He should be a bit of an upgrade over Homer Bailey, who has since been released by the Dodgers. I’ll still be mildly surprised if the Reds can get over .500 in 2019.
Players are bitching that they aren’t getting big deals this offseason, claiming it’s collusion. Homer Bailey was paid $21 million last year, will be paid $23 million next year and still got released, will make over $100 million in his career, and in a 12-year career he had exactly two seasons one could say were “good.” He’s 67-77 with a bad ERA.
Maybe they’re just wising up.
Now that the foosball nonsense is over with, we’re barrelling toward spring training with a lot of unsigned free agents, once again. The hot stove is cold, but never fear, the owners and the players association are hell bent on monkeying with the rules of the game.
Universal DH? Three batter minimum?
I really don’t enjoy watching pitchers pathetically flail at baseballs, and I really, really didn’t enjoy watching Masahiro Tanaka pull both hamstrings tagging up at third, but forcing the DH on the national league is dumb, dumb, dumb. You don’t need to take a poll to know that NL fans do not want it. The universal DH wouldn’t improve the game and it might actual cause serious harm.
Three batter minimum? They should try it out in the minors, but it seems like forcing bad baseball on everyone. Pitcher wild? Make him stay in for two extra walks. Great.
Monkeying with the rules of the game, indeed. Seems to me that both of those changes would nudge baseball in the direction of being less a game of strategy and more a game of brute force. Which is not what I want.
I fully support the DH but I know there are die-hard NL fans that think it’s an abomination. No reason to force it upon them, although I assume the players union wants it.
Three batter minimum is also stupid. There’s already a cap on mound visits.
SNY.tv says the odds are against the universal DH, at least for this year.
Why do you assume this? And does anybody know for sure?
What what little I’ve seen/heard, I get the impression that individual players’ opinions vary: some like it, some dislike it, some are neutral, and many are happy with the way things are now.
What good would a three-batter minimum do? I am assuming it wouldn’t apply if the pitcher was injured; what stops a pitcher from faking an injury to be replaced? The roster limit already takes care of this situation - if you want to use a spot for a one-batter-and-done specialist, that’s your business.
The NCAA baseball rules committee wanted to impose a pitch clock this year, but the “playing rules oversight panel” overruled them; among other things, there was no provision for what to do if a game was played at a neutral site that did not have the clock installed and would not allow one. Besides, you would almost certainly need a special rule to handle pickoff attempts.
The DH in the NL is inevitable, just do it. I like the 3 batter minimum as well. I’m so tired of endless pitching changes.
Well, in theory NL teams would be replacing a utility guy with an everyday player. I assume the everyday DH would make a higher salary on average. Maybe I’m wrong and it would basically wash out.
The DH is not inevitable. Kill it dead everywhere. Salt the earth afterwards. I agree with That Don Guy that roster limits take care of the pitching problem. That’s why I would oppose the expansion of the roster. The idea of punishing sub-.500 teams by nicking their draft picks seems counter-productive to me.
Some of the other rule change proposals:
A 20-second pitch clock - Hate it
A single trade deadline before the all-star break, to replace the traditional July 31 deadline and the Aug. 31 waiver-trade deadline. - I actually kind of like this.
A rule, which would be tested in spring training and the All-Star Game, in which each half-inning in extra innings would begin with a runner on second base. - Oh my god please no. Why? Why is this necessary?
A reduction in mound visits from six to five. - Whatever. Also seems unnecessary.
So is Corey Kluber off the table now? I knew the Reds were still chasing him, but the asking price is steep…as it should be for a player of his caliber.
The increase in pitching changes extends the length of the game but not by as much as you’d think. Today there are about 3 relief pitchers used per game. 25 years ago, it was two and a half. If the 3-batter minimum is meant to get rid mof one pitching change every two games, I say that’s hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.
Farting around with this stuff is simply ignoring the REAL problems:
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The entire pace of play issue can be attributed to commercial breaks and delays between pitches, which are caused more by batters delaying than pitchers. The only way to fix this problem is to reduce commercials between innings and enforce pace of play on hitters. That’s it.
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There are too many strikeouts.
The way to take care of extra inning games is to just start counting ties after 12 innings.
Otherwise I have little problem with pace of play. I like long games.
Yes, but only because of the clock. Pitchers work too slowly; it isn’t just the batters stepping out to tug on their gloves.
Yes - another change would limit rosters to 28 men in September (26 the rest of the year), so no more disrupting pennant races with a bunch of cup-of-coffee guys.
It’s just under consideration, as one of many possible ways to reduce all-nighter games. I agree it would not be a grave offense against the Gods of Sport for baseball to have ties, so yes, I would prefer the 12-inning-max rule.
Resistance to the DH among the fans of the only league in all of baseball that doesn’t use it is, honestly, tribal ritualism far more than appreciation of the game. That’s been indulged for far too long, and yes, if interleague play is going to stay (which it is), then interleague rules are needed too.
Maybe they should ban batting gloves. The damned things don’t ever fit right.
I’d rather have an announced 25-man roster for each game, but still allow the September call ups. That way you could still show off a bunch of prospects (which is especially good for non-playoff teams) without having a combined 20 pitcher in a nine inning game.
Also, apropos of nothing, I wonder what MLB would be like without fences. Just massive fields.
I’m a fan of the DH, but to be fair, the N is not the only non-adopter. One of the two leagues in Japan doesn’t use it as well.
I again have to point out what a miniscule problem this is. How often do MLB games actually go past twelve innings?
Only about one in twelve games goes to extra innings at all. Of those, eighty percent or so are already over by the 12th inning. Every year, there might be 30, 35 games in all of MLB that go longer than 12 innings, and as you might expect, about half are over in the 13th (about half the remainder are over in the 14th.)
Super long games just aren’t a problem.
How did they handle things back in the train travel and no lights era? Surely there were extra inning games that couldn’t be finished due to darkness or needing to catch a train. I assume they’d just suspend the game and resume it on the next visit, but that might not always be practical if it’s late in the season and both teams are way out of the pennant race.