Thinking Through the Roster Expansion Problem
Last night, the Nationals and Braves played an 11-inning game, and because it happened in September, 17 different pitchers were used between the two clubs. Ninety-nine batters, 17 pitchers: that’s a new pitcher every six batters, essentially. Yes, it went extra innings, and Stephen Strasburg had to leave the start with an injury, forcing the Nationals into an unplanned bullpen game, but 15 pitching changes is still just far too many for a Major League game. It’s a problem the league faces every September, when teams are able to carry everyone on their 40-man roster as active players if they so choose; the Nationals currently have 37 active players.
Of course, neither the individual teams nor the players are all that incentivized to change the system. Since the minor-league season ends around Labor Day, the roster expansion gives teams a chance to give their best prospects something to do in September, and gets them some valuable experience in the big leagues. Players like it, of course, because the promotion to the active roster comes with a big improvement in salary, and so guys who have been making minor-league wages are essentially rewarded with a significant end-of-season bonus. It’s hard to imagine either side is going to push hard to limit September roster sizes in the current CBA negotiations, as they both benefit from the current system, and the burden of longer, less enjoyable games are mostly carried by the fans, who don’t have a seat at the bargaining table.
But as the Braves and Nationals showed last night, there has to be a better way than this. Let’s run through a few options.
The solution bandied about the most often is to maintain the 25-man active roster limit in September, but just let teams select which players are going to be active before each game or series. That way, teams could still travel with up to 40 players if they so chose, and could continue to give their prospects experience with the big-league club in September, without giving them the chance to turn every September game into a war of relievers. Of course, this solution might not actually end up doing that much to impact the problem. Consider: if teams could choose to activate different sets of players every day, they could simply keep swapping in fresh relievers who didn’t pitch the day before, and so managers would still have far more pitching depth than they do during the rest of the season, and pitching changes would still be more frequent than they are in April through August.
Simply limiting the number of active players each day would probably help a little bit, but maybe not enough. And then the league and the MLBPA would have to decide what the paycheck would be for a player who’s traveling with the team but deactivated for a given day; is that an active player, paid at the standard rate, even if he’s not eligible to play that day?
So there might be some logistical issues, and the fix might not actually fix much. So there might not need to be some more significant changes.
One idea I still like is something I proposed four years ago: move the minor league season back a month, so that rosters are expanded in April, not September. If we had the month of the MLB season without corresponding minor-league games at the start of the year, teams would be able to manage their pitchers’ workloads early in the year, when everyone is still ramping up to full strength, and teams would be incentivized to carry their best prospects on Opening Day, knowing that the alternative would be to have a guy like Kris Bryant just hanging out in extended spring training otherwise.
Of course, this would just move the too-many-relievers-on-a-roster problem from September to April, and maybe that’s not really an improvement. And this issue doesn’t take into account that the minor leagues do have playoffs that extend into mid-September currently, and if you push the whole minor-league season back, you’re now pushing those into the same time period as the Major League playoffs, and into a colder-weather month. They might not be particularly fond of that change.
So that’s not exactly a perfect solution, either — though I, for one, would rather have the expanded rosters earlier in the year than at the end of the season. But that’s a pretty big structural change to just move the issue from the end of the year to the beginning of the year, and it seems pretty unlikely to be the path MLB actually pursues.
What else is there? Well, they could just get rid of the roster expansion in September entirely, but I can’t imagine either side preferring that option. They could shrink the expanded rosters from 40 down to 30, but that would essentially end the practice of calling up minor-league veterans and fringe prospects, the types of guys who benefit the most from getting a big-league paycheck for a month.
This seems to be a situation where the two parties responsible for finding a solution don’t have incentives that align with really solving the issue. So, despite the fact that no one really wants to watch a game with 15 pitching changes, I don’t know if there’s a change that will solve the issue while actually making either the teams or the players happy. In the end, this might just be a situation where the cures aren’t any better than the disease.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The easiest solution to me would be to change it so that the entire season you use a 22-man active roster that you can change each day, and then the “taxi squad” could simply be, say, 26 men for the main part of the season, going up to 40 at the end of the year.
During the main part of the season you’d usually designate your last 4 starters as the guys to sit out each game. In September, you could also swap out tired players/relievers for the game as well, but at least it means that you’re playing by the same rules the entire season.
Another option could be to simply play the entire season with, say, a 20-person game roster, but there would never actually be an upper limit to the “active” roster. This means that you’re basically limited to about 6 relievers max in a game, but you would usually manage your team so the 6 relievers would all be rested guys. Instead of continuously swapping out guys with options to the minors for 10 days, you could simply alternate them on the taxi/active squad the whole season. Since your average game most teams have 1-2 relievers who are usually unavailable anyways, there shouldn’t actually be a large in-game difference to this.
Doesnt seem all that difficult to me either. Have an active game roster in Sept that can be changed each day. Allow 22-24 players each day from the large 40 man pool. Game integrity is preserved and teams get to look at extra guys and lighten the workload.
I’ve always liked this solution. You can use 20 players per game. No need to set the active roster to “declare” which players are active, just a maximum number of appearances. Add +1 in the 10th inning and every other inning after that.
Joe Maddon at the very least wouldn’t like this. He’s warmed up starters a couple of times in late extra situations, after running out of pitchers, and in multiple cases has used starters as pinch hitters (including at least one pinch bunter in the 12th inning).
FWIW and since nobody else is pointing it out: this is the way the Japanese league operates all year: 28 man roster, 25 active each game.
I think the solution to excess managerial changes is to make them cost something. Force managers to submit their lineup/positions for the entire next inning between innings. Those substitutions would be as now. But any changes that occur once the inning starts render some player (idk prob the guy taken out) ineligible for the remainder of the series.
Doubt it will happen since it would kind of force a restructuring of both bullpen (teams would need long relievers again and fewer one-out guys) and bench (goodbye to pinch-runners and no-field power bats)
Thanks Dave for laying out the issues. Did I read correctly? You want to limit number of pitching changes per game; Give best prospects something to do in September; Get valuable big league experience for best prospects; and Give minor league players on 40-man roster a significant end-of-season bonus. I suspect a rule limiting number of pitching changes per game might do the trick. Teams could still call up their prospects. Prospects could still get a salary bump. Games would remain the same length as games before September. In fact they might be shorter unless MLB implemented the pitching change limit all year. Then all games might be shorter. Just dreaming.
To me, one of the main benefits of expanded rosters in September is to take pressure off the guys who have played almost every day of the summer and are on the edge of falling a part. Sure, players on contenders will continue to play, but there’s no need for a Freddie Freeman type to push his body to the limit. I know players themselves (especially relievers) call August the hardest month of the season because they’re exhausted and they don’t yet have the safety net of expanded rosters.
Old Hoss Radbourne scoffs at this article.
FanGraphs scoffs at Old Hoss Radbourn! Win 59 games? Lead the league in ERA and IP? You’re the third best pitcher in the league, you slacker!
Am I the only person on earth who doesn’t see this as a problem? It’s baseball – some games are long, some are short. I enjoy seeing random guys I haven’t heard of making pinch hit appearances and one batter outings. I like seeing guys on probable playoff teams making their bid for ’25th guy who could inexplicably get the game winning hit and be immortalized forever even though he isn’t actually any good.’ The whole thing is fun to me; yeah, it can be a little dull and wonky. But that’s baseball!
An 11 inning game with 17 pitchers is a delightful aberration, not a cause for concern, I think.
Are you in favor of having expanded rosters for the entire season? If not, then isn’t it a problem to some degree?
I don’t think that. I think expanded rosters make sense for the reasons they exist – they give guys a chance to do something after the minor league season. It’s a random wrinkle in the season that I couldn’t begin to think negatively about – it’s fine. That some games are slower or have more breaks is just the nature of baseball; tonight, you could see a game where both guys throw complete games and the final score is 1-0. You could also see a game where there are 20 pitchers used and it’s 15-13. That’s baseball! And you’d have people complaining about/singing the praises of both games.
I don’t mind the game being a little different in September. And I don’t mind games having all sorts of potential outcomes. I like baseball the way it is.
(Note: I also wouldn’t complain if rules were changed for whatever reason. I can’t begin to imagine getting worked up over this particular issue).
If you’ve suffered through five months of watching a non-contender, the extra roster space to see some new players, assuming your team actually calls up prospects and not filler, is nice. It’s one of the few incentives to watch September baseball after your team has been knocked out of contention.
I actually think it would be interesting to start allowing expanded rosters immediately after the trade deadline. You could even try to use it as a tool for parity — allow a 30 man team starting August 1st, but only for teams that are already below .500 on that date. (Yeah, there might be some team that is right at .500 at the end of July that “tanks” a game or two to get the benefit.. but does that really matter?)
Are you in favor of having interleague play for every game? If you despise interleague, scratch this question.
Overall, I don’t think it is a huge problem, but I definitely find it less interesting when it takes 3 pitchers to throw 19 pitches in a half inning.
I understand that baseball is a slower sport as is, but having breaks in the game 2 or 3 times every half inning after the 6th really does seem to make the games drag on in some instances.
That does happen, but very seldom. Despite all the many, many pitching changes in this game, there was only one half inning in which there were three pitchers, and it happened as you might expect. A man came in, faced three batters, failed to record an out, and was replaced. The man who replaced him was a lefty who faced two batters, got one out, and was replaced as well.
I cannot speak to how many times it’s happened across the league since rosters expanded, but the Giants have used three pitchers in a single half-inning four times in the last seven games, including in both the eighth and ninth innings against the Rockies last night.
Count me as a fan who doesn’t like that stuff at all. I am much more impressed with a player who is left in the game even when the odds start moving against them – rather than having the manager insert themselves into the game by picking their preferred one-note-johnny specialists for every situation. It takes away the heroics and substitutes planning/management.
It’s akin to the difference between a regular basketball game – and the over-managed last two minutes of that game with all its timeouts and substitutions and foul-shooting.
I’m with you on this. I don’t see this as a big deal for the reasons you laid out. I would however like to see fewer time-outs during ABs. Catcher visits to the mound should count as a visit. Pitchers shouldn’t be allowed to wait on the rubber indefinitely, and batters shouldn’t be granted time-outs just because they are antsy.
I have long believed MLB should outlaw pitching changes within an inning with an exception given to the game’s starter. The only other exception would be for injury and if that exception is used, the pitcher must be placed on the DL. This would eliminate the problem.
If you outlaw pitching changes within an inning, do you also outlaw pinch hitters mid inning?
“The only other exception would be for injury and if that exception is used, the pitcher must be placed on the DL”
So if a pitcher thinks they pulled something that needs some attention, but wouldn’t hold them out for more than a day or two, then the team/player has to choose between losing the player for 15 days or pitching through it and possibly causing significant injury?
I’m not in favor of this change, but just for the sake of exploring it as a isn’t-going-to-happen and don’t-want-it-to-happen idea, you could institute a 7-day DL for just this purpose. That means the pitcher misses his next start, so there is a penalty for (ab)using it, but only his next start so the penalty isn’t excessive.
MLB could always create a ‘series DL’. I’m pretty sure the ’15-day’ DL was not mandated via the 10 commandments or the laws of physics.
Rosters expand in September so that teams see their upper-level prospects play for a year before easing them into the major leagues. Moving expanded rosters to April doesn’t make sense because it defeats the purpose of doing so in the first place.
Nobody likes frequent pitching changes, but it’s a necessary byproduct and the pluses far outweighs the minuses – like it says at the end, the cures aren’t any better than the disease, and all things considered it’s a really minor disease.
I don’t understand at all why this is a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”
The issue at hand is akin to the “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy in basketball. You slow the game down to an unwatchable pace by interjecting unnecessary stoppages of play.
In a game with no clock, that already runs over 3 hours on average, it’s pretty easy to see how this might concern those around baseball?
Actually they run slightly under three hours on average, at least as of last year. I suspect that’s up again this season and so you may be right, but it’ll be a month before we know for sure. (Still, I like to use that fact to tweak the see-everything-through-the-lens-of-the-NFL sports fans I know, who complain that “baseball games take too long.”)
And there’s very little action in a football game, anyway. The actual “plays” within a football game take up about 12 minutes, and the games last over 3 hours. This is clearly not a problem for the NFL.
I also like football, by the way, I just don’t see why limiting delays is considered a huge issue for the MLB and a non-issue for the NFL.
why limiting delays is considered a huge issue for the MLB and a non-issue for the NFL
From my perspective it is because delays themselves change the nature of the game. Football/basketball/soccer are timed games. A delay stops the clock but once the clock starts again the game is back on track.
Baseball is not timed except by innings/outs. Delays just insert something extraneous – and once there is one delay then the odds of another one and then another one go up too. The flow of the game itself gets lost and the focus changes a bit to ‘well what is the manager gonna do now’. The manager shouldn’t be as big a part of the game in baseball.
Yet there’s a ton of unnecessary delays that get built into an NFL or college football game. Somehow the NFL is able to get away with situations in which one team scores, kicks the PAT, then there’s a commercial break, then there’s a kickoff that sails through the endzone, then another commercial break. It becomes a 10 minute stretch in which essentially nothing happens. That’s certainly as annoying as putting up with two pitching changes just so you can watch a LOOGY.
Yes – other sports have TV timeouts that are very annoying. But they are also clearly TV timeouts so people can blame TV not the sport itself.
Pitching changes at the start of the inning do not bother me all that much. Pitching changes in the middle of the inning are the boring thing.
I suppose I care about teams having ridiculous number of relievers, but they already have a ridiculous number of relievers before September. Just more of the same. Using the minor league guys to eat mop-up innings and in extra inning games does not bother me all that much.
“but 15 pitching changes is still just far too many for a Major League game.”
I hate to be a snob, but says who? What’s wrong with this?
It’s on the extreme end of the spectrum, and if the game was close and well-fought, while having significant value to one or both teams, there was a high level of fan entertainment with postseason significance which, in many fans’ eyes, takes precedent over the amount of commercial breaks they faced. Now, if it was a Braves vs A’s game… Ugh.
Says me. Says every person watching a game who’s had enough after four commercial breaks in one half-inning and decides to go and do something else. Is it so difficult to see?
Just dress 25 players in September. The four SP will be benched, along with maybe one reliever? So that’s actually a 29-30 man roster. not bad
Dave, with April expansion, it takes away the ability to promote prospects (who could be opening day guys the following year) and get a look at them at the end of the year. I’m sure the Dodgers prefer to have De Leon progress throughout the season, move up a level or two, then try him out at the big league level at the end of the year, and see if he can be useful in the playoffs. With your proposal, he would be unlikely to be used in April, only to be optioned back to AAA, especially if he is succeeding. It would therefore make it tougher for teams to manipulate service time.
I prefer the expansion, but with a 25 man roster set before lineups are due for the first game of every series. That way, relievers can’t be switched out so easily (they have to be locked in for the full series), but the flexibility is still there. Their pay would be pro-rated based on days with the active 25-man.
Dave, September is football season in those minor-league towns. Attendance matters.
What if we attacked the problem differently. Instead of trying to minimize the number of pitching changes in September, we can attempt to improve the process for the entire season by limiting the time taken for each pitching change. I understand that September games would still be relatively longer, but if the delay created by switching pitchers was reduced to a more tolerable amount of time, say, one that that doesn’t necessitate a commercial break, then there may not be as many complaints about the carousel of September pitching changes.
Relief pitchers often throw a sufficient number of pitches to warm up in the bullpen, but between the coach’s walk to the mound, the reliever’s arrival from the bullpen, and further warm-up pitches, the play stoppage becomes irritatingly lengthy. I believe in the past Dave has mentioned that the second set of warm-up pitches is necessary because some bullpens aren’t raised like the actual pitcher’s mound, but why can’t we simply incorporate the game conditions into the bullpens?
If we eliminated the pre-switch meeting at the mound and drastically reduced the number of warm-up pitches after entering the game then we may be able to save significant time with each pitching change.
To reiterate, the September roster expansion would still fuel the increase of pitching changes, and that can be alleviated using reasonable resolutions, whether it’s one of Dave’s admittedly imperfect suggestions or something else. But the time consumption of each pitching change can be dramatically reduced to the point where people stop complaining about their over-use and focus their energy on removing the pre-challenge stalling mechanism employed by every team.
Personally, I Iike the roster expansion and wouldn’t change a thing. It doesn’t bother me at all. Especially if you are following a bad team, it is nice to have something to look forward to in September in the minor leaguers. With any kind of active roster/reserve squad, you know all that will be switched around is pitchers.
Given the lack of parity in the game this year especially, this isn’t an small point.
A dozen teams are more than 5 games out of the last playoff spot – fans of those teams all have literally no reason to watch other than than random personal stuff (Votto on the Reds, Trout on the Angels, etc.). Expanding rosters and the chance for new guys to be seen is huge for those 12. And let’s be honest- Pittsburgh and Colorado are within that ‘5 games of a playoff spot.’ Those aren’t real contenders either. If you lower the bar to ‘3 games out of a playoff spot,’ you’re looking at 17 teams who have no chance at playing in October. For all of those teams, roster expansion is a nice perk at the end of the year to engage fans.
Put me on the “this isn’t really a problem,” boat. The game lasted a long time due to extra innings, an injured starting pitcher, plus an hour long rain delay.
Of the 15 pitching changes,7 happened mid-inning. There was only one half inning in which there were two pitching changes, and the major cause of this is that the Braves have a very large pile of bad relief pitchers. They twice brought in a reliever to face multiple batters and that pitcher was incapable of recording an out.
If you want to avoid this problem, don’t watch games where a team is employing Chris Withrow, Eric O’Flaherty, Matt Marksberry, and Brandon Cunnif. These are guys who will always struggle to record more than one out.
To me, the 15 pitching changes are one of the quirks of baseball that we should try to preserve, rather than abolish. If we get fatigued by 15 pitching changes, should we do away with 15 or 16 inning games? Sure, extra innings have more excitement and tension, but at a certain point they become exhausting. Still, I don’t think most baseball fans are arguing that we should implement NHL scoring or put runners on second.
More to the point of pitching changes, I would think that the obstacles above are reason enough to stop any changes to the call-up system, but I would also posit that September games are the most significant games on the schedule. Teams that decided to push for the playoffs in July want to get the most leverage out of any given at-bat, and tanking teams (while they’d never admit as much) want their opponents to have an advantage to win. Teams, first and foremost, are in the business of winning championships, and as an active, 6-month 40-man roster is unrealistic, keeping the September call-up system is in the team’s best interest.
Setting a daily roster limit of 30 say, isn’t the same as having 37 or 38 in any given game. Those extra 5 are not going to be exclusively RPs, first bc 40 man rosters have limitations, and second bc teams will naturally add also to their position player depth for both flexibility and to get their looks at these players.
So limiting the roster expansion is the obvious compromise solution. Yes, managers will shuffle around their RPs by activation/deactivation to an extent, but teams in races aren’t going to make their best arms unavailable. They will use the rules for their intended purpose – to bring in fresh[er] arms – but the extent of the benches and substitutions per night will be reined in.
How about you give a guy a pitch floor, you have to throw this many pitches before you’re taken out or you can’t pitch for 3 games.
When a new pitcher is brought in the game, they shouldn’t need warm up pitches on the mound. This could cut diwn the time fir switching pitchers. Old pitcher cones out, new pitcher in and batter to the box. They should be warmed up in the pen. I see no reason they should need up to 8 more on the mound. The only exception would be in the case of an injury.
Warm up pitches serve a purpose. They allow the new pitcher to get accustomed to the mound. It may not sound like a big deal if you have never pitched before but it can throw you off. Especially if the guy before you really liked to dig in.
Besides there is almost always going to be a commercial break when a new pitcher comes in (nobody wants to see a guy walk from the outfield to the mound) so the ~1 minute or so it takes to throw 8 warm up pitches really isnt ever delaying the game.
Bullpen mounds are different than the actual mound. Pitchers get warmup throws on the actual mound to help prevent injuries. Preventing pitcher injuries needs to be a top priority in baseball.
This would have no effect on game duration anyway. The time allowed for mid-inning pitcher changes is currently controlled by a countdown timer, and is set to to allow a specific number of commercial advertisements during the pitching change.
The only way to get shorter games with appreciably increased game action per unit time is to reduce the number of commercials. But that would reduce revenue, so it ain’t gonna happen.
Then why not make bullpen mounds the same as the game mounds?
“But that would reduce revenue, so it ain’t gonna happen.”
But advertising revenue is driven by viewership, so you’d have to plot the decrease in ad count against the increase in viewers.
You might get an uptick from the group that stopped watching baseball almost entirely because of too many commercials and then another bump as with shorter breaks perhaps people are less likely to flip the channel.
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If a typical game has 20-22 120s commercial breaks and you can reduce that to 18-20 90s, you now have 60-75% of the ads. Will that bump up viewership enough to raise per ad pricing enough to break-even? I have no idea.
Not even that simple, as the cable companies pay for a share of those spots and if the spots are worth more, they’d presumably have to pay more, so there is at least another variable in play.
That all said, presumably the teams have done the math/projections and already believe they are doing it optimally, right? Just like I assume that Macy’s already did the math and determined that they are better off selling bathing suits in September at 50% off, rather than boxing them up, shipping boxes to distribution centers, putting boxes on pallets, putting pallets on shelves and sitting on them for ~ 6 months [or shipping them to other regions with longer or year-round swim-suit seasons].
Proposing fixes for problems that don’t appear to exist. September call ups are good for everyone, including fans, and I like seeing the next wave getting chances in game action.
1. Yes, move the minor league schedules back a month.
2. For the month of April, major-league teams may invite any 15 players anywhere in their organization to join their major league roster, no more than five of whom can be pitchers.
3. These players shall be paid the major league minimum salary plus expenses on a daily basis, and shall accrue no service time.
Bingo. It helps with the April rotation issue, not too many pitchers can be added, there’s a strong pay incentive for the minor leaguers to want to be added, and since they accrue no service time there is no reason not to bring up that phenom.
“shall accrue no service time.”
So, 7 years of control for virtually every player?
My biggest issue with September baseball is that the fundamental rules of the game change in the middle of a playoff race. The game loses a lot of strategy when a manager can make essentially unlimited moves without consequences.
That said, September is a perfect opportunity for rebuilding teams to see what they’ve got going into next year and do so without the penalty of having to demote/DFA/DL players off of the big league roster. I love that as a fan and I’m sure organizations love it.
I think the best “fix” is to allow teams to carry a full 40 man roster during September, with any player joining the big club earning the MLB salary and service time, but set a 25 man active roster. A team could, in theory, still end up with a 12 man bullpen by deactivating 4 of 5 starters but at least there is some sort of consequence to moves. Plus it would make it a lot easier for contending teams to rest veterans and every day players without worrying about having to use them in an emergency or the player talking their way into the lineup.
None of this is a big problem though, I personally find Bruce Bochy using what seems like a dozen relievers an inning to be hilarious entertainment.
I don’t think the expanded April roster works… where do you draw the line mentally between spring training and the regular season? Expanding the rosters at the end of the seasons has so many more advantages for the players and teams, even if it means the fans suffer through a few duds.
I feel like I could write several paragraphs on the drawbacks, but other sports (hockey, soccer, football) succeed using a “gameday” roster. Baseball makes more sense to do it by series… additional strategies for 2, 3, 4 game series, off days, etc. A tired pitcher could be a healthy “scratch.”
Limiting the number of players a manager can use is an option, but for the sake of player (pitcher) safety, I wouldn’t do that… imagine three extra inning games in a series.