Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is humming along. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is humming along. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is humming along. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is humming along. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is a few weeks in. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The 2026 season is a few weeks in. Do you have a question about a hot or cold start in the early going? The upcoming trade deadline? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Read The Transcript Of Nicklaus Gaut’s Fantasy Baseball Chat
Nicklaus Gaut will be talking fantasy baseball with Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers today at 1 pm Central time. Get your question in early or participate in the live event at the link below!
[restrict]
Click here to read a transcript of Nicklaus Gaut’s completed fantasy baseball chat, and be sure to come back next week and ask a question!
MLB To Test Check-Swing Rule In Triple-A
Major League Baseball will implement a handful of rule changes at various levels of the minor leagues during the 2026 season. Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs first reported the slate and those interested in the topic are encouraged to read that post in full.
The most notable is the introduction of the check-swing challenge system in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, beginning in early May. That allows a batter, pitcher, or catcher to challenge an umpire’s check-swing decision against bat-tracking technology. MLB had tested this rule in the Low-A Florida State League and the Arizona Fall League last year.
A check-swing challenge system requires an objective cutoff point. The threshold is whether the bat head breaks a 45° angle relative to the handle (essentially aligning with the opposite base line). Major League Baseball’s rulebook doesn’t have an official check-swing cutoff, instead leaving it at the umpire’s discretion as to whether the hitter offered.
As Longenhagen demonstrates with video, the 45° threshold is further along than what umpires have generally treated as the cutoff. That led hitters to successfully challenge a lot of calls last year. It appears that’s a deliberate consideration by the league. MLB’s memo notes a slight drop in the Florida State League strikeout rate after the check-swing challenge was implemented, “having a positive impact on balls in play and encouraging more extensive testing at higher levels.” It’s not a huge effect but one that would turn more swinging strikes into balls than vice versa.
The check-swing challenge will only be tested in the Pacific Coast League. In the other half of Triple-A, the International League, MLB will instruct umpires to visually use the 45° degree cutoff but will not give players the right to challenge. That’s seemingly to set up some kind of control group vs. the PCL while encouraging umpires to be more forgiving on check-swing calls generally.
Additionally, there’ll be a slight adjustment to the positioning of the second base bag in the International League. That change, which goes into effect in the second half of the 2026 season, moves the bag a little closer to the pitcher’s mound and reduces the distance from second to the corner bases by roughly nine inches in both directions. As with the previously implemented change to enlarge the bases, it’s designed to encourage more aggressive baserunning.
There are a few more minor tweaks related to pace of play and positioning of base coaches which the FanGraphs post covers in greater detail. There’s also the introduction of a reentry rule for a pulled starting pitcher at the rookie ball levels. Unlike the other rule changes mentioned here, that is not being tested for eventual implementation in MLB. That’s simply designed to avoid overworking young pitchers — most rookie ball players are teenagers — who are struggling to throw strikes, hopefully reducing injury risk.
MLB tests a number of rule adjustments in the minor leagues or independent ball. Some of them like the pitch clock, the ball-strike challenge system, and shift limitations make it to the highest level. Others (e.g. the DH “double-hook,” designated pinch-runners) have not.
The check-swing rule seems to be the one worth most closely following of this year’s group. “We haven’t made a decision about the check-swing thing,” commissioner Rob Manfred told Evan Drellich of The Athletic last June. “We do try to think sequentially about what’s coming. I think we got to get over the hump in terms of either doing (ball-strike challenges) or not doing it before you’d get into the complication of a separate kind of challenge involved in an at-bat, right? You think about them, they’re two different systems operating at the same time. We really got to think that one through.”
Submit Your Questions For This Week’s Episode Of The MLBTR Podcast
On the MLB Trade Rumors podcast, we regularly answer questions from our readers and listeners. With the next episode set for Wednesday, we’re looking for MLBTR’s audience to submit their questions and we’ll pick a few to answer.
The World Baseball Classic is winding down and Opening Day is now just over a week away. Do you have a question about a camp battle? The upcoming season? Next winter’s potential labor showdown? If you have a question on those topics or anything else baseball-related, we’d love to hear from you! You can email your questions to mlbtrpod@gmail.com.
Also, if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, send us your question in audio form and we might play it. iPhone users can find instructions on how to do so here.
In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Steve Adams
- Good morning! We’ll get going around 1pm CT, give or take a couple minutes. Feel free to submit questions ahead of time, as always.
Astros71
- Jake Meyers is staying, right?
Steve Adams
- At this point that’s my assumption, yeah. The Astros are already short in the outfield. I guess in theory they could try to swap him out for a less-proven LHH center field option, but I don’t know that such a scenario is really out there. Feel like he’s more or less locked in there by now.
Littell
- Why did I sign with the nationals? I could have gone anywhere else!
Steve Adams
- If it were true that he could have gone “anywhere else” for that same money or more, he probably would have. The market for Littell clearly wasn’t anywhere near what he and his camp set out hoping to find early in the season. I’m sure there are more competitive clubs that would’ve given him $7MM back in November/December. Probably a fair bit more than that on a one-year deal. But Littell was surely seeking two- and likely three-year deals at that point and wasn’t going to be open to something like 1/12 at that time, even if it was on the table.
- Littell has pitched a bunch of innings the past two seasons, but he’s a low-90s guy with his velo and had one of the lowest strikeout rates in the majors last year.I think he was worth more than this and definitely like it for the Nationals, but I’m not entirely surprised that the market just didn’t show up for him
MarioSoto
- Honest thoughts on the Reds?
Steve Adams
- Had one of the five best rotations in baseball prior to the Greene news. That drops them down a ways (though obviously there’s a lot of upside if it gets someone like Lowder into the rotation).I don’t love the bullpen. Their fixation on dedicating a significant portion of their limited payroll to one of the most homer-prone relievers in baseball and having him close games in their bandbox park is weird, but Emilio Pagan posted decent numbers last year (with the help of a few game-saving home run robberies).
Offense should be improved with Geno there, possible full seasons of Stewart, Stephenson, Friedl … better health from Elly
- I think they’re probably behind Chicago and Milwaukee for me in the NL Central, but not by so much that a few breakouts for the Reds and/or a key injury or two elsewhere can’t make it a tight race. They should be in Wild Card contention at least.
Big Time
- Other than Giolito, what other free agents are out there that you are surprised don’t have a contract in hand right now?
Steve Adams
- Michael Kopech is probably the biggest one. Danny Coulombe, to a lesser extent.
Jesus Luzardo
- Thoughts on my new deal?
Steve Adams
- I’d have pegged him for something like Carlos Rodon money (6/156) in free agency (with an outside chance at seven years, depending how his 2026 goes), so getting him for five years seems like a nice win for the Phillies. But at the same time, Luzardo has had plenty of injuries throughout his career, and he was offered a pretty hearty nine-figure deal that spares him all the uncertainty surrounding the labor staredown and everything … I get it.