“You are Baseball Czar and have the power to change any one thing on the field or off. What would you do?”
Sandy Alderson, Mets GM
“I would require a pitcher to throw to three hitters. One, it would speed up the game. Two, and more important, it would change the dynamics of the game in the late innings. Today, we have too few lead changes late in games, in part due to the dominance and specialization of relievers. One way to offset dominance is change the dynamics a little bit, as we see occur when things get out of balance in other sports all the time.”
Josh Donaldson, Blue Jays third baseman
“Make a walk count as a hit statistically. That would cause pitchers to look differently at walks and would push them to throw more strikes, which would speed up the game.”
Rick Hahn, White Sox GM
“All postseason games must commence by 7 p.m. Eastern. I realize that this will never happen and very real economic forces would be fighting against this, but I’m blinded by wanting to make sure children (particularly, mine) are able to watch the pinnacle of the season in its entirety.”
A.J. Hinch, Astros manager
“I would just eliminate all the different sets of rules in the game and have us be on an even playing field. 25 man roster for April-August. 30 man roster for September including the SPs. DH across the board. Same rules apply to all teams. TV revenue even……let the best team builders and strategists prevail.”
Jed Hoyer, Cubs GM
“I think the lack of action late in games is a long-term problem. The last third of the game should be the most exciting. Instead, increased velocity and specialization have taken the ball out of play far too much. We have to be open to rules changes that will move the needle in favor of the offense late in games.”
Jeff Luhnow, Astros GM
“The biggest changes I would probably make if I could wave a magic wand is to have the same rules in both leagues (meaning DH in the NL); to realign the divisions to make more sense (Texas and Houston in the west is strange); and to add teams in Europe and Latin America (starting with London and Mexico).”
Manny Machado, Orioles third baseman
“I think MLB is doing a great job on letting us wear whatever cleats we want, whatever apparel we want. They’re letting us be ourselves out there….What I’ve learned in this game (is) everyone’s different in this game. All 25 guys in this game are different. Guys around the league are different. There are different personalities. Guys are more quiet, more low-key. Other guys are flashier. Other guys like to be up. But as long as your respect each other and you do what you’ve got to do on the field, I think you should go out there and play the game however you want to play it.”
Don Mattingly, Marlins manager
“I’d put the electronic strike zone in. Just watching in the last couple of years and the technology we have, it’s so hard for these guys [umps] to get it right. With the power guys are pitching with now and you’ve got umpires with different strike zones. I know they say they don’t miss many [calls], but for me, they’re missing too many. We see the video and most games it’s more than 20. We’ve got to get it uniform so you know what you’re gonna get. There will be adjustments to it for hitters and for pitchers. You think about umpires, they get older and older and you’ve got guys throwing 98, 99 [MPH] with movement. If you made it electronic, you would know what the zone was and how to handle it. There’d be less complaining. I don’t know if they [the umps] would be against it. Some of them say ‘bring it on.’ I also wouldn’t mind getting the pitch clock going. Let’s go.”
David Robertson, White Sox closer
“Get rid of instant replay. It’s changed baseball.”
Mike Scioscia, Angels manager
“There’s one area, there’s a sensitivity to it because it pays everybody’s bills, but I think that especially when you start to get into the playoffs and you start to get to 3-minute and 40-second breaks between innings, I think that becomes almost intolerable as a player and pitcher. So I hope there’s some remedy and again, there’s a sensitivity, I totally understand, this is what pays the freight is television. I would hope there would be some sensitivity to the game flow, to the people that pay money that sit and see a game, that should take 2 hours and 50 minutes to play that all of a sudden is taking three hours and 30 minutes to play.
“The one solution that I’ve heard that I think makes a lot of sense – they use it in soccer at times – is to have a picture-in-picture thing come up where you get the game started, the commercial finishes for about 20 seconds. So let’s say you shave 20 seconds off each half-inning. You’re talking about six minutes of dead time in a game which cuts a three-hour game down to 2:54, which I think is much more in line. The one thing I would suggest is for all the major league baseball powers that be to get together with networks and try to work out a solution where you can cut down the time between innings but still obviously give the forum for television to get their advertising where it needs to be. Whatever way that can happen I think would be a plus for the game.
“Everyone talks about the pace of the game, believe me, we’ve tried to tackle that issue, pace of play. But if you look at an easy way to save six minutes out of the total package over something like this, which is huge.”
Buck Showalter, Orioles manager
“Give a team five timeouts per game (for all mound visits, from managers, coaches or players). Use them how you want, but it becomes a strategic decision. And give each team two replay challenges to check swings. Those calls are very hard, and they’re crucial.”
Stu Sternberg, Rays principal owner
“I would enlarge the strike zone, deaden the ball and further flatten the seams. Basically do everything I could to get batters swinging. Pitchers throwing strikes. And getting balls put in play and not over the fence as much. This infatuation with the home run as excitement needs to end. Fielders making plays and players on base and running the bases is the engine of the game after the pitcher/batter confrontation.”
Ichiro Suzuki, Marlins outfielder
“I would change replay. There are times when the momentum of the game gets stopped or the excitement of the play gets stopped. Imagine it’s the seventh game of the World Series, ninth inning, play at the plate. The ump calls him out, the crowd goes nuts and everyone has to hold up. The plan all along was to speed up the game and I don’t think it’s been the case with replay. . . . They need to talk it over and see what is reviewable. We need more guidelines to make the process smoother. We’ve had replay for a few years, so let’s go over the data and see what we can improve. Let’s go back and clean it up. I firmly believe at the end of the game, we shouldn’t have a replay, because players and fans can’t enjoy the ending.”
Troy Tulowitzki, Blue Jays shortstop
“Change it to four balls and four strikes. Because hitting a baseball is the hardest thing in sports.”
Ken Williams, White Sox executive vice president
“People don’t come to games to see who puts the best defensive shifts on. So in that spirit, I think I would make sure that there are two guys on the left side of second base, two guys on the right side of second base, and not only that, their feet have to be in the infield. Every other sport has its fair share of action, much more than we have right now. Through this, what we’ve done is reduced it to less action than what the game naturally calls for. I don’t think that serves our overall fandom in the best way.”
