September Roster Expansion

[Texsox]

I never cared for the roster expansion. Managers have more options, some teams look like a AAAa squad, right when races are determined.

[danman31]

You put this in the wrong board to get an unbiased response.

[wsox08]

Good -- gets teams out of contention a chance to see the future and keep fans in the seats

[southsider2k5]

I think it is a great idea to be honest. Come September guys bodies are breaking down and need more rest. Plus it gives fans and teams basically a tryout situation for players, and rewards players who had great years in the upper minor leagues.

[Texsox]

Forty-Man Fraud

 

September 1, 2000

 

September means many things to the baseball crank: pennant races, cold late nights, the promise of the play-offs, and the sad sight of teams well out of contention winding down their seasons like a toy bunny with the wrong batteries.

 

The baseball on the field is strangely affected by that phenomenon unique among professional sports: September roster expansion. Baseball is the only sport that actually expands the available roster of players the last 15% of its season. There are different rules to allow clubs to do this with impunity. For example, minor leaguers brought up during this time don't have the games and days on the roster count towards their major league service time (and thus accelerate them towards arbitration-eligibility).

 

Some teams only bring up a few players, of course, but most bring up between five and fifteen extra hands for the stretch drive. For teams out of contention, this is practically an early spring training, as the four-A-type ballplayers, the rehab projects, and the youngsters on their way up all get some extra playing time. But for teams in contention, it presents a cornucopia of bench options for little ball and for resting their everyday players.

 

I'll try to put this as bluntly as possible: September expansion is the worst rule on the books for distorting the game of baseball, at a time when it's most critical everybody is playing on the proverbial level playing field. Worse than the DH, worse than the umpires' inconsistent zone (which is at least random), worse than allowing Terminator-style protective armor to the batters.

 

Here's why.

 

1. Expansion eliminates hard choices about in-game management decisions.

 

if you've got fifteen pitchers and eleventy-two possible pinch-runners and hitters, then there's essentially no real hard decision to be made during the traditional late-and-close games, when the decision about whether to use up your last lefty out of the pen or your last right-handed pinch-hitter can swing the game. As such, expansion removes the "back wall" of the end-game. 2. Expansion leads to an overemphasis on little ball management.

 

If you keep score at a September game, take extra paper. Managers love substitutions and specialists, because it gives them the illusion of control over a game. Check out the box scores this week: you'll find a dizzying array of footnotes indicating pinch-running, pinch-hitting, and pinch-hitting for pinch-hitters, along with pitchers entering the game for a third of an inning at a time. There's a time and a place for this kind of chess match, but an unlimited supply of subs makes it happen a lot more and interrupts the flow of the game without making the confrontations any more interesting.

 

3. Expansion lengthens games significantly.

 

The two reasons above explain why: with substitutions happening all over the place, games plod on forever in September, at a time when the weather is probably the least amenable to a slow pace, at least for the fans' sake.

 

4. Expansion distorts the post-season by unfairly benefiting teams with divisional leads.

 

If you've got a team with a significant lead in the division, you can afford to rest up your regulars as much as you want, take them out in mid-game, and so forth, with your pile of September call-ups. Other teams fighting for the lead in their divisions have to run out their regulars, of course, subjecting them to injury risks and wear and tear. One might argue that this should simply be a benefit to teams that have been so good as to clinch early, but good October baseball contests are the ones where the best players go up against the best players.

 

5. Expansion exacerbates the small market vs. big market gulf

 

While major league service rules don't count for September call-ups, major league pay rules do. This means each September call-up gets his major league salary, which for rookies is at least $33,333 for a whole month. Adding on ten players for $300,000 isn't anything for the Yankees or Dodgers, but you better believe the small-market teams, looking at poor September attendance, pay attention to every nickel. As such, the smaller-market clubs are less inclined to do a large expansion, and this creates an imbalance between roster sizes. That distorts the game. [more]

 

http://thediamondangle.com/crank/20000901.html

[southsider2k5]

There are a lot of things about Baseball that are completely unique to our sport. For example, baseball is the only sport where the defense controls the ball, should we get rid of that too?

 

Also one of his big points loses a lot of luster because no one calls up 15 guys. Heck no one really calls up 10 guys even, most teams call up half a dozen guys tops.

[Rex Hudler]

This guy's whole point seems to be based on this statement.....

 

Some teams only bring up a few players, of course, but most bring up between five and fifteen extra hands for the stretch drive.

 

I have not done any research on this, but I would tend to think he is VERY wrong in that assertion. My guess is that most teams bring up in the 3-5 players range, with very FEW bringing up more than 8.

 

I don't think it affects games/pennant races anywhere nearly as much as he thinks.

 

That said, there is certainly more of a possibility of races being affected now with the wild card than before.

 

Still, I think it is a non-issue, personally.