Collective Bargaining Agreement

Commissioner Rob Manfred addressed a few topics in his chat with reporters this afternoon. His announcement that he wouldn’t seek another term beyond 2029 was the most significant development. Among the other topics: the league’s desire for a free agency window during the offseason.

“We would prefer to have a free agency signing period, ideally in December, with a deadline,” Manfred said, regarding the league office and the owners (relayed by Alex Speier of the Boston Globe). Manfred confirmed the league has floated that possibility in conversations with the MLB Players Association, which opposes the idea.

“We actually made proposals to that effect to the MLBPA. They were not warmly received,” he continued (link via ESPN’s David Schoenfield). “With the system we have right now, one of the tactics that’s available to player representatives is to stretch out the negotiation in the belief they’re going to get a better deal. That’s part of the system right now. There’s not a lot we can do about it. Certainly, from an aspirational perspective, we’d rather have two weeks of flurried activity in December, preferably around the winter meetings where (media is) all there to write about it.”

Some agencies, most notably the Boras Corporation, are more comfortable than others in encouraging players to wait deep into the winter to sign. That’s hardly unanimous — high-profile Boras Corp. clients like Corey Seager, Brandon Nimmo, Carlos Rodón and Xander Bogaerts have inked huge contracts relatively early in prior offseasons — but it has again been a topic of conversation with Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery and Matt Chapman all unsigned into the second week of February.

[Related: Boras Clients Who Signed After January In Previous Offseasons]

One can debate how much responsibility for slowly-developing markets falls on agents, as Manfred implied, versus clubs themselves. Teams can have a similar motivation for waiting to either put an official proposal on the table or move towards a player’s asking price. Clubs could hope that players will feel increased pressure to have a deal in place by the early part of Spring Training and lower their demands. While there’s surely some level of brinkmanship on either side of negotiations that linger for three or four months, there’s no doubt that MLB’s free agent period plays out more slowly than those of other main sports.

The NFL, NBA and NHL all have salary caps and floors, a key distinguishing feature from MLB. That plays a part in spurring early-offseason activity in those other leagues as teams have fixed budgetary ranges. There’s more variability in team payrolls in MLB, which has the luxury tax to disincentivize spending at the top end. There’s no official salary floor beyond the cost of filling a roster with players on league minimum salaries (although obviously no team pares spending to that extent).

While the sport’s salary structure is a significant factor, there’s no question that some kind of signing deadline — whether an end date for multi-year contracts or any major league signing — would translate to a flurry of activity. The impending lockout and transaction freeze on December 1, 2021, led to a run on free agent signings.

As shown on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, there were 30 multi-year free agent deals agreed upon by December 1 that winter. There were eight such contracts last offseason and only six this past fall. Edwin Díaz and Aaron Nola are the only players to sign nine-figure guarantees before the end of November over the last two offseasons, with both remaining with their previous organizations. There were six deals that exceeded $100MM before the lockout in 2021; all six players changed teams.

It’s easy to make the case that’s a more compelling offseason for fans, even if it’d result in minimal activity in January and February. At this point, it’s mostly academic though.

The MLBPA is broadly opposed to what it perceives as restricting players’ options during free agency. The union certainly harbors concern that a deadline would allow teams to hold firm as that date approaches with higher urgency for players to find jobs before a temporary transaction freeze. It stands to reason the league will try to reengage on this issue once talks get under way about the next collective bargaining agreement in 2026, although it’s hard to envision the MLBPA being more receptive to the idea at that point.

Yesterday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that MLB’s Competition Committee was considering trimming two seconds off the pitch clock when runners are on base. That isn’t the only potential rule change under discussion this offseason.

Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reports a number of additional, fairly minor, alterations that’ll be considered. Perhaps most notable would be a requirement that pitchers work from the stretch whenever a runner is on base. Pitchers tend to work from the stretch to hold runners on but sometimes throw from a full windup or hybrid delivery when there’s a runner on third given the unlikelihood of that runner trying to steal home.

The committee is also considering reducing the number of mound visits per team in a game from five to four. A team that used all four would still get one extra visit in the ninth inning.

Another potential change: requiring a pitcher that warms up to face at least one batter. A pitcher who comes out of the bullpen is already required to face at least one hitter, barring injury. Unless that pitcher completes an inning within the first hitter or two, they have to go up against a minimum of three batters.

That only applies for a new pitcher entering the game, however. A pitcher who has faced three or more hitters and concluded the preceding inning can warm up for the beginning of an ensuing frame before being subbed out. While a rare occurrence, this sometimes happens when the batting team calls for a pinch-hitter that spurs a pitching change, usually to mitigate the pinch-hitter’s platoon advantage. Since the oncoming reliever throws warm-up pitches of his own, that can lead to consecutive warm-up breaks with no at-bat, causing a few minutes of dead time. Requiring a pitcher who warms up to face the first hitter would eliminate that occurrence (while offering a slight advantage to the offense in such scenarios).

Free agent infielder Whit Merrifield, one of the player representatives on the committee, proposed a change designed to prevent fielders from blocking a runner’s direct path to any base. The goal of that proposal is to minimize fielder-runner collisions and eliminate scenarios in which an infielder uses his lower body while receiving a throw to shield a runner from sliding into a base. That happens somewhat frequently on stolen base attempts.

Rosenthal covers a few more changes under consideration in a piece that’s worth a full read for those interested in rules minutia. The competition committee consists of six MLB officials, four player representatives and umpire Bill Miller. A simple majority can implement those changes without approval of the Players Association, essentially giving MLB control over on-field rules adjustments.

Major League Baseball’s competition committee is considering a reduction of the pitch clock with runners on base, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. In 2023, the clock was set at 20 seconds with runners on but the new proposal would see that reduced to 18 seconds next year. The 15-second clock with bases empty is not under consideration for a change. The committee is also considering a reduction in the number of mound visits each team is allowed per game, from five to four.

2023 was the first year with a pitch clock at the MLB level and it had the desired effect of reducing game times and speeding up the pace of play. Per a report from Ronald Blum of the Associated Press at the end of the regular season, the average game time was two hours and 40 minutes in the most recent season, a 24-minute decrease from the season before. However, Passan’s report today indicates that gradually crept up as the season went along and players adjusted to the new rules. The average game length was 2:37 in April but inched up to 2:44 by September. It seems the league hopes to stop that trend by reducing one of the two clocks.

This is likely to get push back from some players, many of whom wanted adjustments to the clock for the postseason out of concern for increased injury risk. However, it was reported in September that no such adjustments would be made. Passan reports that players have similar concerns about this new development, though they may not have much sway to stop it.

The players are outnumbered on the competition committee, as there are six members representing teams, four representing players and one umpire. This structure was agreed upon in the most recent collective bargaining agreement. That gives the league the power to implement rules even if players object, though doing so runs the risk of further souring relations that led to a lockout not too long ago. The players would reportedly be more open to the reduction if it also came with an increase to the bases-empty clock, but the league is apparently uninterested in that.

The committee can implement a change with 45 days’ notice. Since Spring Training starts in February, they would probably want to make a final decision before the calendar flips over to 2024. With the baseball world generally slowing down for the holidays in late December, it’s possible there’s some resolution on this matter in the next month or so.

MLB’s rule change initiatives headed into 2023 have largely had their intended effects, improving the run scoring environment while cutting down on game times. That being said, those changes haven’t stopped players from hoping that the rules surrounding the pitch clock, which limits pitchers to 15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on, would be relaxed somewhat during the postseason given the heightened importance given to each play during a win-or-go-home series.

It seems as though those players will be disappointed, however, as Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci reports that MLB has decided not to adjust the pitch clock during the postseason this year. Per Verducci, the league informed the Competition Committee yesterday that they would not propose any amendments to the rules for postseason play this year. It’s easy to see why the league would be satisfied with the changes and not look to mix things up, given the average game time has dropped from 3:03 in 2022 to just 2:39 this year. While Verducci notes that game times have crept up throughout the year as hitters have increasingly made use of their timeout during plate appearances, August’s average game time of 2:41 is still more than twenty minutes shorter than last year’s average.

While there won’t be changes to the pitch clock this postseason, that doesn’t mean the league isn’t contemplating changes at all. Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper recently noted that, starting on September 5, the pitch clock at the Triple-A level will be tweaked significantly. Rather than the previous 14 seconds with the bases empty and 19 seconds with runners on at the level (one second fewer than in the majors in both situations), Triple-A games down the stretch will instead operate with a single, 17-second clock for all situations. Cooper notes that the change is made possible thanks to the level’s widespread use of PitchCom, which allows pitchers and catchers to communicate without the use of signs.

Other, smaller changes at Triple-A are planned as well with an eye toward preventing pitchers and catchers from gaming the pitch clock, such as lowering the number of mound visits. While the changes at the Triple-A level are by no means guaranteed to reach the majors, it’s nonetheless worth noting that the league is still experiment with the specifics of the pitch clock in hopes of further optimizing the rule.

In addition to the incoming pace-of-play related changes, the Triple-A level is also poised to see a change to its ABS system for automating the strike zone. While previously, ABS has used percentages of a hitter’s height to determine the top and bottom limits of the strike zone, that has created issues due to varying body types between players that a human strike zone would normally account for. As such, Cooper relays that going forward the ABS system will be altered to use visual tracking when setting the strike zone to create a custom strike zone for each individual player. While the new strike zone is expected to more closely mimic a human strike zone, the top of the zone will still be lower than the major league strike zone, an intentional feature implemented in hopes of lowering the number of strikeouts on fastballs at the top of the zone.

The change toward an individualized strike zone more akin to the ones created by human umpires seems to be a step in the right direction as people from all sides of the game look toward the possibility of an automated strike zone of some variety reaching the major leagues in the coming years. An automated strike zone wouldn’t necessarily remove the entire human element of calling the strike zone; while half of all Triple-A games are called with a fully automated strike zone, the other half utilize human umpires while offering both pitchers and hitters a challenge system that utilizes the automated strike zone to determine the outcome of the challenge.