Necessity,
it’s said, is the mother of invention, and 2020 having been one motha of a baseball
season it followed that it included a lot of inventions. Circumventing the
virus took some doing, as did stuffing a regular-season race into a 60-game
box. The game’s decades-long struggle to make itself faster and sleeker continued
to hover, as did the trends toward more strikeouts and fewer base hits. Attention had to be paid.
Attend
the MLB’s leaders did, and pretty well, too. The no-fans regime was the biggest
change ever for the National Pastime, and while the vast stretches of empty
seats were jarring they were ameliorated by the fan cutouts and piped-in crowd
noises that, on TV at least, almost substituted for the real thing. The game’s dugouts-and-sidelines covid
protocols were widely ignored but the players surprised many (including me) by
their admirable adherence to monastic rules outside the ballparks in no-bubble
settings. This permitted the makeshift schedule to play out about as planned, with
only two teams (the Miami Marlins and St Louis Cardinals) committing major
breaches. Interestingly, both of them rallied to make the playoffs.
There
also were changes aplenty in the game on the field—more than in any season in
memory for the change-averse sport. MLB
expanded the playoffs to 16 teams from
12; forced the designed-hitter rule on the National League; increased rosters
to an initial 30 players (from 25 last season) and 28 for the playoffs; made
double-header games seven-inning affairs; required relief pitchers to face at
least three batters or stay until an inning’s end; and began extra innings with
a “free” runner on second base.
None of those changes are sure to
carry over to future seasons, but some might.
I heretofore have fancied myself a baseball “purist” but you know
somethin’? I liked them all. Taking them one at a time, here are my takes:
EXPANDED PLAYOFFS— A good idea, and
overdue, although it was spurred by the immediate need for more TV revenue to
compensate for the lack of gate monies. This season’s 16 qualifiers in a
30-team mix was a bit much, so until MLB expands to 32 teams 14 would be a nice
compromise, and I read it probably will happen. No more one-and-done wildcard
rounds was good, too.
THE DH FOR THE NL—The designated
hitter has been the rule in the American League since 1973, and while the AL-NL
split on the matter has been an ever-present bone for baseball fans to chew, it
has tasted like cardboard for a long time. The votes are in and they are nearly
unanimous, the DH having been adopted in just about every level of organized
baseball—the schools, colleges, amateurs, minor leagues and international play.
The only two entities still holding out against it are the U.S. National League
and Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League, one of two such circuits in
that land.
The DH promotes offense, something
that’s needed especially now, and prolongs careers. Few things in baseball are sadder than a
pitcher with a bat in his hands; some act like they don’t know which end to
hold. Most can’t even bunt, for heaven’s sake. The NL came within a whit of
adding it in 1980 when, in a confused and confusing action, the 12 league
owners voted four for and five against, with three abstentions, to uphold the
status quo. I once enjoyed the tactical differences the AL-NL split created,
but they’re just tiresome now. It’s about time the NL joined the party.
INCREASED ROSTER SIZES— Rosters
were scheduled to be upped to 26 players from 25 this season but the disruptions
caused by the virus threat supersized that—to 30 at the start of the 60-game schedule
and 28 for the playoffs. The original plan of 26 is supposed to be reinstated
for 2021, but I think it falls a man short. With 27 players—one more pitcher
and one position player—teams could spread around playing time in a way that
makes sense over the game’s long, long season. The players’ union, which can act
on all such changes, would go along happily, and the probable cost—one more
minimum-wage player—shouldn’t be too large for the owners to swallow.
SEVEN-INNING GAMES FOR
DOUBLEHEADERS—This was pretty much of a one-off change because
two-for-the-price-of-one doubleheaders in the majors are relics of bygone eras,
for 40 or so years and counting. This season was an exception because of the
narrow scheduling window and the log jams created by the multiple positive-test
cancellations of the Marlins and Cardinals. The odd doubleheader these days
comes about because of the need to make up weather-caused cancellations, and if
players and managers could vote they’d adopt the seven-inning rule. That’s
already the way things are done in the minor leagues and colleges, where
doubleheaders are more frequent.
A THREE-BATTER RULE FOR RELIEVERS—I’m
for just about anything that moves games along, and nothing slows them like
mid-inning pitching changes. This is a good rule, but the rub is that with the
end-of-inning exception it rarely applies. More helpful would be to mandate
that relievers be driven to the mound quickly by cart and limited to two or three
warmup pitches instead of the present six. What have they been doing in the
bullpen, anyway?
A MAN-ON-SECOND-BASE START TO EXTRA
INNINGS—This is the most unbaseballlike of the 2020 rule changes but I liked it
a lot, just as I did when it was used in last year’s Fall League. Before when
games went into extras I’d say “Oh, nuts” or something similar. This season I
found myself saying “Oh, goodie!”
Giving teams a “free” runner is a
wrench, and scoring it put some Figure Filberts’ noses out of joint, but so
what? The freebie is scored as an error
even though none is charged to the team or any player; if the run scores it’s
unearned to the pitcher. The situation sets up an interesting tactical question
for the first-up team: bunt the guy over or swing away? In keeping with the
ethos of the times, most teams this season chose option two, but with a strong
pitcher of its own on the mound option one could be preferrable.
A complaint about the rule is that
it puts a sort of clock on the game-without-a-clock, but that ain’t necessarily
so. If teams match each other run for run games could run indefinitely. They don’t
figure to for long, though, which suits me fine.
