your opponent: I have a confession: I love the pick your opponent component of MLB’s 14-team postseason format proposal. As a reminder, MLB proposed that the best team in each league gets a bye, and the other two division winners get to pick their opponents in the Wild Card Series. The selections would be made during a live broadcast too.

I love the strategy (and the ensuing analysis) behind picking your opponent, and I also love the potential for pettiness. Give me trash talk and the crowd booing and cheering and chanting and all that. That’s the kinda thing that will draw younger fans in. Not being a good sport. Sportsmanship is boring. The players are professionals. They can handle boos and trash talk.

“They wanted us and they got us,” Enrique Hernandez told ESPN after the Red Sox won the Wild Card Game, after the Yankees chose to play Boston rather than Toronto in a potential tiebreaker scenario. That wasn’t the same as picking your opponent (picking the Red Sox applied to a four-team tiebreaker scenario only), though it gave the Red Sox a little bulletin board material, and it created more drama. Let’s do that on a larger scale.

My proposal: the team with the best record in each league picks its first round opponent. They could pick the Wild Card winner (before the Wild Card is played) or either of the other two division winners. Making them pick after the Wild Card would probably be better, though then everyone has to rush to travel and all that. It would be tough, logistically.

Is picking your opponent something a team would even want? I could see this becoming a reason to not want the league’s best record, but if a team is afraid to walk the walk, then boo freaking hoo. Let them lose games on purpose and be the No. 2 seed (and we’ll shame them in the process). The league’s best record comes with home field advantage throughout the postseason, and that’s a big deal. Players strive to be the best and my hunch is they won’t shy away from the No. 1 seed just because they’d have to pick their opponent.

Point is, I love the pick your opponent idea, and all the potential it brings for analysis and trash takes and #takes. It’s a way to liven up the postseason, and also make the last few weeks of the regular season a bit more interesting. Let’s do it, then let’s all enjoy watching a team lose to the team it picked as its opponent. It’ll be a blast (as long as it isn’t the Yankees, of course).

Best-of-seven LDS: I don’t want to add more teams to the postseason but I am willing to meet MLB halfway and create more postseason games by turning the League Division Series into a best-of-seven. At minimum, it’s four additional games. Between this and the modified Wild Card Game, we’re potentially adding 18 games to the postseason schedule.

My concern with a best-of-seven LDS and more postseason games in general is the workload. This postseason was a war of attrition, moreso than in previous years because of the pandemic and injuries related to the shortened season last year. Also, I just spent an entire section talking about limiting the number of pitchers and using starters more, things like that. Everyone might be on fumes come the LDS.

This is a concern, but I don’t think turning one best-of-five series into a best-of-seven is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Adding another round entirely (i.e. more guaranteed games), like MLB is proposing with the 14-team format, is more likely the point where it’s just too much to put on players. So, I’m going with a best-of-seven LDS. That’s my compromise for more postseason games.

A World Series day game: Do you know how long it’s been since a World Series game started before 7pm ET? 34 years. The last World Series day game was Game 6 in 1987, which started at 4pm ET. The last World Series with multiple day games was 1984. Prime time broadcasts are big money makers, even if half the country is asleep when the game ends.

The single best way to grow the game is making it more accessible, and having to stay up until midnight on the East Coast to watch the champion get crowned is not accessible. For every kid who gets to stay up and watch, there are 100 who don’t. Game 6 is a guaranteed potential clincher, so I say make that the day game each year.

There is no way MLB can do this without taking a ratings/financial hit. You can’t have a World Series day game during the week, when everyone is at work or school. Do it on Saturday and you’re competing with college football. Do it on Sunday and you’re competing with the NFL. There’s no way to have a World Series day game without competing events.

For this to work, MLB has to suck it up and trade $1 today (maximum broadcast revenue) for $2 tomorrow (cultivating younger fans). Schedule it so Game 6 falls on a Saturday – MLB can’t compete with the NFL and doing it during the week is dumb – and make that a day game. Also, there’s an off-day before Game 6, so there would be no day game after a night game worries. Make World Series Game 6 a day game and let the kids watch without worrying about homework or bedtime. It’s a win in the long run.

Postseason MVP: It’s time to create a Postseason MVP award. The LCS MVP awards have only been around since 1980. They’re not some long standing award with a ton of history. Keep the World Series MVP award, that’s a no-brainer, and replace the two LCS MVP awards with a single Postseason MVP award given to the best player during the entirety of the postseason. (Or hell, keep the LCS MVPs too. What do I care?)

Just to use 2009 as an example, CC Sabathia was the ALCS MVP and Hideki Matsui was the World Series MVP, but Alex Rodriguez would have been the Postseason MVP, rather easily too. Heck, a Postseason MVP award could lead to some weirdness like a player on the World Series loser winning it. Wouldn’t Randy Arozarena have won Postseason MVP last year?

If MLB is going to keep adding postseason games and postseason rounds, it only makes sense to do something to acknowledge the tournament’s best player. Ignoring the LDS and Wild Card don’t make much sense. Those rounds count too and those contributions should be acknowledged. This is a very small thing, admittedly, but let’s do a Postseason MVP award.

So, those are my proposed changes to the postseason. The No. 1 seed in each league picks its opponent, a best-of-three Wild Card Series in which the higher seed starts with a 1-0 lead, a best-of-seven LDS, a day game for Game 6 of the World Series, and a new Postseason MVP award. I don’t want to add more teams and water down the postseason talent pool, and make the regular season less important. Let’s just tweak the current postseason format.

Miscellany

Changing the way teams use pitchers is at the center of my commissioner for a day campaign. I want to shorten games (specifically by reducing dead time between pitches and cutting down on mid-inning pitching changes) and also increase offense (specifically by introducing more balls in play). If MLB does that, I’ll be happy. Tweaking the postseason is worthwhile too.

There are countless other ways to improve the game without overhauling it. I know there’s a segment of baseball fans who get mad about every little change – remember when people were against extended netting? – but you can’t let them stop you from doing what you think is best (they’re just going to move on and get mad about the next thing anyway). Here are a few other rule changes I would implement as commissioner.

More games in new places. The London Series was a blast, the Field of Dreams Game was really cool even though the Yankees lost, and MLB’s other trips around the globe (Australia, Cuba, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc.). were a lot of fun. Let’s do more games in new places. A few suggestions, in no particular order.

• Dominican Republic: Hard to believe this hasn’t happened already.
• South Korea: MLB has been to Japan multiple times. It’s time to go to Korea, where baseball is quite popular.
• Italy: The Italian Baseball League has been around since 1948, you know. Let’s get Major Leaguers over there to promote the game.
• Curacao and the Netherlands: Curacao is a certified baseball hotbed, and besides, who doesn’t love saying Honkbal?
• Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson: One of the few Negro Leagues parks still standing. It is currently undergoing a $94M renovation.
• Mobile, Alabama: Birthplace of Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige, and scores of other baseball legends.
• Doubleday Field in Cooperstown: Duh.

There’s no reason MLB couldn’t do two or three of these games (or series, ideally) a season. It doesn’t always have to be the Yankees, though I understand the appeal of involving the sport’s most popular and recognizable team. These games in different places are a good way to grow the sport, and also break up the monotony of the long season.

154-game season. The MLBPA has sought to roll the season back from 162 games to 154 games in the last few CBAs and I’m onboard with it. It’s eight fewer games (four fewer home games) per team, so that’s one extra off-day every three weeks or so. Not a huge deal, and it won’t undermine our “three days required rest for starters” idea to combat openers too much.

I’m asking a lot – a lot – of pitchers with all my rule changes, and building a little more rest into the schedule is a good idea. The owners will make up the revenue in other ways (i.e. they’ll jack up the ticket prices for the remaining 77 home games) and the biggest obstacle are those billion dollar television contracts, which require a minimum number of broadcasts and things like that.

There's plenty of historical precedent for a 154-game season (the AL played 154 games until 1960, the NL until 1962) and, as fans, I don’t think we would notice the difference between a 154-game season and a 162-game season. It’s still a ton of games. Scattering eight more off-days into a six-month season won’t cause a major disruption. I want more from starting pitchers. I also want to keep everyone healthy and performing at a high level. The eight extra off-days would help.

Full September call ups: Time to be a hypocrite. I want to limit pitching changes and things like that, yet I want full 40-man roster Sept. call ups back (you don’t have to call up a full 40 players, but you can if you want). If I have to live with never-ending pitching changes for a month to get the old Sept. call up rules back, so be it.

I am pro Sept. call ups because they a) reward minor leaguers for good seasons, b) allow teams to showcase their depth and young players, and c) lighten the load on everyone late in a long season. That last part is important as we ask more of starters. I can live with a month of bullpen games – there’s also a “neat, we get to see this prospect” component that adds a little jolt to September – if we cut down on them the other five months. Long live Sept. call ups.

Offseason 60-day injured list: I can’t believe this still isn’t a thing. It’s a win-win for MLB and the MLBPA. An offseason 60-day injured list makes it easier for teams to keep players and it’s essentially more roster spots for the union. The Yankees, for example, wouldn’t have to tie up a 40-man roster spot on the injured Zack Britton this offseason. They could put him on the 60-day injured list and use the 40-man spot on someone else.

Put a player on the 60-day injured list in Spring Training and the 60 days don’t actually start until Opening Day. The offseason 60-day injured list could work the same way. Basically, if you put a player on the 60-day injured list to clear a 40-man spot at any point before Opening Day, he has to miss the first 60 days of the regular season. This is so obvious. Incredible it’s not a thing.

Draft pick trading: I can’t believe this still isn’t a thing either. What’s the reason to not allow draft pick trading? Back in the day MLB was concerned small market teams would trade all their high draft picks to avoid paying bonuses, but that is pretty much the exact opposite of what would happen today. Teams would hoard draft picks, not trade them away.

Baseball is the entertainment business and trades (and trade rumors) are entertainment. Give teams more tradable commodities and you create the potential for more trades, and thus more entertainment. I say make the draft picks tied to the bonus pools (top 10 rounds) tradable, and let teams go nuts. We might even see some draft day trades announced during the draft broadcast. That would liven up a fairly dull event. I have no idea how teams would value draft picks in trades. I would like to find out though.

Specialized umpires: Why don’t we make the best home plate umpires full-time home plate umpires? Other sports have specialized officials (the NFL has seven different referee positions) so why can’t baseball? We know who the best strike zone umpires are thanks to pitch tracking, and Statcast can tell us who the best are on bang-bang plays at first base, etc. So let’s put each umpire where he’s most effective.

The biggest issue here is workload. Asking a full-time home plate ump to wear all that gear and get pelted by foul tips day after day in the summer heat and humidity is unrealistic. Umpires are by and large older gentlemen and daily home plate work might literally kill someone. The base umps could work four or five games in a row with little issue, I would guess. The home plate umps might need a one day on, one day off schedule though, so you’d need at least 60 of them (really more than that because you’ll need injury/time off replacements).

Point is, teams are hyperfocused on using players in optimal roles. A one time through the order pitcher, a lefty low ball hitter who only faces righties with sinkers and changeups, etc. Let’s extend that thinking to umpires. Put the best home plate umps behind the plate full-time, the best bang-bang umps at first base, etc. The league will have to manage workloads and whatnot, but that’s doable. Put umpires at their best positions and improve the quality of officiating and thus the quality of play.

Condensed replay: Instant replay is a good thing because getting the call right should be a top priority. The replay process itself – the manager telling the umpire to hold on while the bench coach phones the video coach, the umpires huddling together while MLB’s central office reviews the play, etc. – is just brutal. It is painstaking and needs to be streamlined.

I propose giving managers only 10 seconds to ask for replay (they have 20 seconds now) and if MLB can’t find conclusive evidence within a hard 60 seconds, the call on the field stands (they have two minutes now, though they often take longer). That should be enough time to overturn the most egregious incorrect calls. The ticky tacky “his foot was off the base for half a second” stuff will slide and I can live with it. I don’t need absolute perfection. Just fix the really bad calls.

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I love and watch baseball an embarrassing amount. That doesn’t mean I have to love everything about it, or that I can’t criticize the sport. The game’s aesthetics have taken a huge hit the last few years, largely because pitching has become so insanely specialized that hitters have a hard time making contact, and that specialization often slows the game down (for pitching changes and recovery time between pitches). That’s all fixable.

I’m not sure MLB is ready to reckon with its declining aesthetics or the fact that fans these days don’t really have the attention span to dedicate three and a half hours a night to baseball for six (really seven) straight months. Adapt and survive. If Manfred & Co. keep their head in the sand, the league will lose eyeballs and future generations of fans.