Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is the proverbial weekend griller who can’t resist poking at the coals, trying to shave a precious few minutes off a game that has no clock.
Meanwhile, the Players Association – which had one of the country’s most powerful unions when Don Fehr and Gene Orza were in charge and was a thorn in former commissioner Bud Selig’s side – will placate management and discuss the pace of play, but is seemingly ignoring the elephant in the room.
Spring training is a week away, but nearly 100 free agents are without a home, including Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, both in their mid-twenties and seeking long-term deals nobody wants to give.
"We think it’s bad for the players, the fans, and the game,'' said Bruce Meyer, senior director of the Players Association, "being this close to the beginning of the season and having so many fan bases not even knowing who’s going to be on their teams."
The last work stoppage in Major League Baseball was in 1994, which was officially a strike, but with management later found guilty of collusion the owners actually forced the union's hand. The key issues were a salary cap and revenue sharing. The strike lasted 232 days, had 948 games lost and forced Selig to pull the plug on the 1994 postseason.
Among the fallout, in an effort to bring back disgruntled fans, was Selig turning a blind eye to the use of steroids by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998. The Great Home Run Duel was a great farce.
It took 20 years, but the owners got their salary cap dressed up as a luxury tax.
Major League Baseball generated $10.3 billion last season, their 16th consecutive year of growth. In addition, over the past three decades, every team with the exception of the Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox, Athletics, Blue Jays and Rays have either moved into new stadiums or had extensive renovations done on their current facility. More often than not, the taxpayer picked up the tab.
With all that money pouring in, Major League Baseball and Manfred seem more preoccupied with speeding up the game, which is the essence of several of the issues on the table, some of which can alter the outcome of games, and consequently perhaps a season.
It's not the last minute yet, but the Collective Bargaining Agreement will expire after the 2021 season before you know it.
The one drawing the most attention on the radio talk shows in New York today is to force pitchers to face at least three batters in an inning. This could cause the eventual elimination of the lefty specialist, theoretically costing the union up to 32 jobs. The union wants to try it this year in the minor leagues and the majors in 2020.
According to The New York Post, last season relievers came in to face a single batter 1,159 times, down from a record 1,410 in 2017. Lefty specialists went from 765 times in 2017 to 577 last season. I don’t care about the extra few minutes it takes, but my objection is having a rule dictate strategy.
Also, in the interest of time, Manfred wants to go from six mound visits last year down to four and unbelievably three in 2020. The union wants to go to five and if there’s a notable decrease in the time of games, down to four the following season.
Then there’s the implementation of a pitch clock which makes little sense. This isn’t the NBA with a 24-second shot clock. With the game on the line, why should a pitcher rush and possibly make a bad pitch that costs a team a game, or perhaps a season, or even a World Series?
Manfred clearly doesn’t understand one of the most riveting moments in sports is to watch a struggling pitcher ride the waves of tension with the game on the line in the late innings, especially during the playoffs. Does anybody remember the Yankees' Paul O’Neil working a walk from the Mets' Armando Benitz in a classic 11-pitch at-bat during the 2000 World Series?
What Manfred and Selig before him have never satisfactory been able to explain exactly is what people are supposed to do in that extra five or six minutes.
Perhaps in exchange for the union caving on the time issues, Major League Baseball seems willing to give in on what was supposed to be a three-year experiment, or gimmick if you will, and install the designated hitter in the National League. Since Major League Baseball wouldn’t go the other way and make American League pitchers hit, this was the right thing to do.
This especially comes into play during the World Series when American League pitchers are forced to hit. To have the two leagues play with different rules was always beyond comprehension. It’s akin to having AFC teams being allowed to have the two-point conversion, but not NFC teams.
Theoretically, another positive aspect of having a universal DH is it could enable teams be more willing to offer long-term contracts in the free-agent market. But, how does that explain American League teams also passing on Harper and Machado? While adding the DH means new jobs, what Manfred might have overlooked is adding more offense means possibly longer games.
The union also proposed having one trade deadline and moving it up to as soon as the All-Star break. In theory, it could force teams to make a decision and trying to go for it early. However, part of the union’s proposal is to expand the playoff field, but that doesn’t figure to work.
With more teams vying for the postseason it stands to reason they would wait until they are reasonably sure they have a chance before dealing. However, with the deadline moved up, I believe more teams would be reluctant and back away from trading for fear of making a mistake.
