Change can be good, if the change is a good one. I think Yogi Berra might have said that. At any rate, baseball, a sport that through history has often been accused of being allergic to adaptation, appears to be on the cusp of more than change. It's more akin to a metamorphosis.
You've seen the proposals that are rumored to be on the table, but let's start with this list from ESPN's Jeff Passan:
• A three-batter minimum for pitchers;
• A universal designated hitter;
• A 20-second pitch clock;
• The expansion of rosters to 26 men, with a 12-pitcher maximum;
• A study to lower the mound;
• Draft advantages for winning teams and penalties for losing teams;
• A rule that would allow two-sport amateurs to sign major league contracts.
Let's begin with the last two of those bullet points, because there is a stark difference between them and the other five items. The draft proposal is obviously an anti-tanking measure and whether it would have the desired impact would entirely depend on the form the rule would take.
The notion appears to be that if a team doesn't see multiple seasons of losing as a clear path to, say, a top-five pick, then it will be less likely to put the objective of winning on a temporary back burner. That might have some effect if the penalties are stiff enough. There is indeed a real value in top-of-the-draft picks, but the draft itself remains an exercise in variable outcomes.
But if, as has been reported, teams would be docked 15 slots, that would have a certain impact, as would the possibility of docking a team $2 million in international spending. The penalties would get worse with each season of extreme losing, defined in the linked report as 90 losses.
The danger: Struggling teams could get stuck in cycles of mediocrity. When a team focuses on rebuilding its roster from young talent developed from within its farm system, the hope is that a handful of impact players emerge and serve as a foundation for years in contention. To be sure, impact players are found all over the draft board, but if you're not getting those premium picks, your chances to uncover gems are diminished.
I can understand the desire to diminish the incentives to strip down rosters and go lean while building up the talent pipeline. It's a lengthy, wholly transparent process that fans recognize and sometimes clamor for. While they might buy into the plan in the abstract, they aren't as likely to validate their faith with ticket purchases in the interim. Looking at last year's attendance drop and the markets that lost fan support, it's a concern.
But I am not sure I want to see the problem addressed in ways that might further undermine competitiveness. There has to be an economic solution. After all, in the end, that's what serves as the ultimate incentive.
As for the two-way players idea, it's a good thought. Baseball needs to be a welcoming place for the world's best athletes and you don't want to inhibit their path with poorly designed economic structures. But the thing about the Kyler Murray situation that bugs me most is that if he ultimately chooses football, the Oakland Athletics are out a top-10 draft pick. There needs to be a way to compensate them that does not currently exist. You don't want teams shying away from these athletes when they come along. Maybe you make it optional; if the A's wanted to just hold on to Murray's rights, then they could. Or they could relinquish them and accept some sort of draft-pick compensation.
Now we can address the five other bullet items together because they all underscore a common goal: to generate more action, mostly in the form of increased offense. Perhaps the baseball overlords have seen the well-received bursts of points in both the NFL and NBA and asked, "Why can't we get some of that?" To that, I say be careful what you ask for.
My feelings on the universal DH have been addressed before, so I won't enter that old debate again. In a nutshell, I'm a status quo guy. But the bigger point is this: It doesn't matter what I like, or even what the players or owners like. It should be all about what the fans like.
I have not seen any reliable, recent polling on the DH debate, so I can judge only by my own travels around cyberspace, which could be mistaken. But I feel like National League fans want no part of the DH. American League fans, to a lesser extent, prefer to keep it. And baseball fans as a whole would favor eliminating it altogether. If this theory could be borne out through extensive polling, then the universal DH notion would be a mistake. Because it's merely an aesthetic problem, not a competitive one. There are reasons why baseball fans like the style of play that they like. Those reasons, from both sides, are equally valid. So why not give everyone what they want?
The pitch clock is something I have little experience with in its use at other levels, but the feedback I've gotten on it is that it is pretty unobtrusive. If that's the case and it helps tighten up the dead points of a ballgame -- when the batter steps out to straighten out his batting gloves after every pitch, for example -- then I can't see a downside with the pitch clock. Plus it's another thing to look at on the scoreboard.
The trade-off of putting 26 players on a roster but limiting it to 12 pitchers is a good one. Teams simply make too many pitching changes to gain an edge that might or might not actually exist, and even if it does, it's a marginal uptick. I'd want to see the teeth of this idea, however, because as it stands, you can simply ramp up the shuttling of optionable pitchers so that you always have seven or eight available relievers. That's not accomplishing much. But the increase of bench sizes and the possible return of the pure pinch hitter -- that is an exciting prospect.
As for the lowering of the mound, well, when mounds were raised 50-some years ago, it helped stifle offenses for nearly the entire decade of the 1960s. Who's to say that lowering them won't have an equally skewed effect in the opposite direction? But the proposal as reported is to study the issue. I guess it's hard to say what the validity of something as extreme as this might be if the issue hasn't been systematically evaluated. Basically, I feel the same way about the three-batter minimum being discussed. I need to see that in play before I judge it, but I can't say I love the idea because, again, it's an infringement on strategy and, by extension, the actual competition.
Let's widen the lens a bit and consider whether the goal to artificially encourage offense is a sound one in the first place. I would argue that it's not. To me, the best baseball isn't a run-crazy environment, nor is it at its best when runs are too hard to come by. The best baseball is one of balance. Not too few runs, not too many. Just the right amount, and then the game is one of unending beauty. You can have your occasional pitchers' duel or slugfest, but making either of those things the norm saps the charm from their occurrence.
But the thing is, baseball's run levels aren't a problem. The problem is how those runs are being scored, with too much station-to-station baseball and three-true-outcomes trips to the dish. I don't see how any of these proposals addresses that problem.