Ironically, this is the only 1 I disagree with. Also here are the series lengths I’d go to:
LDS-Best of 3
LCS-Best of 5
WS-Best of 7
I thought it was a Leg Before Wicket.
Absolutely agree with Barry Bonds rule.
Rule number two - suggest 30 player max for September roster and all be permitted to play.
Rule number 1 - absolutely disagree. You can’t have a replay on fair/foul balls and trapped balls when there are men on base. Baserunners need certainty. Umpire says fair, runner runs like hell. If he gets injured or injures someone, at least it can’t later be said what a tragic injury on a foul ball etc. The hitter should be entitled to that same certainty.
You can have IR as long as you admit that the final result of reversing a blown call won’t always be the same as if the call was right. If an out is reversed, batter goes to 1st, runners move if they are forced to the next base. If a hit is reversed, runners go back to their bases.
A stopwatch is not inherently an “electronic device”. Mechanical stopwatches have been around for a long time, is the rule intended to force teams to buy expensive mechanical versions of devices?
Definitely get rid of the extra umpires, and the extra visits to the mound.
You don’t need any body armor rule other than what body armor is acceptable. I’m OK with hard shell items for legs/feet, but not elbows, soft padding no more than x.xx inches thick.
First base, add the safety base for chrissake. There is no sporting interest in having players collide at first because they were both trying to put their feet on the same little bag. I don’t see the value in eliminating the running lane rule, since you’ll just get guys bunting down the 1st base line and deliberately blocking the throw, which is likely the reasoning behind the rule in the first place.
I endorse more replay and losing the outfield umps in the playoffs. I could also support a limitation on catcher trips to the mound; maybe one per inning, same as visits from the dugout.
I don’t have a problem with body armor. Obviously, if the pitch is in the strike zone, it’s a strike. Doesn’t the batter also have to make an attempt to avoid the HBP?
I don’t like the broken bat interference idea. It’s really not comparable to a baserunner because the batter/bat are not intentionally interfering. The baserunner has complete control of where he is going.
I agree with #1 and #9 but disagree with the rest.
I have no problem with using instant replay to get the calls right, since that is the point. Frankly, when the day comes where we can substitute the human umps for infallible robot umps and get every call right 100% of the time, I’ll be a happy camper.
As for rule nine, I hate the extended playoff system and have for a long, long time. From my perspective, if after 162 games you still haven’t figured out who the top four teams in baseball are, there’s something wrong with your process. Best of 7 LCS, best of 7 World Series, done before the snow flies in a bunch of MLB ballparks. But I know that’s never gonna happen because there’s entirely too much money tied up in dragging the fucking playoffs out for as long as possible.
Rule 2 is dumb. If you want to call up your entire farm system and have 75 guys sitting on your bench, knock your socks off. The farmhands weren’t good enough to make your team for the first five months of the season; to suggest that they’re now suddenly going to make you dramatically better is silly, IMHO.
As for Rule 3, if my understanding is correct, players are only permitted to wear body armour on their elbows these days with express permission from MLB and only in cases where they are protecting an injury; Bonds had his big-ass elbow pad grandfathered in before that rule was changed. And if I were throwing 90+ and had some punk trying to horn in on MY plate because he had body armour on, he’d be getting a high, hard one in the ear-hole to adjust his attitude. 
There’s nothing about the running lane that detracts from the game. Verducci is wrong. A straight line from the right side of the plate does not stray far off the baseline, as he suggests, and sneaking a single foot back into fair territory to hit the bag doesn’t make you veer all over the place either. It ain’t broke; don’t fix it.
There’s already a rule in place for cutting down on catcher’s visits to the mound. It’s called the umpires growing a pair and disallowing the catchers to call time on every other pitch. Those trips are purely at the discretion of the umpires, like all timeouts in baseball and they can grant them or not at their own discretion. You think this catcher is holding the game up, say “No” next time he asks for time. Simple.
Baseball can take my stopwatch away from me in the dugout or in a coach’s box when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand. We’re not talking about supercomputers doing advanced sabermetric calculations here; we’re talking about clocking the ball from the pitcher to the catcher and down to a base, usually somewhere in the 3.5 second range. It’s less of a game-changer, frankly, than the pitch-by-pitch scouting reports every team has on hand for every player in the game.
Bats break. Hell, I’ve seen more than one aluminum bat break (which is pretty cool, by the way). Short of changing bats to some kind of unobtainium alloy that will never shatter, I don’t see how there can be a change to this rule that makes any kind of sense.
I don’t care one way or the other about outfield umpires in postseason, but let’s not start blaming them for a correct application of the infield fly rule. If an infielder can reach a fly ball within ordinary effort, the batter is ruled out, regardless of whether the infielder makes a catch – if the batter hits a ball 500 feet into the air and to the warning track and the shortstop has enough time to track it all the way to the wall, the infield fly rule applies and it’s an out. We had a kid on my ballteam in the early 90s who routinely ran down fly balls 60-70 feet behind him to the point where we were playing our leftfielder just a step or two off the warning track because Brent could track virtually any shallow fly ball that was hit to that side. He just had the knack. Should he now be punished because his ordinary effort on that play is different than some pudgy slug with no range? I don’t think so.
It may have been a correct application of the rule, but it’s a moronic rule. The purpose of the infield fly rule is to prevent the defense from gaining an advantage by allowing a pop-up to drop and executing a double force-out. The notion that anyone would have or could have attempted to do that on the Simmons fly ball, more than 200 feet from home plate, is absurd. My god, Paul Konerko could have made it from first to second long before the defense could have picked up the ball, thrown to third from a standing start, and relayed to second.
The infield fly should be restricted to a fixed distance (perhaps 30 feet) beyond the edge of the infield.
- I’m all for speeding up the game and limiting visits to the mound. As was said upstream, it doesn’t take a rule change, all it takes is for the ump to say “No” when the catcher asks for a timeout.
However, I would speed things up by limiting pitching changes. Make it so a pitcher has to face at least 2 batters, or be injured, before he can be removed.
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I can see the point of limiting September rosters, but they need to be expanded so that teams that are out of the race can take a look at their potential rookies for next year. I’d compromise and limit September rosters to 30 and not 40.
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Replay - I’m for it, generally, but I’d like to make an exception for trapped ball/vs. caught ball plays. The problem is that the play is still “live” when the ball is caught or not, requiring the runner to make a decision and take a chance on whether to advance or not. If we just go to the replay right away, that exciting decision is eliminated.
No, this is incorrect. The rule exists to prohibit the defense from turning a cheap double play, which would not happen on a warning track pop-up. The outfield umpires in the playoffs are seeing the game from an angle they haven’t experienced all year, which I guess is the excuse for blowing calls like that infield fly in Atlanta. Regardless, when did you ever see a play where you thought, “if only there had been an ump out there?”
Actually it is correct, although, as Freddy the Pig noted, a loophole within the framework of the rule as it currently exists (notwithstanding that you’re never, ever going to see an infielder run down a pop-up at the warning track).
I do agree about the point of the rule, which is to prevent cheap double plays, however there’s no good way
The problem with imposing a distance limit on the infield fly rule is that it is subjective by necessity; ordinary effort for Prince Fielder might not be anything off the dirt while ordinary effort for Clint Barmes could be 100 feet behind him. Add into it the complexity of determining which infielder has enough arm to hypothetically turn a double play from what location and you have a big ol’ mess. If you draw a line in the grass after which the infield fly rule no longer applies, I can pretty much guarantee these arguments will stop and a whole new argument will start when some clever middle infielder starts camping under shallow flies, letting them drop, and turning two from a place where the rule doesn’t apply.
At the end of the day, controversial infield fly calls are fairly few and far between; this one happened to occur in an important game on a national stage, so a few people care about it.
As to the question of “if only there had been an ump out there?” I think that all the time in cases where an outfielder may or may not have trapped a ball while diving for a play. Maybe not for ruling on infield flies, though. 
I just thought of a better solution: Have the umpire call “infield fly” as they do today, but instead of an automatic out, the only effect is to prevent the defense from executing a double force-out. If they do so anyway, the ball is dead and the trailing runner is declared safe.
Because even when the call isn’t controversial, I hate it when the defense boots a pop-up but still gets the automatic out.
The problem I have with the “body armor” rule is, it starts become subjective as to what is “body armor”, or whether or not it hit it.
Keep in mind there is already a rule where if the pitch is in the strike zone when it hits the batter, then it is a called strike and no base is awarded.
I think the problem with #1 (expanding instant replay) is, players now have to be taught to ignore calls of “foul ball” because the replay may show that it was fair. Also, if a catch is ruled a trap on the field, but is later determined to be a catch, can the defense then appeal against the runners who did not tag up?
As for the “running lane,” why don’t they take it one step further and add the “orange base” that they use in softball? (First base is actually two bases put together - half in fair territory, colored white, and half in foul territory, colored orange. Note that once the batter reaches first base, only the white part of the base “counts.”)
Do the current rules still allow a batter to call time just as the pitcher is about to deliver? That’s bullshit, one of the too many things that slow the game down.
There is no clear rule on this because players cannot call time, ever. Only umpires can call time. A player can only request it.
The problem is thus one of enforcement; umps have just been so easy on hitters in this regard that they can call time ridiculousloy late. No discipline is enforced, so hitters exploit it. It’s much like the issue with catchers visiting the mound six times an inning, or batters stepping out and spending a minute adjusting their batting gloves after every pitch; there is no rule allowing OR disallowing it, it’s a matter of what umps are willing to allow. (In the days when not all parks had lights, umpires kept games moving very quickly in an effort to complete them. So it can be done.)
What do you propose to do to change this enforcement besides adding some sort of rule?
Get the umps to start growing a pair. If MLB warns all teams that the umps have been instructed to not allow frivolous time-outs and they actually follow through with it, then things will start to change.
Would it be against the board rules to summarize each of the proposed rules? The link in the OP is blocked for me (no sports sites at work).
Summary of Verducci’s proposed new rules:
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Replay (or some tennis-like Oracle system) for all fair/foul balls and trapped balls.
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No roster expansion in September, instead a continously changing 25 man roster (e.g. 4 starting pitchers are not “on the roster” for games they aren’t pitching).
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If you get hit by a pitch in body armor, it’s a ball and you are not awarded 1st base.
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Eliminate 45’ running lane to 1st base.
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Limit catcher vists to the mound.
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No stopwatches for first base coaches.
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A broken bat that interferes with a fielder making a play on the ball results in the batter being automatically out.
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Eliminate outfield umps in the playoffs.
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Reduce LCS to best of 5 games.
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As for that infield fly rule…
I bolded the important part there. A shortstop sprinting to the warning track to run down a fly ball is not exhibiting ordinary effort.
I’m against it and get off my lawn.
The umps on the field rarely miss fair/foul calls, I don’t mind the current reviews of fair/foul for home runs.
I don’t like the idea of pitchers going on and off the roster in September. I wouldn’t mind say a 30 man roster to give a few minor leaguers a shot, 40 has always seemed quite excessive.
I hate to see guys penalized for wearing safety equipment.
I don’t see a problem with the running lane.
Yes on limiting catcher visits. At least make the pitcher meet the catcher off the mound to reduce the time for the catcher to walk back.
Why on earth would someone mind about the stopwatches?
I don’t like the idea of a broken bat penalizing the batter.
I’ve always thought the outfield umps were silly.
I would like: Wild card = best of 3, Division= best of 5, LCS & WS= best of 7.
I believe the body armor situation was addressed a few years back, in BB’s last season or two, when the size of protective pieces was limited. Am I misremembering? That seems like a good compromise - there is a difference between padding on the elbow and wrist, and the RoboCop thing Bonds had for a while.
Anyone who’s objecting to the rule… did you SEE what Bonds brought to the plate? It was not a small strap-on pad like you see some batters wear on elbows or inside of knee, ankle or foot. It was an articulated piece of medieval armor, completely ridiculous.