Actual rule proposals are due 11/6, so feel free to workshop things before then but get me the actual proposals on/by the 6th.
I am personally going to propose eliminating the cap on pitcher GS in the regular season, as I completely agree with Rick that it's pointless when we have an IP cap and, frankly, it is a HUGE pain to keep track of.
In addition to the proposal under discussion, I note that there was a lot of discussion about playoff usage rules and ballpark customization last year if anyone wants to revisit that.
Given its resounding defeat last year I will not personally be re-proposing elimination of the closer rule, since y'all seem to believe in Mystical Closer Wooo (and presumably also ghosts, unicorns, and trickle-down economics)
Does your last sentence include my belief that I will one year win an ARBA WS?
Just throwing something out on ballpark customization. Would it not make sense to just allow teams to pick the ballpark of their choice every season instead of once every 3 years?
I think the ballpark numbers change from year to year in order to help replicate the stats for the true MLB players who played in the park during that particular season.
Yes Travis, the changing ballpark dimensions are to help in the replay of actual stats and standings, for those that replay full seasons. This is one of the reasons why I've been a proponent of allowing each manager to actually customize the dimensions of their own ballpark....i.e., pick an existing ballpark and allow the manager to move the numbers up or down by 3. I believe this allows managers to customize a ballpark to their own team/managerial style, while also infusing a little extra enjoyment/fun in playing in your own ballpark. Also, if allowing managers to customize their own park, I think that would essentially do away with having to pick new ballparks, since you've already designed something you like.
Eliminating the cap on GS is an interesting idea that has some merit, but I would oppose eliminating it completely. I could support using a standard cap such as the 35 that we use for unlimited starters. Nobody has started 36 games in MLB since 2003 and it's been over 30 years since anyone had more than 37 GS. With no cap at all, I would worry that some player would end up starting 50+ times, which could happen with quick hooks. That just seems like too great a departure from real baseball to me. Despite the recent trend of "openers" by some teams, nobody is starting nearly that many times.
Oh yeah, since someone asked why we have +10% for IP but not GS, I should mention that this actually predates my entry into the league...in 1988. So we obviously were using dice and paper back then, or maybe it was stone tablets.
One rule proposal that I would like to make revisits a previous discussion. I propose allowing teams to adjust their rosters before each season, instead of keeping the original 30 man roster until Series 11. In this proposal, we still wouldn't expand rosters until that point. However, they would become more fluid, which would help with usage and also be more realistic. This proposal would be compatible with adjusting the current roster maximums, but I think that should be a separate proposal if someone wants to make it. However, I do think that this one should include eliminating the rule stating that only players on the initial 30-man roster are eligible for the playoffs as there would no longer be anything so special about that initial roster. I also think this is more realistic anyway as there have been plenty of players in MLB history who made an impact in the playoffs after playing very little during the season. In our case, their potential impact would still be limited by our playoff usage rules.
I'm sure I could come up with some more stuff to change, but will stop there for now.
Eric, wouldn't it be impossible for any starting pitcher to gather more than 40 starts in an ARBA season? Regardless of how many innings a starter accumulates in one start, he must still rest for 3 games before he can start again (and that only if he's unlimited or is an asterik starter).
Think you could actually end up with at a minimum 48 starts. 12 home and 12 away series, could get at a minimum 2 starts per series because rest is reset at the beginning of each series.
Oh right, I was thinking a continuous schedule 1 through 162, and not our Block style where there is no rest needed between blocks. (ie., a starting pitcher can pitch the last game of one block, then pitch the first game of the next block).
In that case, I agree that we need to limit game starts for starting pitchers.......35 starts would probably be a good limit.
I like the idea of capping all SPers at 35 starts but not having a personal cap for each SP based on how many games *he* started.
Is there going to be a parallel rule proposal revisiting starting pitcher usage in the playoffs? Right now we have this system where a guy who made 19 starts probably pitched a lot more innings in real life than a guy who made 60 relief appearances, but the former is entitled to one playoff start while the latter is an unlimited reliever. That's an extreme example, but I guess my point is, if the attitude in the regular season is going to be "they are inning limited so we don't need to look at starts" then should we also have a playoff usage system that is based on innings rather than appearances?
On one of the teams in smaller divisions with 9-game series, the GS max would actually be 54 for a * starter. So a team could get through the entire season with only 4 starters! That definitely seems too extreme for what feels like more of a minor annoyance than a major issue. Capping all starters at 35 GS while maintaining the +10% solution seems reasonable enough, although I suspect that we would end up with a lot more overused starters from teams that fail to limit IP in those starts. I suppose that's they're problem, but is a point against the idea that this change would necessarily make roster and usage management easier. Personally, I think including the +10% for GS would be sufficient and carry less risk.
In fact, I'll go ahead and propose the +10% GS maximum for SP. Unlimited SP would still be capped at 35. Of course, this becomes moot if the other proposal passes, but it represents a fallback solution in case that one doesn't get enough support.
It's super tempting to propose bringing back injuries (at least rest of game ones) to make Strat more interesting again, but there may not be much support for that idea.
As for Kevin's suggestion that we modify pitcher usage in the playoffs to be based on IP instead of games...sure, go for it! There was a recent proposal to modify playoff usage, but I if I recall correctly it went too far, partly by mixing batters and pitchers in the proposal.
The annoyance to me would be going through this discussion and ending up with a proposal of +10% GS. For a 10 start pitcher, he can't 1 additional start, and a 20 start pitcher gets 2. Big whoop. It makes little sense to me go through the process of someone drafting a proposal and going through voting such an insignificant change. So far, it seems to me that best idea is to only have an Innings Pitched limit of 110% while at the same ensuring that no starter gets more than 35 starts in a season.
The +10% GS is personally highly annoying. As the guy who hates hates hates having to go through all the rotations at the beginning of the year and the usage at the end of the year to see if GS are off, I would LOVE a rule that would let me not have to do that and just rely on the IP cap. I'm reasonably indifferent to a universal 35 GS cap since I don't think it's necessary with the IP cap but would be easy to check and enforce.
