September baseball: You can’t defend it intellectually.
Competing with as many as 40 players on each team, after playing with 25-man rosters for the first five months? Ludicrous. Commissioner Rob Manfred knows it. I’d be very surprised if Manfred didn’t address it significantly in the new collective bargaining agreement that is being negotiated right now and, assuming the owners and players come to terms, will begin in the 2017 season.
But like with everything, there’s the intellectual component to September baseball and then there’s the emotional component. And emotionally, I’ll defend September baseball all month long. I will miss it, although not entirely, when it’s gone.
Manfred, in his second year on the job, has made clear his desire to appeal more to the younger demographic, and September’s myriad extra pitching changes, because managers have so many more relievers, hurt the time-of-game and pace-of-game initiatives. While the Players Association likes that so many players accrue an extra month of service time, you can get around that easily enough by telling teams they have to establish an “active roster” daily, or weekly, or however you want to play it. I also think many veteran players would be happier if their clubhouse and team flight didn’t get so crowded in September, so it’s hard to see this being a no-bend issue for the union.
Let’s assume the bending occurs and we never again experience this brand of September baseball. Here’s what the game will lose:
1. Strategy on steroids: Yeah, I get it. Watching September baseball can be exhausting with the multitude of pitching changes. Nevertheless, when the stakes are so high, I love that managers have so many different options to contemplate and fans and media have so many moments to second-guess. How about Monday night’s Mets-Nationals game, when Terry Collins let Rafael Montero hit in the top of the second inning and the Mets trailing, 2-1? Under normal rules, you understand Collins’ thinking. In September, though, it became another decision and discussion point.
2. Unlikely heroes: Another argument supported by this week’s Mets-Nats series. T.J. Rivera! The undrafted Bronx native hit his first big-league homer in the top of the 10th inning Tuesday night, a game-winner against Washington closer Mark Melancon. He might not even be in the majors if not for the expanded rosters.
3. Rookie previews: This used to be the dominant flavor of September. Teams wanted to showcase their prized prospects to fire up their fan bases for the subsequent season. In 1980, Fernando Valenzuela made 10 appearances in relief for a contending Dodgers team, allowing no earned runs in 17 2/3 innings, to whet the locals’ appetite for what was to come. You still see it occasionally, though. The Red Sox recalled their highly touted Cuban player Yoan Moncada this month. Maybe he’ll get some chances this weekend against the Yankees, who also made a run at signing him.
4. Welcome encores: On the flip side of the previous point, September has afforded vanished veterans the chance to either say goodbye or, they hope, reintroduce themselves. Joe Nathan has been reunited with the Giants, the team that drafted him. The Yankees are adding Billy Butler. Quite memorably last year, Barry Zito, after sitting out 2014, pitched an entire season with Oakland’s Triple-A affiliate in Nashville and then got a mid-September call-up from the A’s. He and old Oakland teammate Tim Hudson faced each other in an otherwise meaningless A’s-Giants game, and they both retired after the season.
None of these joys should outweigh the good that will come with an expected rule change. And maybe we’ll still get a little bit of them through a “designated roster” mechanism. It won’t be the same, though. And the game, while making the right move for the future, will lose a little of its character in the process.
This week’s Pop Quiz question came from Dianne Rosen of Boca Raton, Fla.: Name the current major-league manager who appears as himself in a 1994 episode of “Seinfeld.”
Yeah, it’s an easy one: Buck Showalter.
