When Major League Baseball introduced the new rules changes for this season, baseball purists were infuriated. As it turns out, players are not too happy about it either. The Nationals’ Max Scherzer in an interview with The Washington Post made it clear that the rule changes could improve entirely ineffective since they are not complete.
Foreseeing faked injuries. An idea to really curtail roster manipulation. A push to implement a timeout system in baseball.
Max Scherzer spoke with @PostSports about MLB's latest round of rule changes. He had a lot of thoughts: https://t.co/KSyOvqwreG
— Jesse Dougherty (@dougherty_jesse) February 26, 2020
Scherzer is one of two players that is a part of Major League Baseball’s rules committee, the other being teammate Daniel Murphy. So far, Max has not been impressed with how the league has chosen to implement the 3-batter-minimum rule for pitchers as well as the increased minimum for the injured list.
In Scherzer’s own words, the rules being put in place make it easy to game the system.
It’s very plausible that, when it’s convenient, somebody just could come up lame because the umpires are always going to side on player health, and they have to. If they were to force a guy to pitch injured, now that screams lawsuit, right? It won’t happen. We’re going to be talking about this over and over again.
Scherzer is understanding of why the league wants the rule to exist, but cannot help but to stress that it is still incomplete. There is too much that goes into a game and situation that makes the rule ineffective at its current stage.
When you consider talking about games in September and October, when some of these matchups can really swing a game, do we really want that for the fans? Do the fans really want to be told we have three-batter minimums, but a guy comes up lame and now the game is altered? The rule is just not ready yet.
In regards to the minimum Injured List stint being moved up to 15 days, Scherzer is equally unimpressed. The rules as it stands dictate that a player optioned must wait 15 days before they get to come back up to the majors. The exception to that rule is a player can come back up right away if he’s replacing a player moved to the injured list. Scherzer argues that will turn a roster spot into a revolving door and nothing could keep the team from keeping on Injured List roster spot open throughout the season.
If you have the chance, read the interview with Scherzer in the Twitter link above.
