Colorado Rockies Poll: Do You Like Roster Expansion?

Apr 30, 2014; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Colorado Rockies pitcher T. Kahnle wears a pink backpack against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

The Colorado Rockies — and every other MLB team — are allowed to expand their rosters to 40 players now that September is here. Is that good?

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The Colorado Rockies, like everybody in baseball, are taking advantage of the September roster expansion. For those uninformed (which probably isn’t many, but still!), rosters grow from 25 to 40 players in September, allowing teams to call up relief corps helpers, utility and bench players, top prospects, players to audition for the next season, yada, yada, yada.

I was watching a baseball game last week — forgive me, I can’t remember which one, but it wasn’t a Rockies game (I think it might have been the Padres and Rangers) — and the broadcasters got into a debate about the 40-man September roster, and whether having up to 40 guys on the team was excessive.

It got me thinking about the practicality of the 40-man expansion, obviously, the 2007 Colorado Rockies used it completely to their advantage in that final month, trotting out reliever after reliever on an unusually deep staff to win 94 games in a row and send the club into the postseason. But that’s just one anecdotal example.

So I know this is a little random for a poll question, and perhaps most of you haven’t given any thought to it, but do you like the 40-man roster in September?

I won’t go into this too deeply, but if it were up to me, I’d stop the 40-man roster for the final month of the season, and instead do this: make active rosters 27 players all year long (so, add two players to an active roster), and expand just to 30 for the final month.

It would force teams to fine-tune a little bit more during the stretch run, since they wouldn’t be able to call up a dozen guys. But more important to me is (slightly) expanding the active roster the rest of the season; at 27 players, teams could add one (or two) pitchers, or a pitcher and another back up catcher, or whatever the case may be.

It sucks to see amazing pitchers lost for a full season due to elbow and shoulder surgeries (example: Adam Ottavino). Obviously, Ottavino would have likely still gotten injured even with another pitcher or two in the bullpen, but perhaps some of the more nagging injuries that befall players could be (slightly) more infrequent if teams were less pressed for depth. Just a thought.

As always, send me your tweets: @RoxPileFS and @BobbyDeMuro. Happy (early) Labor Day! I’m going to the ‘Topes game tonight in Sacramento. Yayyyyyyy!!!

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