Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have agreed to a 14-pitcher limit on active rosters between May 2 and May 29, the league announced this morning. As previously announced, the active rosters will still shrink from 28 players to 26 on May 2.
The league and union agreed to expand active rosters by a pair of players for the season’s first couple weeks this year. That was in response to the shortened Spring Training period that followed the lockout, with concerns that players did not have enough time to prepare for a typical regular season workload right out of the gate. That was particularly true of pitchers, who require a few weeks to gradually build their pitch counts.
Alongside the temporary roster expansion came a relaxation of the league’s 13-pitcher limit, which is being put into effect for the first time this year. Initially enacted over the 2019-20 offseason, that provision was suspended in each of the past two seasons as part of the COVID-19 health and safety protocols. It’ll make its debut in 2022, although the full extent now won’t come into play until Memorial Day.
Today’s announcement marks a small change to afford clubs a bit more freedom in managing their pitching staffs, although they’ll still have to make some cuts next Monday. Teams will need to reduce their roster by two players six days from now, and even the higher 14-pitcher threshold will force a change from the early-season status quo. The pitcher limit was scrapped entirely through May 2, and many teams had carried 15 or even 16 arms in the early going as they stockpiled bullpen options.
Along with the expanded rosters, the league and union agreed in March to delay the implementation of the new option limits and the return of the 15-day injured list for pitchers. Teams can no longer option a player to the minor leagues more than five times in a given year, and pitchers who go on the IL for non-COVID reasons will have to miss at least 15 days instead of 10 this season. Neither change was in effect through the season’s first month as the league and union afforded teams more flexibility with their pitching staffs. Today’s announcement from the league made no mention of further delay to either of those features’ implementations, however, which seems to suggest they’re still set to take effect next Monday as originally scheduled.
stop micromanaging and let teams do what they want with their 26.
I fully agree. If a team wants to carry more pitchers it’s at a disadvantage to their bench.
Irrelevant. Position players pitch sometimes. Just list that last pitcher as an outfielder and then bring in your outfielder to pitch. Problem solved.
I’m 99% certain that when this was initially implemented two years ago the league defined what a pitcher was, and I’m 100% certain that they defined what a two-way player was due to Ohtani and Brendan McKay.
Not allowed – the MLB cut off that loophole immediately. Because of the run of position players pitching in blowouts, they’ve sharply limited position players as pitchers in all but extreme cases (deep in extras, I believe). The one exception is for position players who have a demonstrated history of pitching (Ohtani, McKay, etc.). Just randomly including pitchers as position players is expressly forbidden.
Sorry but until teams max out their staff at 11 or 12, pitchers will still overthrow and Tampa will still make it impossible to watch their games. Too bad because they have great players to watch at the plate and in the field. I just couldn’t watch the recent series with Boston. Too many changes
The Rays should relocate to one of Charlotte/Raleigh/Nashville/Memphis anyway. Their stadium is horrendous, their uniforms are boring and their fan turnout is weak.
What do boring uniforms have to do with where the team should be located> The Yankeed have the most boring uniforms in all of MLB. Should they have to leave New York?
If they relocate then they will likely change the team name (and obviously the uniforms).
I disagree – the Charlotte Raes have a nice ring to the name.
Funny.
Still think the Rays issues are where they are located and of course bad stadium. If they were in Tampa instead of St Pete, it would be different.
The Giants used 8 members their bullpen to win a game against the Brewers yesterday (2 Giants starters are on the IL) but every SF pitching change occurred between innings. The Brewers only made 2 pitching changes – one of those occurring mid-inning – so remarkably, the game only took 3:01 to complete, despite 11 total pitchers used in the contest.
The game is more enjoyable aesthetically if there are fewer pitching changes. I’m open to anything which helps facilitate this
The game is more enjoyable when you get better pitching. I’m open to anything which helps facilitate this.
I’m assuming this delay has something to do with the recent spike in COVID absences. Pitchers should be built up now – Shane Bieber threw 100 pitches last night. So I don’t think it’s about load management at all.
Stop telling teams how many of each position player they can have on a 26-man roster. If a team wants to have 26 catchers on the team, they should be allowed to do so.
Why can’t they enforce 10 man pitching staff’s like it used to be? Way too many pitching changes now and it slows up the game. Seems like they pitch less and get hurt more.
Agreed. 1975 Reds carried nine pitchers in the WS.
As recently as 1993 the Braves used 13 pitchers. For the SEASON. One of them only threw 1.2 innings, too.
I’m disappointed that they they aren’t extending the expanded rosters for a while longer. If not still at 28, I thought they might at least go with 27. (TBH, think 27 man rosters would be be better for the game anyway.)
Why? How exciting is it to watch pitching change after pitching change? It’s ridiculous. Slows things down.
Don’t know about that.
If teams had an extra long man/mop up guy you could argue that would actually prevent pitching changes.
In close games, having another arm in the pen probably won’t factor in
IF you had a long man. But teams don’t do that anymore. If they did they wouldn’t need nine relievers. That argument is purely theoretical, with no real world actuality.
I’ve never minded pitching changes. The only slowing-things-down issues that bother me are pitchers who take too long between pitches and batters who take to long to get ready for the next pitch. I don’t know if limiting throws to 1st base is practical or not, but that’s about the only other thing that I might prefer an adjustment to – to keep the game moving.
I think fixing those things is enough.
Every pitching change leads to a great, great evil: commercials. I’d rather watch a pitcher walk around the mound scratching himself than a car commercial.
Why have any limits? Let the entire 40 man play! Save the pitchers by going to 1-1 automatically on each batter. Two strikes put it in play! Foul ball is strike 3. The same people that complain about rule changes are probably the same ones that don’t want the temporary rules removed. Its all nonsense. Simple solution is to have rules, and play by them. Can we get back to baseball?
I’d rather have a permanent daily reserve roster where every day a team can move players on or off the reserve list of 5 spots of players who will not be eligible for that day’s game, two of them being the starting pitchers of the previous two games. Have a rule to be that no player can spend more than 5 consecutive games on reserve, and service time is not affected by being on reserve.
The routine use of 5-9 pitxhers in a regulation game by a single team has contributed significantly to much longer games and diminished offense. This has to end. Pitching staffs should be capped at 12.
The other side of that coin though is that would just incentivize the Louis Head treatment (5 options per year rule or not) and teams would just cycle players through the roster and still make the pitching changes.
They do that now.
Which is why it really wouldn’t work as hoped. If you want to influence a behaviour, deal with it directly rather than putting adjacent mechanisms in place in the hopes of leading teams to that behaviour. That kind of stuff often just has unintended consequences in other areas.
Really, can you provide proof of this?
Longer games are due primarily to increases in commerciak time between half innings and a change in hitting philosophy (swinging for the fences rather than putting the ball in play), not pitching changes.
Diminished offense, such that it is, is primarily due to the virtual elimination of steroids from the game and no longer using the juiced balls introduced after the 1994 strike, not pitching changes.
26 players – 9 starters (including DH) and a backup catcher makes 10. 14 pitchers means 1 backup IF and 1 backup OF.
Does the P in MLBPA stand for players or pitchers?
Serious question, not a proposal. During my life, the expectations of what a starting pitcher did has changed. In the 1960s, starters were expected to try to finish a game. For example, from 1961 to 1969, Bob Gibson pitched complete games in about half of his 300 plus starts. Over the years, the expectation dropped to pitchers making it seven innings, then six, then 100 pitches, now ? Are we witnessing the death of the traditional starter and it’s replacement by pitching by committee where no pitcher throws more than thirty pitches, a pitching squad of only relief pitchers? I am not advocating this nor do I like the idea, I am just wondering if that is where the trend leads to.
I believe the issue is a change in the philosophy in roster construction. Back in the day, almost all relievers were guys who weren’t good enough to be starters, either because they had been tried and failed or they had gotten injured and lost some of their stuff. Nowadays most relievers have better stuff than their team’s starters but have no endurance. It is not uncommon for a pitcher to make it to the majors never having started a professional game. In a previous era minor league relievers were just filling out a roster.
That was true maybe 50 or 60 years ago.
Yes. The stats show that starting pitcher effectiveness, generally speaking, is lower starting the third time through the opponent’s lineup. In all seriousness, I can’t believe the MLBPA didn’t bargain for a start to be counted with only four innings.
Also, as someone else pointed out, relievers aren’t necessarily washed up starters anymore, which means there’s fewer long relief pitchers in general. I would be curious if anyone has analyzed the trebd of relief pitcher endurance. I would guess it’s probably fallen quite a bit in the last 15-20 years.