September MLB rule changes better for fans than prior to adding wild-cards

Expanded playoffs easier to gain post-season but better for MLB product

Aug 30, 2024

September arrives with 17 MLB teams alive and kicking: Purists point to major-league baseball and its World Series heyday of pitting the AL pennant winner against the NL pennant winner, with two leagues, no divisions within each league and, most definitely, no wild-cards. That perceived period of purity lasted from 1903 until the 1968 World Series between the Tigers and Cardinals. Then came MLB expansion to 24 teams, splitting the AL and NL into two divisions each, East and West, with an additional round of playoffs. Traditionalists never got over it, so now with an inflated 12 playoff teams out of 30 competing in October, old-school heads are spinning.

You can call what we’re seeing now watered down, but I’m old enough to remember the traditional two pennant winners as the automatic World Series matchups and, easily can explain my view from a personal viewpoint. I started working in the game with the Expos in 1973, at a time when there were just four teams of 24 qualified to compete for a berth in the Fall Classic. What we see today is better.

Reduced September rosters? Better: Until recently there was a head-scratching major-league rule that every Sept. 1, teams could expand their major-league playing rosters to a maximum of 40-men, basically everyone on their current protected roster.

The reason for that strange rule of expanded rosters was logistical. For 80 years, the upper levels of Double-A and Triple-A usually finished around Labour Day, meaning in the second week of September, there were up to 15 MLB roster players on each team with nowhere to go. So going way back to the advent and implementation of MLB farm systems, owners made an agreement you could just bring all those minor leaguers up at the end of their seasons, in order to keep an eye on them, maybe to further their development and, most importantly, to be able to use them in actual regular-season games for the final month.

Some non-contending teams would use the whole allowance of 40 roster players, meaning they could, in actual fact, have up to 18 pitchers and 22 position players available for up to 30 of the final games. An outfielder that can run like a deer, but can’t play defence or hit? No problem, that guy can pinch-run 15 times. With no “three-batter rule” for relief pitchers, you would often have upwards of 10 pitchers work in a blowout game. The consistency and fairness of competition in the month of September was so uneven that many times it easily spoiled the integrity of the final month for the 4-5 teams left alive that were in competition for a pennant.

You could have been three games behind, out of the league lead and be in scoreboard watching mode, to find out that the team you are trying to catch is facing a white-flag waving team that doesn’t care about winning any more, but wants to see its not-ready-for-primetime prospects in MLB game situations. The integrity was severely in doubt.

With up to 17 of 24 MLB teams realistically eliminated by Sept. 1, in most seasons following the first big expansion from 1969-93, attendance and interest at those also-ran ballparks for meaningless late-season games, invariably took a hit. More conspiratorially, if teams looking to pull in the reins on escalating payroll wanted to, they could play the added youngsters and claim they were looking to their future, while subtly suppressing the offensive numbers for their own star players, making them easier to sign the next year, with lower numbers. Sept. baseball was often a competitive wasteland of playing out the string.

So, what then has changed for the better? As we pointed out earlier, with 12 teams now promised a spot in the post-season, there are still, in 2024, fully 17 teams that still believe they have a chance and, less realistically, 26 of 30 franchises that have not yet been mathematically eliminated. The need to keep roster numbers down and ensure late-season games are competitive via reduced rosters, it is more essential than ever.

Instead of allowing the promotion of all 40-man rosters, the limit for the final month is now maintained at 28. That means that, for fans, the players they see on the field competing for their home team are basically the same players they paid their money to watch all season. Under revised rules, teams can bring up one position player and one pitcher, or two position players, but they are complementary piecers instead of an entire, imported to the majors, Triple-A roster. Integrity.

In truth, there was never any logical reason to keep the 40-man limit as an alternative for September. Back when that rule was a thing, it was important, because otherwise organizations had to let their upper-level minor-leaguers drift off and go home, until some of them went to play Caribbean winter ball.

Now, as a substitute, all MLB teams have state-of-the-art player-development complexes to which the best of their minor-leaguers can report in the final month, instead of the majors, plus the Triple-A season has been lengthened until later in the final month just because of that. There is also the added option of the Arizona Fall League, where the best young prospects can play three months of high level ball, starting in late-September, without accumulating precious (to teams) days of MLB service, but in a setting where all teams have the opportunity to scout many of the Top 100 minor leaguers, their own and others, in the industry.

The Blue Jays have 14 home games left at Rogers Centre, vs. the Phillies (2), Mets (3), Cardinals (3), Red Sox (3) and Marlins (3).

The advantage of the 28-man roster rule, given the 12 playoff spots available, with more teams believing they are alive for a spot on the October dance-floor, make attending those home games for teams not in the hunt more appealing, even if it is only to have a better look under legitimate MLB conditions at what the Jays may be looking at in terms of contributing talent for 2025, between the Buffalo Boyz and the inexperienced acquisitions at the trade deadline. It’s the integrity of the final month and it’s important both financially and for the quality of the MLB product.

Griff’s The Pitch

Discussion about this post