Welcome back to The Commish, a series of posts in which I fix baseball.
For the Williamsport game, baseball allowed the Mets and Phillies to add a 26th player, however it was mandated that the 26th man could not be a pitcher. The Mets chose Dom Smith.
I’m amazed at how the MSM has glossed over this. That was a MAJOR MAJOR rule change that came out of nowhere.
It is unclear to me how MLB defines a pitcher vs. a position player. Was everyone on the roster except Dom allowed to take the mound? (Say the Mets were losing by 20 and wanted to get The Virus some work.) I assume so based upon what the ESPN broadcasters said, and Gary Cohen mentioned on Monday night’s telecast.
So let’s stop down and pay attention: On Sunday night, Major League Baseball put in a rule saying someone could only be a position player.
That’s new. That’s great. Let’s run with it and fix baseball.
Part of the death of baseball is because of bullpenning and because of the opener. Here are my proposals.
An MLB Roster may consist of no more than 11 pitchers. Pitchers pitch and they can play other positions. Non-pitchers aka Position Players may not take the mound.
Yes I just took away the novelty of seeing Jose Reyes pitch. That kind of stuff was fun for a while, but it seems like it happens every night in MLB 2018, so let’s end that nonsense. Or if you want I will allow you to designate one “emergency pitcher.” OK fine, solved.
That 11 pitcher roster leaves you with (probably) five SPs and six relievers. It leaves you with 8 starting position players and a six man bench. It stops teams from using 7 relievers in a game.
Interesting outcomes: maybe bullpenning would still happen – but instead of a faceless reliever, imagine Thor coming out on his throwing day to face one batter. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Don’t you love that sort of thing in October? Let’s bring it into August.
Eliminate The Opener. The opener is also bad for baseball. Fans want to see Big Name vs Big Name. Not Faceless reliever for an inning. So here is my proposal (which yes Virginia I have blogged about before). A pitcher who starts a game is ineligible to pitch for the next three games. So today the Mets wouldn’t be able to pitch deGrom, Wheeler or Matz. If some manager wants to get cute and use an Opener and then have one fewer bullpen guy for three days, go nuts. This rule causes no harm because the Mets weren’t going to pitch any of those three guys today. The rule is in slight conflict with my idea of using a SP as a reliever…maybe the rule should be that the SP has to sit out two games….anyway there is something to both these ideas and they should be discussed.
Institute The Surrender. Baseball does not guarantee you the fan nor its advertisers nine innings. You are promised five innings. Sometimes it rains and everyone goes home and the advertising gets made good later.
I propose baseball allow the surrender. There’s no reason to finish these games where the Mets are beating the Phillies 17-4 after five. Just call it. We do that in youth sports. It’s fine. No reason to slog through and waste pitchers and make The Virus take the mound so the Nationals can tack on more runs.
You got to see 20 runs scored. You got your five innings. Allow teams to surrender after five.
