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MLB Considering Rules To Keep Starting Pitchers In Games Longer

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One of the biggest differences between modern baseball and past versions of the game is declining starting pitcher usage. Many fans and people in the baseball world want to reverse this trend and the league is considering some rule changes that could help in that regard, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN. The most drastic change on the table is a rule that would dictate starting pitchers have to complete six innings before being removed from a game.

Such a rule would have to come with exceptions for injuries, blowouts or other extreme scenarios. Rogers reports that the league has discussed criteria where a pitcher could leave before competing six innings, such as throwing 100 pitches, allowing four or more earned runs or suffering an injury. The last one would require an IL stint in order to avoid shenanigans.

Some less-extreme suggestions have also been thrown around, such as a five-batter minimum for relievers, which could give managers more hesitation about making a move. There’s also the possibility of lowering the sizes of pitching staffs or the double-hook designated hitter system. The latter, which has been in consideration for a while, would see a team lose its DH once they remove their starting pitcher. It’s also suggested in the ESPN piece that draft pick compensation could be offered to the team with the most innings pitched by its starting staff.

It’s worth emphasizing that no changes are imminent and MLB has shown that it will experiment with potential changes in independent ball and/or the minors before bringing it to the majors. They have also tried out many changes that never made it to the big leagues, so even getting to the experimental stage is no guarantee that a new rule will eventually be implemented in the majors. If any momentum builds towards making this change a reality, teams would have plenty of warning so that they could alter how they target and develop pitchers for this new reality.

All that said, it’s not a huge secret that this shift has been happening over the years, with most baseball fans keenly aware of the trend lines when it comes to pitcher usage. Even putting aside things like bullpen games and openers, starters have just been throwing less. Just about any volume stat can illustrate this by looking at a recent season compared to one further in the past. Last year, there were five pitchers who hit the 200-inning plateau and five who threw more than one complete game. Just 20 years prior, in 2003, there were 44 hurlers who got to 200 innings and 43 who pitched at least two complete games. Go back another 20 years to 1983 and those numbers are 50 and 82.

This is due to various factors, including the fact that pitchers are less effective a third time through the order. This year, for example, hitters are slashing .238/.311/.388 the first time they see a pitcher. That jumps to .250/.311/.416 the second time and .263/.327/.437 the third time through. Bringing in a high-octane reliever is simply just a better strategy than letting the starter stay out there. This has led to the pejorative term “five-and-dive” to describe modern pitchers only concerned with throwing five innings, compared to old school pitchers who aimed to go a full nine.

Batters and teams are also more focused on power these days. Last year, there were only ten players who qualified for the batting title but finished with less than ten home runs. In 2003, there were 30 such players. In 1983, there were 46. That makes it harder for a pitch-to-contact strategy to yield positive results.

It has also been learned that a pitcher has little control over what happens once a ball is put in play, so teams have been focusing more on strikeouts. The Athletic recently ran a five-part series looking pitchers emphasizing punchouts as opposed to pitch-to-contact strategies. This has led pitchers and teams to look to maximize velocity and spin, which is thought to have had an impact on the abundance of significant injuries and surgeries for pitchers these days.

The hope is that all or many of these factors could be mitigated by the six-inning minimum. Theoretically, a pitcher would have to dial back on velocity a bit in an attempt to stay in the game longer, going back to the old school focus on getting contact with fewer strikeouts.

Along with the pitch clock and the rules to incentivize base stealing, the league is hoping for a more action-oriented game and better entertainment product. It’s also hoped that this will lead to fewer pitchers undergoing Tommy John surgery or other significant operations that require lengthy rehabilitation periods.

Whether it’s possible to actually succeed in this mission and whether this is the best way to go about it is a something that can, and surely will, be debated at length. Many fans despise the constant tinkering that has gone on during the era of commissioner Rob Manfred, while those who yearn for the prominence of the starting pitcher to return would likely be more excited about these potential developments.

MLB Announces Modifications To Pitch Clock, Other Rule Changes

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1:27pm: In a statement, Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark announced that the players on the Competition Committee voted against today’s slate of changes.

“This afternoon, Player Representatives voted against the 2024 rule changes proposed by the Commissioner’s Office,” the statement reads. “As they made clear in the Competition Committee, Players strongly feel that, following last season’s profound changes to the fundamental rules of the game, immediate additional changes are unnecessary and offer no meaningful benefits to fans, Players, or the competition on the field. This season should be used to gather additional data and fully examine the health, safety and injury impacts of reduced recovery time; that is where our focus will be.”

1:15pm: Major League Baseball announced a slate of modifications to the game’s official rules, which have been approved by the MLB Competition Committee (comprised of six owners, four players and one umpire). Per the league’s press release, the changes are as follows:

  • Runner’s Lane: The Runner’s Lane will be widened to include the dirt area between the foul line and the infield grass. Widening the lane allows batters to take a more direct path to first base while retaining protection from interference.  The distance between the foul line and the infield grass will be between 18 and 24 inches in all parks, with some limited grace periods granted by MLB due to difficulty in modifying the field (e.g., synthetic turf field).
  • Pace of Game: MLB proposed minor changes to the Pace of Game Regulations to address an increase in game time as the season progressed – the average nine-inning game time increased seven minutes from April to September (five minutes after controlling for the number pitches, breaks, and runs scored).
    • Timing Between Pitches: Reduce time from 20 seconds to 18 seconds with runners on base. Pitchers began their deliveries with an average of 7.3 seconds remaining on the 20-second timer in 2023. Pitchers retain the ability to step off and re-set the Clock up to two times without penalty. Violations with runners on base were the least frequent (14% of all violations vs 32% of all pitches) in 2023. A universal 17-second Clock used for the final month of the Triple-A season did not increase violations with runners on base.
    • Batter Timeouts: Based on player feedback, MLB withdrew a proposal that would have required the home plate umpire to immediately reset the Pitch Clock after a batter called timeout.
    • Pitching Changes: If a new pitcher steps onto the warning track with less than 2:00 remaining on the inning break Clock, the Clock will reset to 2:00 rather than 2:15 as was the case in 2023. Inning breaks that contained a pitching change averaged 2 minutes and 35 seconds in 2023 (broadcasters are only guaranteed two minutes of commercial time).
    • Mound Visits: Mound visits will be reduced from five per game to four, and an extra mound visit will still be awarded for the ninth inning if the defensive team has zero remaining at the end of the eighth inning. Mound visits rank among fans’ least favorite events in baseball. Clubs averaged only 2.3 mound visits per game in 2023. Last season, 98% of games would not have exceeded a limit of four mound visits.  Umpires will also permit defensive players to signal for a mound visit without actually visiting the mound to further help improve pace of game.
    • Circumvention: The FTC (field timing coordinator) will now restart the timer after a dead ball (e.g., foul ball) when the pitcher has the ball and play is ready to resume. There will no longer be a requirement for the pitcher to be on the mound, removing the pitcher’s ability to delay the start of the timer by walking around the edge of the mound.
    • Pitcher Who Warms Up Must Face At Least One Hitter: A pitcher who is sent out to warm up for an inning must face at least one batter (in addition to any requirements under the Three-Batter Minimum rule). There were 24 instances this season where the pitcher that warmed up between innings was replaced before throwing a pitch (adding approximately three minutes of dead time per event). There were two such instances during the 2023 World Series.

Runner’s lane photo courtesy of Major League Baseball communications department.

MLB Creates Economic Reform Committee

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One year after a tense period of CBA negotiations between MLB and it players that resulted in a lockout and a delay to the start of the 2022 season, it appears the league is already preparing for the next round of negotiations. According to Evan Drellich of The Athletic, the commissioner’s office has formed what they’re calling an economic reform committee chaired by Dodgers chairman Mark Walter. Drellich reports that Tigers chairman Chris Ilitch, Red Sox principle owner John Henry, and Rockies chairman Dick Monfort are among other members of the committee of franchise owners. The current CBA is set to expire following the 2026 season.

As Drellich notes, the impending bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, owner of the Bally Sports networks that hold the TV distribution rights of 14 MLB teams, appears to be a catalyst for the creation of this committee. Should that bankruptcy indeed come to pass, it would open the door for MLB to begin work on a league-wide streaming service free from blackouts. But according to Manfred, discussions of such a path have brought about concerns about disparity between the revenues of clubs:

“We have businesses that are literally not similar in terms of the overall revenue that they’re generating.” Manfred tells Drellich, “And to the extent that you could find a new distribution model that actually helped on that disparity side, that would be the daily double. So people are having conversations that haven’t been had in baseball, and it’s really been owners talking to owners, which is a good thing.”

As Drellich points out, the financials of most MLB clubs are not public and the new committee has no plans to produce a league-wide financial report, making it impossible to verify most claims related to revenue. But Drellich reports that concerns about revenue disparity have been exacerbated by the willingness of Mets owner Steve Cohen to put up record payrolls that dwarf those of other clubs. Per RosterResource, the Mets 2023 payroll for luxury tax purposes currently sits at almost $374 million, and that’s even after the club’s bid to land Carlos Correa on a 12-year, $315 million contract fell through due to concerns about Correa’s physical.

Drellich quotes an industry source as saying that “[Small market clubs] demand everything’s got to change… The whole idea is to basically come up with a system that gets to a salary cap.”

For his part, Manfred claims that the league has not “even begun to think about where we’re going to be the next go-around” of collective bargaining negotiations, but Drellich notes that other quotes from the commissioner indicate the proposal of a hard-cap could be on the horizon:

“When I talk about a more national product, sort of the thought there is that a more national product produces more centrally shared revenue… which, in turn, we hope, would reduce payroll disparities. At various times, we have talked and proposed, including in the last round, about direct payroll regulation, in addition to that, having a minimum payroll… We remain open to those sorts of solutions. Obviously, we’re a long way from the next round of bargaining, but there are ways to get at it.”

Even if the league has interest in pursuing a salary cap in future CBA negotiations, plenty of obstacles remain. The MLBPA, which Drellich reports declined to comment on the league’s new committee, has of course staunchly stood against a salary cap for decades. Drellich also notes that teams likely disagree as to where a hypothetical cap and floor would be set. Still, this committee serves as a reminder that, even with the lockout in the past and a new agreement in place that should keep labor peace for at least the next four seasons, more difficult negotiations remain on the horizon, both between owners themselves and between the league and its players.

MLBPA Rejects MLB’s “Final” Proposal On International Draft

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The Major League Baseball Players Association announced Monday that it has rejected Major League Baseball’s latest (and purportedly “final”) proposal regarding the implementation of an international draft. The MLBPA’s statement reads as follows:

“The Players Association today rejected what MLB characterized as its “final” proposal to establish a draft and hard slotting system for international entrants.

Players made clear from the outset that any International Draft must meaningfully improve the status quo for those players and not unfairly discriminate between those players and domestic entrants. To this end, the Players Association made a series of proposals aimed at protecting and advancing the rights of international amateurs.

Our draft proposals — unprecedented in MLBPA history — sought to establish minimum guarantees in player signings, roster spots, infrastructure investments, playing opportunities, scouting opportunities as well as enforcement measures to combat corruption. We also made proposals to compensate international signees more fairly and in line with other amateurs, and to ensure that all prospects have access to an educational and player development safety net.

At their core, each of our proposals was focused on protecting against the scenario that all Players fear the most — the erosion of our game on the world stage, with international players becoming the latest victim in baseball’s prioritization of efficiency over fundamental fairness. The League’s responses fell well short of anything Players could consider a fair deal.”

An MLB spokesperson released a statement of their own (relayed by James Wagner of the New York Times):

“MLB has worked to reach agreement with the MLBPA to reform the international amateur system in ways that would address longstanding challenges and benefit future players. We are disappointed the MLBPA chose the status quo over transitioning to an international draft that would have guaranteed future international players larger signing bonuses and better educational opportunities, while enhancing transparency to best address the root causes of corruption in the current system.”

The system for acquiring international amateur players has remained a topic of negotiation between the league and union going back years. It was a particularly prevalent point of discussion in the most recent collective bargaining talks, with the league’s desire for and the MLBPA’s opposition to an international draft emerging as a late sticking point in the parties’ efforts to finalize a new CBA last spring. Eventually, the parties agreed to temporarily table international draft discussions while ratifying the remainder of the CBA and ending the lockout. The sides gave themselves until July 25 to agree upon a draft, with the condition that the qualifying offer system for free agents would be eliminated if a draft were implemented.

It would appear that no draft will be put in place, although the July 25 deadline was a mutually agreed upon date between the league and union the parties could revise if they wanted to do so. The “final” terminology of the league’s proposal indicates no additional discussions are on the horizon, but it’s at least worth remembering that in March, the union rejected multiple CBA offers MLB had presented as its last proposal before the sides eventually agreed to circle back and reconvene in time to avoid the final cancelation of regular season games.

That certainly doesn’t mean the same process will play out in this case, however, particularly since it seems the parties weren’t anywhere close to agreeable terms. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports (on Twitter) the MLBPA leadership was so dissatisfied with the league’s offer they never brought it to the players for an official vote, as the union leadership has authority to do. Union leaders did inform player reps they planned to reject the offer before officially doing so, according to Heyman, to which there were no objections.

There indeed seemed to be a large gap between the sides to bridge, primarily on the amount of money that would be allotted for signing bonuses. The league’s “final” offer involved the creation of a $191MM bonus pool to be distributed among the players taken in the 20-round draft; the MLBPA had been seeking $260MM. The league wanted fixed, hard slots associated with each selection that could neither be exceeded nor undershot; the union wanted slot values to serve as a floor but afford the flexibility for teams to go overslot. Additionally, there was a reported gap in the proposed maximum bonuses for undrafted free agents — with the league offering $20K and the MLBPA proposing $40K.

MLB has maintained that even a $191MM bonus pool would be a boon for players relative to the status quo, claiming it’d result in more than $20MM extra going to international amateurs than had been the case under the existing system. The union has countered the bonuses for the top international players would still fall short in comparison to those of domestic draftees and that any overall financial boost would be more than counteracted by international players’ forfeiture of their ability to choose their first team.

The league has also expressed concern about the current system’s incentivizing teams and players to verbally agree to deals well in advance of players reaching their 16th birthday. A hard-capped draft would all but eliminate that occurrence, but the union has expressed its belief that tighter enforcement against verbal agreements would achieve the same purpose without necessitating a draft.

If this truly marks the end of negotiations, the status quo for both the international amateur setup and the qualifying offer will remain. That’s a notable development for upcoming free agent markets, as teams will still have to forfeit draft picks and/or international signing bonus space to sign players who received and rejected the QO. The MLBPA has sought to remove that non-monetary cost associated with adding any free agents, but that hasn’t proven a sufficient enough inducement for the union to agree to the league’s vision for an international draft. Even if this closes the book on the issue for a while, it stands to reason the league’s desire for a draft will come up again during future CBA negotiations.

League, MLBPA Exchange Proposals On International Draft

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July 25 is the deadline for Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association to come to an agreement on an international player draft, which would replace the current international signing system and end the qualifying-offer system for big league free agents.  The two sides have been in negotiations for weeks, and ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez (all via Twitter links) reports that counter-proposals were exchanged within the last two days.  The union put forth a new offer on Saturday, and the league quickly countered again today with what MLB said was a final offer.

“There was some movement on the money,” Gonzalez writes, with the league increasing its offer from a $181MM bonus pool for the top 600 players to $191MM.  Of course, this is still well below the $260MM bonus pool the MLBPA was and is still seeking, and there wasn’t any word on whether or not the league’s new proposal involved fixed slot prices.  According to past reports, the union wanted slot prices acting only as minimum expenditures for the assigned selections, whereas MLB wanted hard slots that couldn’t be exceeded for any pick. 

Also, the two sides differed on the amount of money available for signings of undrafted players, as the MLBPA wanted a $40K limit and MLB wanted only $20K.  This other financial aspect was one of many differences floated between the union and the league (as illustrated by The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal), and it isn’t known if any common ground on these issues has been reached.

There are definitely still some hurdles, as Gonzalez notes that the MLBPA “still isn’t satisfied with some of the other aspects of the league’s proposal.”  With less than 24 hours to go until the deadline, it would seem unlikely that a deal will be reached on the creation of an international draft, considering that the two sides remain some distance apart.  Then again, back in March, it didn’t seem like a new collective bargaining agreement was going to be reached in time to avoid the cancellation of games, but the two sides were rather quickly able to make up a lot of ground in order to launch a shortened version of Spring Training and a full 162-game schedule.

The question of the international draft was the last outstanding issue from the offseason’s CBA talks, as the two sides agreed on the broader new collective bargaining agreement in March in order to end the lockout, and talks resumed this summer about the possibility of the draft.  If no agreement is reached, the current rules regarding the international signing system and qualifying offers would remain in place through the term of the new CBA, which expires following the 2026 season.

Beyond just acting as the last vestige of the CBA negotiations, the talks also have a sizable impact on baseball business as a whole.  The Athletic’s Jim Bowden observes that with the international talent-acquisition process and QO-related draft compensation undecided, teams have been waiting until after tomorrow’s deadline to propose major trade offers, as clubs want to be sure about their future avenues to obtaining young talent before considering moving any current prospects at the August 2 trade deadline.

MLB Makes Counterproposal To MLBPA On International Draft

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10:08pm: In a follow-up piece, Drellich and Rosenthal report a host of additional specifics on each side’s proposals to date. Among the most notable aspects under consideration: the union has proposed to extend the posting window for players coming from Asian professional leagues from the current 30 days to 45 days. Both sides are also proposing the creation of prospect leagues to operate in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela (contingent on U.S. government regulations in the latter nation). MLB’s proposed draft would begin in 2024, while the union has offered to start at some point later in 2023.

Under the MLBPA proposal, teams would be unable to sign players for below slot value but would have the discretion to go above slot. That addresses any concerns the union would’ve had about teams not spending at least their minimum bonus pool. The league’s hard-slotted proposal would prevent teams from going over the allotment, capping overall spending while eliminating the cutting of pre-draft deals.

The Athletic’s piece is worth a read for many more details for those interested in the subject.

9:05pm: Major League Baseball made its latest counterproposal to the Players Association as the sides negotiate the possibility of a draft for international amateurs, report Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. It’s the league’s response to an offer put forth by the MLBPA last week. For the first time, the union showed a willingness to implement an international draft but only with certain conditions such as a higher bonus pool and the exemption of players from Japan.

The league’s proposal calls for a $181MM signing bonus pool for drafted players, according to the Athletic. That’s the same as the league’s previous offer, while Drellich and Rosenthal note the union has been seeking a $260MM pool. There is also a gap between the parties on the maximum signing bonus that would be available for undrafted players. The league is proposing a $20K cap, while the union’s proposal called for a $40K limit.

Additionally, Alden Gonzalez of ESPN reports there’s a discrepancy in slotting between the two sides. MLB is proposing fixed, hard-slotted bonuses for players depending on with which pick they’re selected. That’d differ from the domestic amateur draft, which features a set overall pool of money teams are freely allowed to spread around to draftees. The domestic draft comes with recommended slot values per pick, but teams can and do ignore those recommendations to pay certain players overslot while cutting below-slot deals with other selections. (Teams are permitted to exceed their bonus pool in the domestic draft, but doing so by more than 5% comes with future pick forfeitures no club has been willing to take on). The union, according to Gonzalez, is pushing for a similar soft-slotting system in the international draft.

Of course, the prospects involved are not perfectly analogous. International players would likely be draft-eligible at age-16, while domestic draft prospects must have graduated high school. Domestically, many high school prospects have the ability to play at a major college if they don’t sign with their drafting team. In contrast, most international amateurs won’t have that fallback.

Hard-slotting would keep teams from not offering to spend their entire allotment to take advantage of the players’ comparative lack of leverage, and it’d eliminate the possibility for teams to cut pre-draft deals with prospects. Yet it’d also reduce the ability to go over-slot for top players in the class. The league’s proposals during negotiations in March came with a $5.5125MM value for the first overall pick, for instance. The #1 pick in the 2022 domestic draft comes with an $8.842MM slot value, according to Jim Callis of MLB.com. Last year’s top selection, Henry Davis, signed for $6.5MM.

The union’s desired bonus pool would close the gap between the slot values of the selections between the international and domestic drafts. According to Gonzalez, MLB counters their proposed bonus pool would pay international players $23MM more collectively than what they received during the 2020-21 signing period, making it an economic improvement over the status quo. Of course, one of the trade-offs would be the forfeiture of players’ abilities to choose their first employer. If no draft is agreed upon, the existing system would remain in place. That features hard-capped bonus pools to limit overall team spending, but players are permitted to negotiate with all 30 clubs.

Gonzalez reports some movement the league made in more minor areas than the overall bonus allotment. The league has withdrawn its push for a mandatory one-year suspension for prospects who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs. MLB also proposed that any prospect who submitted a pre-draft physical would have to be offered the full slot value of their selection. Both sides are in agreement that a draft, if implemented, would last 20 rounds.

The parties have until July 25 to come to an agreement, with the draft likely to go into effect in 2024 if implemented. If a draft is agreed upon, the qualifying offer system would be removed, and teams would no longer have to forfeit selections for signing free agents.

Interestingly, there’ll also be a small change for the upcoming domestic draft. Bonuses for undrafted free agents have been capped at $20K in each of the past two seasons, but Kyle Glaser of Baseball America reports that’ll no longer be the case. Any expenditures north of $125K on a non-drafted player would count against a team’s pool limit, however. That’s a return to the pre-2020 setup.

Postseason Expands To 12 Teams; First Round Will Be Three-Game Series

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As expected, the collective bargaining agreement expanded the postseason field from ten teams to twelve. Travis Sawchik of The Score reports the format (via Twitter): the top two division winners in each league receive first-round byes, while the worst division winner and the three Wild Card teams per league will play three-game sets to advance to the Division Series. The worst division winner will face the final Wild Card qualifier, while the top two Wild Card clubs will take on one another.

There is no “ghost win” involved. The Players Association had previously floated the possibility of division winners starting with a one-game advantage in any first-round set against a Wild Card club. MLB opposed that idea, and it didn’t make it into the final agreement.

The union’s push for a “ghost win” seemed more rooted in concerns about a potential 14-team format than with the 12-team arrangement, though. The MLBPA was unenthused by the possibility of going to 14 playoff teams, fearing that doing so would disincentivize clubs from ardently upgrading their rosters if they believed they were already comfortable postseason qualifiers.

Ultimately, the union held firm on the 12-team playoff this time around. Describing that as a loss for the league, which had sought 14 for most of negotiations, wouldn’t be entirely accurate though. Going from 10 to 12 clubs marked a major concession in its own right; the introduction of a new round of the postseason is worth a reported $85MM annually for the league under the terms of its broadcasting arrangement with ESPN. That’s before accounting for gate and concession revenue for clubs hosting those additional games.

With the postseason expansion, the Wild Card game is no more. The one-game playoff between the two Wild Card clubs in each league took effect with MLB moving from eight to ten postseason qualifiers back in 2012. It remained in place through 2021, but the one-game playoff has been eliminated in favor of three-game series moving forward.

Interestingly, the potential Game 163 tiebreaker has also been scrapped. Jayson Stark of the Athletic reports (Twitter link) there are seeding tiebreakers in place in the event teams finish the year with the same regular season record. The specifics aren’t clear, but other leagues have used such things as head-to-head record between tied clubs and winning percentage in intra-league games as tiebreakers. Rather than conducting a one-game playoff between teams that finish tied for postseason spots, a prearranged formula will determine the field.

Finally, the division series won’t be reseeded, Sawchik reports. The top seed in each league will host the winner of the 4 vs. 5 Wild Card series in the second round, even if the #6 seed beats the #3 seed. That’s a bit of an odd choice on the surface, but it could perhaps aid MLB in marketing the postseason as an NCAA basketball-style bracket.

New CBA Officially Introduces Universal Designated Hitter

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Today’s collective bargaining agreement officially introduced the designated hitter to the National League, tweets Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. That’s certainly not a surprise, as the universal DH had been one of the earlier principles for MLB and the Players Association to settle.

The union has sought a universal DH for quite some time, with more possibility for aging or defensively-limited players to have regular roles. AL teams have increasingly used the position as a quasi-rest day for regular players rather than committing to a true full-time DH, but six players (Nelson Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, J.D. Martinez, Giancarlo Stanton, Franmil Reyes and Yordan Álvarez) tallied at least 400 plate appearances in the role last season.

Cruz, in particular, could be the most immediate beneficiary of the universal DH’s implementation. He’s a free agent but is unlikely to see much, if any, time in the field next year. The universal DH opens up the opportunity for NL teams that may have otherwise been wary to bid on Cruz. Other bat-first free agents like Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler could also see their respective leaguewide demand propped up a bit.

The league, meanwhile, embraced the universal DH as a means of aiding offense. The sport’s ever-increasing strikeout rate has drawn plenty of consternation. The leaguewide strikeout percentage ticked upwards every year between 2005 and 2020, setting an all-time record each season. Last year finally marked a stop to the record-breaking streak, as the strikeout rate marginally slipped from 23.4% to 23.2%. That’s perhaps a bit encouraging, but last year’s number still checked in almost seven percentage points above 2005’s 16.4% mark.

Pitchers aren’t the only culprit for the decrease in balls in play, but they’ve had real issues making contact. Last year, pitcher-hitters fanned at a 44.2% clip. Overall, they hit .110/.150/.142 across 4,830 plate appearances. That’s ghastly production, even by the historically low standards at the position. Their five highest all-time strikeout rates have come in the last five years of pitcher hitting. Four of the five lowest pitcher-hitters’ wRC+ (which compares their overall offensive output to that season’s league average marks) have come since 2017. However one wants to explain that trend — improved leaguewide velocities, specialization that leads to less practice for pitcher hitting, etc. — pitchers were putting up less of a fight at the plate than ever before.

The development figures to receive varying reception from fans of Senior Circuit teams (although many likely considered it an inevitability some time ago). Aside from its implementation as a pandemic protocol in the shortened 2020 season, the NL has never had the position. Most MLBTR readers, however, seem to favor its introduction. In a December poll, 62% of respondents expressed support for an NL DH; 26% were against the possibility, while 12% were generally apathetic.

The universal DH is the only official on-field rules change for 2022, but two recent pandemic protocols did not survive the CBA. Jesse Rogers of ESPN reports (on Twitter) that the nine-inning doubleheader returns, as do standard rules for extra innings. The “ghost runner” provision has been scrapped.

The seven-inning doubleheaders and the extra-innings runner proved divisive provisions among baseball fans in their two years in place. They’d been implemented as part of the COVID-19 protocols, with both provisions designed to lessen player workloads during seasons that could be massively impacted by virus-related postponements. Those concerns aren’t expected to be as prominent in 2022, and it seems neither party was motivated enough to agree to implement them permanently. The league may look to reinstitute those rules at some point down the line, but they won’t be in effect for the upcoming season at the very least.

As part of the CBA, a rules committee will be created in 2023, Feinsand tweets. That committee — a group of four active players, six league appointees and an MLB umpire — will have the authority to implement an on-rules change within 45 days of recommending it to the MLBPA. Previously, the league had to wait one year between asking the union’s approval on a rules change and having the right to implement it in the event the MLBPA refused a bilateral agreement.

MLB technically no longer has sole authority to implement those changes, though its appointees will outnumber the player reps on the rules committee. That probably gives the league de facto control over rules, and it’s expected the league will try to implement three in particular — the implementation of a pitch clock, limits on defensive shifting, and larger bases — for the 2023 campaign. Feinsand suggests the automatic strike zone could also be a topic of discussion at that point, although that’ll become clearer next offseason.

Manfred Expresses Optimism For Full Season, Says MLB Has Proposed Universal DH And Elimination Of Draft-Pick Compensation

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Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met with the media for about 30 minutes Thursday morning as the quarterly owners’ meetings drew to a close, discussing the status of the ongoing labor dispute with the MLB Players Association. Among the more concrete takeaways, Manfred said that the league has “agreed” both to the implementation of a universal designated hitter and the elimination of draft-pick compensation for free agents who reject qualifying offers.

However, as MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes reports (Twitter links), the use of “agreed” is a bit misleading. The two parties have not reached a formal agreement on either issue. Rather, Manfred’s use of “agreed” merely indicates that both the universal DH and elimination of draft-pick compensation were included as components of a broader proposal put forth by MLB some time ago.

Still, with regard to the universal designated hitter, this is one of the most concrete indicators of its likely implementation. Both parties, after all, have in the past shown a desire to add a DH to the National League. For the players, this creates another spot in 15 lineups and could create a handful of jobs for free agents. For teams, this all but eliminates the risk of pitchers being injured at the plate and on the bases. Because of that mutual interest, though, the league’s desire to frame the universal DH as something of a concession is somewhat questionable. It’s not clear the union will perceive it as a concession.

With regard to the elimination of pick compensation, Dierkes reports that the league’s proposal instead would award draft picks to teams for losing free agents, based on the quality of player, with no offer of any sort required. That raises issues on how to specifically determine that player’s value, however, and the MLBPA likely harbors concern that by giving teams a pick for losing a free agent, the league is actually disincentivizing clubs from re-signing some of their own players.

Beyond those two more concrete elements of his side’s recent proposal, Manfred offered little in the way of definitive statements. Asked about the status of Spring Training (i.e. whether it will be delayed), the commissioner replied that the “status of Spring Training is no change right now.”

We’re only a week out from the original report date for players and have, to this point, seen no meaningful progress in negotiations between the league and union. A delayed Spring Training feels like a foregone conclusion, but Manfred at least kicked the can down the road a couple days on any such formal declaration, suggesting that the decision was contingent on how Saturday’s meeting with the MLBPA plays out. That said, while Manfred didn’t explicitly state that Spring Training will be delayed, he addressed the possibility, acknowledging that the three-week ramp up period to the pandemic-shortened 2020 season was insufficient.

“The injury data shows that,” Manfred said of 2020’s training period. “We’d like to be [at] 28 [days] — we think four weeks makes sense.” A four-week Spring Training would still fall a good ways shy of the typical six-week period, but the extra week of build-up time in that theoretical scenario would prove beneficial to players, particularly to starting pitchers.

Manfred declared himself an optimist, stating more broadly that he believes the two sides will reach an agreement in time for the regular season to begin, as planned, on March 31. Missing regular-season games would be a “disastrous outcome to this industry,” Manfred said, adding that MLB is “committed to reaching an agreement to avoid that.”

Upon being asked about the league making just one proposal in the ten weeks since implementing the lockout, Manfred demurred and stated that “phones work two ways,” painting the lack of meaningful talks as a two-way street. Whichever side you take in the increasingly ugly battle — and it’s plenty fair if your answer is, “neither!” — it was ownership that locked out the players in, as Manfred stated at the time, an effort to “jumpstart” progress toward a deal. A silent period of more than six weeks followed. It’s plenty defensible to say the union should have been more proactive in instigating talks, but at the very least, the players have spent the past two weeks publicly declaring a desire for daily negotiations.

In one of the more eyebrow-raising moments of the press conference, Manfred was asked whether purchasing an MLB franchise was a “good investment.” He bizarrely implied the contrary, stating that between the purchase price of the team and the money invested into the club on a year-over-year basis, the “return on those investments is below what you’d expect to get in the stock market,” adding that there was greater risk in owning a team. Comments of that nature are sure to further galvanize a union that has repeatedly suggested the league isn’t being genuine or negotiating in good faith.

That term, “good-faith,” is a recurring theme when both sides discuss negotiations, as each indicates that the other is effectively neglecting to operate in such a fashion. For his part, Manfred vowed to make a “good-faith, positive proposal” to the players when the two sides meet Saturday, implying that perhaps this weekend could serve as a turning point.

“One correct move sometimes opens the way to an agreement,” said Manfred. “My view of the world is you always keep looking for that one move that creates that opportunity.”

Collective Bargaining Issues: Service Time, Arbitration

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As covered at length by MLBTR’s Anthony Franco, Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic published a relatively bleak account of the state of negotiations between players and owners yesterday. With the scheduled start of Spring Training fast approaching, the MLBPA — widely viewed among players as having negotiated the short end of the agreement that ran from 2016-2021 — views the owners’ most recent proposal as worse than the prior arrangement. Giants player representative Austin Slater summed up the union’s view when he told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that MLB’s present stance on questions of core economics were “disingenuous” and “a smokescreen” and implied that players viewed owners’ pre-lockout behavior as unprofessional.

Per Rosenthal’s and Drellich’s report, players and owners remain at loggerheads on most — if not all — of the core issues in play. These issues — each of which bear directly on some combination of total revenue, the way revenue is shared between players and owners, and labor conditions — include playoff expansion (a major priority for owners), an international draft (which the players have made clear they’d only agree to in exchange for a significant concession), the competitive balance tax threshold (players view it as a major hindrance to salary growth and would like to see it grow substantially), the minimum salary (which all players make at some point in their career and sets the ‘replacement’ cost for veterans), revenue sharing (players see it as supporting tanking), and draft order (players want a lottery for top picks to disincentivize tanking).

While an on-time start to Spring Training looks like a pipe dream and Opening Day seems to be in increasing jeopardy, owners and players appear to have made at least some progress on one issue: the treatment of players prior to arbitration eligibility. Under the previous agreement, the great majority of players with less than three years of service time were paid the league minimum ($570,500 in 2021) or thereabouts before becoming eligible for salary arbitration (wherein team and player could negotiate but would have a salary set by an arbitrator should they fail to reach a deal) and remain under team control for three further seasons. (Players in the top 22 percent among those with between two and three years of service time, known as ‘Super Twos,’ were granted arbitration rights a year early, giving them four years of eligibility.)

In November, owners proposed eliminating salary arbitration entirely, instead creating a performance-based (by fWAR) salary pool (a solution with the potential to pay young high-end performers a great deal more but that shifts the bulk of injury and performance risk from team to player), while players proposed lowering the arbitration eligibility bar from three years to two (thereby diminishing a year of extraordinary surplus value generated by players entering their primes). Unsurprisingly, both proposals were non-starters.

Recent negotiations appear to have yielded a potential compromise in principle, if not in monetary value. Though the union has not yet dropped its demand for an additional year of arbitration eligibility, each side has proposed the creation of a salary pool for pre-arbitration players — owners have offered $10MM, players have asked for $105MM — to be distributed according to performance, with the biggest bonuses awarded according to MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year voting results. As Rosenthal and Drellich note, owners agreeing to a pool value closer to nine digits than seven might persuade players to accept the continuation of the arbitration status quo.

Some common ground appears to exist on the related topic of service-time manipulation, an issue that rose to prominence in 2015 when the Cubs stashed consensus top-5 prospect (and eventual NL Rookie of the Year) Kris Bryant in the minors for just under two weeks in order to ensure an additional year of club control. Though Bryant’s grievance against the Cubs was ultimately denied, owners appear to agree that such manipulation is a bad look for the game, but their solution differs substantially from the union’s. Both owners and players have proposed somewhat convoluted systems. The union plan would grant a full year of service to a) any player who finishes in the top five in either league’s Rookie of the Year voting, the top three for reliever of the year, or made first- or second-team All-MLB; b) finished in the top 10 at their position in an average of bWAR and fWAR if a catcher or infielder; or c) finished in the top 30 at their position in the same average if an outfielder or pitcher. MLB’s plan would reward teams rather than players, granting a draft pick (after the first round) to any team that keeps a pre-season top 100 prospect on its roster for a full season should that player also finish in the top three in Rookie of the Year balloting or in the top five in MVP balloting in any of his first three seasons.

Owners reportedly view the players’ proposal as affecting a much wider pool of players than they’d like, and there’s no doubt that the union’s scheme would cut into teams’ ability to generate surplus value (in short, the difference between the salary of a player generating a given quantity of on-field value and the cost of that value on the open market). It would do particular damage to teams operating on the model associated with the Rays and A’s of the last several decades, whereby teams generally either lock up players early in their careers for below-market rates (a la the deal Evan Longoria signed with the Rays in 2008, which gave the team nine years of control) or trade them for a maximal return before they reach free agency (as the A’s are likely to do with Matt Olson this offseason). In the 2021 season, for instance, Wander Franco would have been granted a full year of service time under the players’ proposal despite not making his debut until late June — keeping him under team control only through the 2026 season rather than through 2027 — while under the owners’ proposal the Rays would have only received a draft pick had they kept the twenty-year-old on their roster from Opening Day.

How much progress these apparent areas of agreement actually represent is a matter of some debate, and fans should bear in mind that even in these comparatively productive areas of discussion, significant and material gaps persist. Whether or not the 2022 season will begin on time remains an open question, but progress — or a lack thereof — on matters that affect the earning power of all players in the early years of their careers will go a long way toward providing an answer. In any event, the owners’ present proposals aren’t likely to cut the mustard with an MLBPA that feels it’s held the short end of the revenue stick for years.

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