2021 season

Russ2dollas said:
I really hope they set the rules before Free Agency. I know that seems basic but I do not trust manfred to do basic things.

NL not knowing about the DH would be a huge disadvantage.
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Agreed. Free agency starts a week or so after the regular season ends. There is no reason a decision should be held until Nov/Dec....teams need to know what the rules will be so everyone has a fair shot at constructing a team within those guidelines.

The DH did make games more entertaining this season. I don't think a could stomach another Folty AB. And the 3 hitter minimum does add a level of strategy to the game.
 
I’m a big fan of the 3 batter rule, the DH and the limited off days in the playoffs. The DH and 3 batter rule adds extra strategy to the game and the limited postseason off days force the use of the full roster.

Hated the extra inning rule though. That’s not real baseball.
 
Hated the extra teams in the playoffs (and the whole bubble crap) and hated the extra inning rule. Everything else was pretty great.
 
This contention about days off during the playoffs is a waste of time at the moment. Days off during the normal playoff cycle are primary travel days since the advent of East Coast/West Coast baseball. Prior to 1960 and the age of commercial jet planes, same thing existed because St Louis (farthest west team) to Boston (farthest east team) took so long on a train or even a commercial Super Constellation which only flew at about 250 miles per hour.
 
Love the 3-batter rule, don't care one way of the other on the DH (it's likely here to stay), didn't dislike the extra-inning rule as much as I thought I would.

Long term, baseball should add two franchises, go to 8-four team divisions and have the top 8 teams in each league go to the playoffs (or maybe just the four division winners in each league). I think the thing with expanded playoff eligibility is that you could spread the proceeds of the playoffs equally among all teams in baseball to make up for a shorter regular season if that was done to accommodate expanded playoffs. I generally like more regular season and less playoff competition, but playoffs do generate interest.

I think it's safe to say baseball is going to look a lot different this off-season and that is likely to spill over into some longer-term changes.
 
If they insist on having more playoff games then just make the wild card around the three-game series. Or make the division series a 7 game series.
 
Hate the extended playoffs. Postseason should be more exclusive.

Obviously love the DH. I don't think anyone has a valid argument against it anymore...pitchers batting adds zero extra "strategy", and watching them bat is the most boring TV imaginable.

Extra inning rule is garbage, and strikes me as amateurish.

I'm indifferent to the 3 batter rule. All it did was exchange LOOGY strategy for another type of strategy. I don't prefer either, but it certainly didn't shorten games.

For the first ime ever, I heard someone provide a logical argument against the shift, and it has partially persuaded me. I think there are ways to limit the shift without totally banning all novel defensive alignments.

I have never been more in favor of robo umps. Even if they are error-prone, at least they will make errors at the same rate for all teams, and we can finally stop listening to silly whining about umpire bias. Listening to dumb people complain about dumb things sucks a lot of enjoyment from the game for me.
 
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Carp said:
If they insist on having more playoff games then just make the wild card around the three-game series. Or make the division series a 7 game series.
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Get rid of the play-in wild card game at the very least. I think going best-of-seven throughout the playoffs is a good way to go.

I believe there will be expansion and that's maybe one of the ways the labor agreement is reached. Another 50 guys on active big league rosters and 30 more when you consider the 40-man rosters. Of course, the union hasn't been all that kind to the "middle class" player so maybe expansion is a non-starter. But then you could go to a post-season of all division winners.
 
Enscheff said:
Hate the extended playoffs. Postseason should be more exclusive.

Obviously love the DH. I don't think anyone has a valid argument against it anymore...pitchers batting adds zero extra "strategy", and watching them bat is the most boring TV imaginable.

Extra inning rule is garbage, and strikes me as amateurish.

I'm indifferent to the 3 batter rule. All it did was exchange LOOGY strategy for another type of strategy. I don't prefer either, but it certainly didn't shorten games.

For the first ime ever, I heard someone provide a logical argument against the shift, and it has partially persuaded me. I think there are ways to limit the shift without totally banning all novel defensive alignments.

I have never been more in favor of robo umps. Even if they are error-prone, at least they will make errors at the same rate for all teams, and we can finally stop listening to silly whining about umpire bias. Listening to dumb people complain about dumb things sucks a lot of enjoyment from the game for me.
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Games certainly drug on this fall. Not sure why, but man they felt REALLLY long. I'll watch every game, but man a few felt like they went on forever.
 
I don't see the argument against the DH. I'm almost exclusively an NL guy and I don't really see the point any longer of watching pitchers flail at the plate. It forces some lineup action and incentivizes having pinch hitters, I guess, but I don't see it really improving the experience.

I don't mind the regular season extra inning rules. I thought it would be silly but in practice it was just fine. It adds a little immediate suspense and I would guess that it is effective in limiting the length of games on the whole. Regular season marathons just aren't really worth it, I think. It's odd that it was discontinued for the postseason, but I guess that's fine.

I've always thought LOOGY's were anti-American and somewhat sad people, so I don't mind that their days may be numbered. It's interesting that the rule carried into postseason unlike the extra innings rule. Seem like two similar initiatives. The desire to try and shorten games and remove some of the tedium from regular season events that is perhaps forgivable in a postseason game.

I think some kind of illegal defense rules for the shift would be fine. I'm not going to get up in arms about it either way, but I think the shift tends to make baseball games less exciting. Of course eliminating it would do nothing about shortening the games....

I don't like the extra round of playoffs. I'm sure over time I would get used to it, but right now I think that finishing .500 over a 162 game season and then having a fairly good chance to knock off one of the two best teams in the league seems out of whack. I think baseball is a lot more likely to have things like that happen than the NBA and it seems a poor reward for a lot of drudgery during the summer.

I'm not sure how robo umps would work or how effective they would be, but anything that introduced more delays for reviews or whatever would not be welcome. Or that increased the down time in at bats. I watched part of two of the games on DVR this year. The biggest time suck MLB faces becomes very evident when you are fast forwarding. It's the time between each pitch. Somehow it is not aggravating when you are watching live, but infuriating when you fast forward through it trying to catch up with the broadcast.
 
cajunrevenge said:
They should make the worst 8 teams do a playoff for draft position imo.
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Last place would get first and so on? Winner getting the better draft pick would obviously make more sense, but it would be much less fair. I like the idea of the losers getting the better pick. We could see how badly some teams wanted better picks. It could almost be like our version of the Globetrotters, except no one wins.
 
I DO like the Wild Card series being 3 games, but it should only be the two Wild Card teams playing each other. None of the extended ****. We almost had a below .500 team (of cheaters) reach the WS.
 
50PoundHead said:
Get rid of the play-in wild card game at the very least. I think going best-of-seven throughout the playoffs is a good way to go.

I believe there will be expansion and that's maybe one of the ways the labor agreement is reached. Another 50 guys on active big league rosters and 30 more when you consider the 40-man rosters. Of course, the union hasn't been all that kind to the "middle class" player so maybe expansion is a non-starter. But then you could go to a post-season of all division winners.
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I think teams will push back hard on that sort of thing. They will argue that they can't afford that many players after 2020.
 
Things I liked about the 2020 season? Freddie Freemans postseason performance

Things I disliked? Having Pablo Sandoval having to be on the roster in the post season and not only play in the field but have ABs.
 
If they want to do some stupid **** for extra innings like this year, they should go all out. You play 1 extra inning normal. If there is still no winner, we go into a HR Derby Shootout (much like Hockey). At least that would be fun to watch.
 
Dalyn said:
I think teams will push back hard on that sort of thing. They will argue that they can't afford that many players after 2020.
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New franchises have to pay a hefty fee to join the league and that might warm owners to the idea. I don't know which untapped markets could (or would) support a major league franchise, but there's always a billionaire or two that would love to own a major league franchise.
 
I do think, like it or not, the DH is here to stay. Partly because before this year, every other level of baseball outside the NL had it. This season gave the perfect excuse to implement it. I saw Snitker gave the DH his endorsement, and I suspect more managers and other NL people will do the same.

The extra inning rule does not return, I hope. Just too much of a gimmick to me.

The three batter rule I think, is here to stay.

The wild card round was needed this year because of the 60 game schedule. Assuming we're back to 162 games, I don't see a need for that round. I don't see another change needed for the postseason format until MLB expands to 32 teams, which I believe will happen in the next 3-5 years.
 
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