Ballpark Travel

I have always found it frustrating with the dialogue that steroids should be credited with the home run explosion starting in the early-90’s. Yes, steroids did need to be addressed and I am glad that it was, but team expansion also deserves a significant amount of credit to the big home run numbers dating back to the 1960’s. This spring, Major League Baseball announced that they would expand roster size to 26 players starting in the 2020 season. That in and of itself means that in 2020, there will be 30 additional players who would have otherwise been in the minor leagues on big league rosters. Without adding a team, baseball will impact their competition. By adding two expansion teams, an additional 52 players would be on the big stage. This is especially important to the extremes. Great hitters are still going to be great hitters and they are facing pitchers that would have otherwise been in the minors and it stands to reason that home run numbers would jump. Historically...

It seems likely that Major League Baseball is going to expand in the near future with the addition of two more teams. Much has been written recently about speculating where, but Montreal and Portland seem to be two of the common front runners. The addition of two MLB teams will have a ripple effect into Minor League Baseball in what could end up with between 10-12 additional franchises. Not all teams have both Class A Short Season and a Rookie League affiliate, but it is a sure thing that at least five teams will be added per expansion franchise which could expand to a sixth team should the parent club desire to field a Rookie League team. Presently, there are 160 MiLB teams. Here is how the levels break down with the number of teams in parenthesis: -         30 Triple A – International League (14), Pacific Coast League (16) -         30 Double A – Eastern League (12), Southern League (10), Texas League (8...

When the rules changes were announced on March 14th, there really wasn't anything too earth shattering, but it does feel like some substantial changes are building during the next CBA negotiation at the conclusion of the 2021 season - expansion (possibly globalism), fewer games, shorter games and fixing free agency all will be hot topics and to the league office's credit, Commissioner Manfred has done a tremendous job of being open in discussing the future of professional baseball. For this round of changes, however - there were some interesting small adjustments. 1. Changes to encourage faster games: Inning Breaks are reduced by 0:05 in regional broadcast games and 0:25 in national broadcast games. For a national game, that is somewhat significant savings of 7+ minutes, but just shows the commitment to faster games. Maximum mound visits reduced from 6 to 5. I have a hard time remembering a game without playoff implications where this was an issue, but this rule def...