A 26 man roster is an improvement, but is MLB making a mistake not keeping 28?

[Brock Beauchamp]

I think these three and 4 man benches are ridiculous and not what baseball should settle for. I’ve always been a strict 25 man roster guy but with team employing more and more pitchers, it doesn’t work anymore. When Gene Mauch managed the Twins he would use a deep bench. That was a better game. Therefor I’d be in favor of 28 so realistic benches could return.

I’m okay with roster expansion but it needs to come alongside call-up/down restrictions and have a pitcher cap of 13.

 

Playing ping pong with pitchers in AAA just sucks for those players who accumulate service time 1-3 days at a time.

[terrydactyls]

I HATE INFIELD SHIFTS!!!!! But, not for the same reasons most of you do. I hate the shift because current-day major league players have no ability to bunt or hit the opposite way. It's not rocket science; it's just practice. Does anyone really think teams would continue to shift if opponents kept dribbling the ball into the wide open spaces left by the shift? Luis Arraez would have a batting average over .500 if opponents tried a shift on him. The shift only works because hitters still try to muscle the ball through or over the shift.

[ashbury]

You know what else correlates well to time-of-game on that page? Attendance-per-game.

 

Let's cut that back to under a couple thousand fannies in the seats, and I'm sure games will finish in under 2 hours, easy.

 

Or, if MLB really wants to soup up the profits, go the other way and figure out how to have 4-hour games all the time, not just in the post-season. 100K fans will be elbowing their way into the ballpark to see the spectacle.

[Bright Twins]

I like the 26. One or two more may be OK, too

More relief pitchers have become desirable. The game has evolved away from 7 to 9 innings for starting pitchers. It is a competitive advantage for starting pitchers to pitch as intensely as they can from the beginning of the game. In the past, pitchers went into cruise control, holding back as they needed, in order to last longer. This appears to be not as effective as hard throwing starters and using more relief pitchers. So, do you limit this by limiting roster numbers? Might be a good idea, so it does not keep ballooning to one pitcher per inning.

Using a pitch clock only in the Minors is what I am in favor of. I don’t want to watch a pitch clock when watching a game. Too much info already. The use in the Minors should be sufficient. Most coming up when pitch clock has been used in Minors usually pitch must quicker than many veterans. Plus, the three batter rule will decrease pitching changes sufficiently.

Personally, I don’t mind a 3 hour game vs 2 hour 50 minutes. I don’t notice. If I were a sportscaster, watching everyday, it might bug me. I do get tired of hearing the complaints about it when I am watching a game, even though I can see their perspective. They get to watch baseball for a living! Relax and enjoy it.

[Dodecahedron]

I'm not against shifting, but I'm against position players bringing index cards with them to the field. Pitchers are not allowed to have a rolodex of a hitter's weaknesses with them. Only certain data is allowed in the dugout for managers to use. I have never before seen position players bringing anything onto the field other than a glove.

 

If players can memorize where to stand to beat a certain hitter, great. If the dugout can coordinate where they want everyone to stand, great. The cheat sheets gotta go, and I'm surprised the league hasn't acted on this already.