Colorado Rockies: Changes coming to baseball in the near future?

According to ESPN (via The Associated Press), there may be some changes to baseball in 2019 or the near future that would impact the Colorado Rockies and the other 29 major league teams.

ESPN (via The Associated Press) published an article early Thursday morning about some changes to Major League Baseball that have been proposed recently. As you may remember, for the disabled list, it used to be a 15-day DL stint that was the minimum through the 2016 season (it was also in baseball for various stints before being changed for the final time in 1984 until the change back to it in for the 2017 season).

However, after only 2 years of use of the 10-day disabled, MLB is thinking about reverting that back to a 15-day DL.

Additionally, MLB has proposed a change that would increase the time that players optioned to the minor leagues. Currently, it is at 10 days but there are exceptions when somebody on the major league roster is injured and has to go to the DL or when somebody on the major league roster has to go to the bereavement or paternity list. The proposal would change this time from 10 days to 15 days.

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The proposed changes are aimed at reducing the use of relief pitchers and reviving offensive numbers, which have dropped considerably in the past few seasons (e.g. only one NL team, the Dodgers, had an OPS+ above 100, which is league average, in 2018). On the pitching front, “[i]ncreased DL and minor league option use has led to a strategy of teams rotating their middle relievers with their minor league affiliates in order to have more available pitchers each day.”

Also, as a part of the proposals, is the potential of having a pitch clock, as Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci reported last week. Commissioner Rob Manfred can unilaterally make changes but he has to give at least one year notice before the changes are made. However, Manfred has been reluctant to do this unilaterally.

For a change to be made for this season, it would be extremely difficult as spring training games are happening in about a month. In that period of time, Manfred and the MLB Players Association (their union) would have to agree to said change and if it is regarding on-field timing or rule changes, the MLB umpires would have to be trained before games start on the change.

As a result, I doubt we’ll see big changes in 2019 but 2020 and beyond may be a different story